AS400 FAQs - SOFTWARE

My server logs show that many people are coming to this site with general questions about AS400s, so I've added a few pages in which I discuss some of the topics people are searching for.

What software runs on an AS400 ?

Well the thing to remember is that whereas an AS400 is a server, there is not just server software that runs on it.
In the good old days when the AS400 first came out, people could access the server by a dumb terminal. Nowadays this method of access has been replaced by terminal emulation, but there are a great many applications that were built for the AS400 platform that still run now as legacy systems and run natively on AS400 only.
Also bear in mind that the AS400 has been around for a great many years and a large number of software applications were built on this platform. Since AS400s are business machines, with excellent databasing and a world class multi-user environment, they tended to be used for end-to-end business solutions such as:

CRM and sales order
Distribution and warehousing
Planning and forecasting
SRM and procurement
Manufacturing and assembly
Project management
Service management
Financial management
Business intelligence
Integration and collaboration
Industry solutions

Examples of integrated packages include BPCS, SAP, Wintouch, MACPAC, PACS and there are of course many others. These systems tend to be written in either the AS400 proprietary language of choice RPG, but many also contain ports from mainframes written in COBOL.

Being a specialised server there are also a large number of back end add-on utilities to generally facilitate both the running of the server and business processes in general such as:

Database Tools
File Editor
Excel Conversion
PDF conversion
Faxing Software
Change management software
Security
Storage management

Also, since you can also run Windows server, Linux and Java on the platform simultaneously - yes, one server running ALL those operating systems as well as OS400 - the choices for software are virtually limitless!

This article was submitted by me, Vince Lewis. I hope that the hints and tips above prove useful to you

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