Beans are roasting for manufacturing apps on the 3000 That Advanced Network Systems (ANSI) project to bring a Java Beans development toolkit to the 3000 will surface in May, according to ANSI’s Dave Thatcher. The company is deploying its implementation of Adager’s ADBC technology license, software which attaches Java apps directly to IMAGE data and skips ODBC overhead. Thatcher gave us an update that he’s wiring more MPE security into his Java “beans,” the most up-to-date kind of Java application programming interface, at HP’s request. The Developer’s Kit software will allow you to use ANSI’s Java Beans as ActiveX controls in any ActiveX application (like Visual Basic, PowerBuilder, PowerPoint or Excel) to quickly extract data from IMAGE databases. Thatcher said he’s got prototypes working that quickly extract IMAGE data for PowerPoint presentations. As a practical application of its Java Beans product for MPE/iX, ANSI is also working on an MM/3000 Bean that will write to the manufacturing application’s batch processor. This “Conin” bean will allow a user to define information about their MM/3000 application in the properties list of the bean. Once the MM transaction is sent down the pipe to the sever, the server will pre-process the transaction before writing it to the batch processor. The pre-processing validates all information an on-line transaction would do, and communicates back to the bean when there’s an error. “It means you can do valid MM/3000 transactions from any applet on a Web site,” Thatcher explains, “such as adding parts, adding work orders, or inventory adjustments like counts, all with proper validating.” That can enable MM transactions from PC clients like Access or Excel. Benefits from Java to extend 3000 application abilities will keep percolating up into the 3000 community this year. Copyright 1998 The 3000 NewsWire. All rights reserved