When people talking about AS400, it is expected to have some wordings like old, difficult, no way to integrate, etc. However, this system is running in the world for more than 30 years since 1988 with its stability and reliability.
There are thousands of core insurance systems and manufacturing systems running on AS400 (IBM i-series). As a data science team, we are always discovering value from whatever possible sources. It is easier than general impression to exact data from AS400. In this article, we are going to share some different use cases of our client to have fruitful results with the use of AS400 data.
These cases are including Fortune 500, manufacturing companies and a law firm. For these examples, it is not limited to commercial license software products but also real application on open source software working with AS400.
A Data Lake of a Fortune 500 Insurance Corporations
For a large corporation like an insurance company, they are running more than 100 systems within the group. They have their data warehouse for more than 20 years but there are still data silos making data analytics difficult. They are asking us to provide a solution with the possibilities of near real-time analytics including data in legacy systems. In order to capture data from many different databases including DB2 on AS400, DB2 on AIX, Oracle on Linux and Microsoft SQL servers, we have suggested IBM data replication (CDC) to collect data from different sources and replicating the data into 1 single target as their Big Data Platform running on AWS. So, we have installed and configured IBM Data Replication for Apache Kafka to deliver source system data into Kafka topics and messages for their data lake.
As a result, their data lake is now reflecting their system changes within minutes on their dashboards, reports and predictive analytic models.
A Global Apparel Manufacturing Firm with 100 Factories
There is another example for our client using IBM Data Replication (CDC) to replicate their data into 1 single DB2 database (IBM DB2 BLU) in the IBM SoftLayer cloud service. However, this is not only fulfilling the needs of data analytics but also the major data exchange hub for their whole logistic management to allow them to exchange all production data across 100 factories located in 26 countries. They are now adjusting their production and raw material delivery plan to minimize the impact of coronavirus. For instance, their production lines in China are basically stopped running but their factories in Ethiopia taking up some of the workload.
This is one of the typical example for a global manufacturing company and they will not give up the AS400 for the stability for their MFG system.
Another Manufacturing Company (Printing)
We are also working with one of the largest printing companies in the south China. They are running AS400 since 1989 with their customized MFG system. The data age is older than most of our team members. However, they would like to analyze their data across different systems but they don’t have the requirement of real-time analysis.
Then, we have helped them to set up Apache Kafka and connecting to their DB2 on AS400 and replicating data from other system such as POS running in their subsidiaries on Windows into an ODS and modern data warehouse running on PostgreSQL database.
A Law Firm
There is an AS400 system running in a law firm for more than 30 years and storing all their client information. Their focus is doing “deed of assignment” for the major real estate developers in Hong Kong with more than 300 solicitors. They are seeking for analytic solution and reporting system together. As a result, we would suggest IBM Cognos as their answer with well formatted report printing capabilities and Business Intelligence solutions with reasonably good data visualization.
It is very simple to connect their AS400 with DB2 drivers. We have spent just 20 days for helping them to build a number of dashboards and reports for printings to their clients and internal data analysis needs. However, it is possible to use other Business Intelligence tool to connect to DB2 on AS400 with proper JDBC drivers. So, it is never limited to have IBM solutions to connect to AS400 for integration.
Conclusion
For these solutions, you should find that it is possible to use open source solutions or other solutions to connect to AS400. Therefore, it is never limited to IBM products to connect to the legacy IBM systems. If you would like to seek for our advice based on our experiences in IBM AS400 (i-series), please do not hesitate to reach us to raise your questions or to arrange a short session for discussion free-of-charge.
