Shalom,

Some months ago I installed IceBreak Community Edition in our V5R3 520. I had some problems trying to start it due to a conflicting software I had already installed in our i5. I wrote to the System & Method guys requesting for help and the response and support I got was just wonderful.

Although the CE edition is supposed to have just the barest support level, they really helped me out with this, doing a lot of remote support (I'm in Venezuela, they are in Denmark!), even changing their software in order to avoid conflicting with our software (and it really wasn't needed, it was just an old ziplib library, a holdover from older systems).

Unfortunately I haven't had too much time free in order to "play" with their software. From I have already tested, though, it is a really nice product, very easy to use and with a good performance. We haven't seen any problems with it, other than the initial one I just wrote about.

Regards,
Luis Rodriguez

We have been using Icebreak for a couple of years now. I did the initial tests to compare different web front ends that included both RPG & non-RPG based development tools and found that it performed better then other tools.

At first we had a few questions and the response from support team was fast & helpful - I would ask for example code to solve our coding issues which they would provide. After a couple of years they still offer to run customized webinars so we can enhance our applications.

A few key points:
Integrates with AS400 security.
Uses RPG/Cobol/CL so you don't have to learn a new language (unless you don't know HTML).
Comes with it's own webserver that runs on the AS400.
Webserver is easy to configure.
Webserver supports both HTTP & HTTPS.
Performs faster then other AS400 web based front ends.

Not only do we have the typical inquiry/update apps, but we have also developed administration apps, graphs for KPIs, allow users to list & view their spool files in PDF format, a Query tool that allows users to run existing queries and then filter the query results, and so on. I am at the stage that a new inquiry/update app could be completed in a couple of days - today I wrote one in 2 hours.

Other tools that we have on our system and integrate into our Icebreak apps are TAA Tools, RDB Connect from Prodata and Webreport (Cool Spools). Icebreak comes with ExtJS which we use for our KPI graphs.

If you were to ask me if I would recommend it, then I would have to say yes.

Jim