With the new agreement between IBM and Profound Logic, IBM i shops have the convenience of obtaining the entire I/O solution from one vendor. 

Profound Logic Software announced at COMMON that it has signed an agreement with IBM to resell Rational Open Access: RPG Edition, commonly referred to as RPG Open Access. Profound Logic is authorized to sell and install RPG Open Access along with its own software.

RPG Open Access was introduced last year by IBM as a way for RPG programmers to use the simple and well-understood RPG I/O model to access resources and devices that are not directly supported by RPG. RPG OA opens up RPG, allowing vendors to write handlers to access resources such as browsers, mobile devices, Web services, external databases, XML files, and spreadsheets.

Profound Logic Software was the first vendor to announce such a handler, when it introduced Profound UI, a native graphical user interface platform for RPG.  Profound UI enables RPG developers to modernize existing RPG programs away from the limitations of 5250, and to build new rich browser applications.

While Profound UI was well received by customers of Profound Logic and the IBM i community, buying the solution was somewhat inconvenient because it involved obtaining licenses from two separate sources. Customers had to contact IBM to obtain RPG Open Access; and then contact Profound Logic to obtain Profound UI.

With the new agreement between IBM and Profound Logic, IBM i shops have the convenience of obtaining the entire solution from one vendor. Customers can also try the RPG Open Access functionality before they buy it by using the RPG preprocessor, a module of Profound UI that simulates RPG Open Access through alternate compile commands.