Upgrading from PRO/5, OpenBASIC, ProvideX, or Thoroughbred BASIC applications

Here are the most important benefits of upgrading to BBj - pick your favorite!

GUI for BASIC

You can add a modern graphical user interface to your applications, which allows you to provide your users with an improved user experience. For instance, you can break the chains of an 80x25 ASCII monitor and provide your users with the benefits of modern wide screen monitors.

A modern interface's "ease of use" is a major selling point with CIOs, promising them fast acceptance with their staff and saving a lot of time and money they would otherwise spend on user training.

Java adequate applications with BBj

BBj shares all the advantages of Java - flexibility, scalability, and platform independence - but its code is much more succinct, saving you a lot of time and effort programming new business applications.

Mobile and Web solutions

Thanks to BBj's Java integration, you will find it much easier to connect your application with the rest of the world - with other servers, systems, mobile devices (Smartphones) OS's, Web services, and so on.

Replace legacy code step by step

Even if you are not inclined to replace all of your PRO/5 applications at once, you can benefit from BBj's advantages because BASIS ensures that all of our product families continue to be compatible with each other.

So upgrade only those software modules that really profit from BBj and leave the rest as they are, for as long as you and your customer consider it appropriate.

Legacy code and Java

You can use BBj or Java code from within your existing application to add modern functionalities without abandoning your PRO/5 based legacy products altogether.

Cloud computing with BBj

BBj's architecture and functionality make it a perfect toolset for programming cloud applications.

Generate Reports at a click of your mouse

BBj comes with a prefabricated report generating tool that allows you to generate WYSIWYG reports at the click of a button.

Creates relational databases from your legacy tables

With BBj, it is much easier to access standard third party databases such as MySQL, Oracle, and so on. And as a surplus, BBj allows external applications to access your legacy data much easier through ODBC and JDBC because BBj "translates" your tables to "real" databases on the fly - without you having to touch or code a thing.

Programmers are more productive than ever with BBj

Since Java is a worldwide software standard, recruiting developers for your team it is much easier. While it took quite a while to teach a programmer to handle Business Basic, modern-day Java developers familiar with Java and/or Visual Basic have no problem understanding BBj's structure.

For them, it takes just a few days to become familiar with BBj before attaining a high level of productivity, much higher than what they have ever experienced. 

Compliance!

For instance, it is impossible to get an ISO Quality Management certificate if you are still running an old CUI application not written for modern environments, which forbids a proper risk evaluation. In addition, with BBj's and Barista's role-based security model, you can make your application Sarbanes/Oxley compliant with just a click on your mouse.

Easy Business BASIC upgrade

If you have some reservations about upgrading a PRO/5 application to BBj or concerns that it will take a tremendous effort, understand it is generally easy to upgrade to BBj from PRO/5 or other legacy Business Basic dialects like /M/A/I OpenBASIC, Thoroughbred, or ProvideX. BASIS supplies you with tools specifically designed for upgrading your PRO/5 code automatically to BBj.

These tools work flawlessly with an estimated 99.5 % of all PRO/5 applications. In addition, BASIS will check your application, free, to determine if it is in the 99.5 percentile. If your app needs some individual treatment, BASIS can help. Then, just deploy your application by installing Java and BBj, copying your application files, and off you go.

In many cases, the upgrade process takes less than an hour.