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Company Profile

DCSoftware, Inc., originally created ARCTOOLS/400TM to fill a major gap in one particular ERP software package. This particular package included extensive purge routines, but never included the archiving feature. Despite multiple user requests to the software vendor, archiving never made it into the standard software. Many clients had manually added the archiving feature to the purge programs, a task which typically required the services of a programmer for over a month's time. And, this task had to be repeated for every subsequent release of the software since the code modifications had to be migrated.

DCSoftware, Inc. discovered a better way to accomplish this task. With the early versions of ARCTOOLS, users of this package were able for the first time to archive their purged data without making any changes to their software. ARCTOOLS was simply installed, pointed at the various libraries, and run after the standard purge program. The purged data was recovered and placed in the archive library.

Users of this particular application software package were lucky, since their package had a fairly complete set of purge utilities. ARCTOOLS made the management of the data complete by archiving the purged data. Users of other packages were not so lucky. Many packages on the market do not include purge utilities, or perhaps the collection of purge utilities is incomplete or inconsistent, or they might use unworkable approaches like CPYF routines. In later versions, ARCTOOLS was enhanced with the PurgeWizard to help these users. The PurgeWizard allows a purge to be defined for any physical file as easily as a query record selection. A proprietary RPG code generator is then used to create a custom RPG program for purging and archiving the file.  The purge does not require exclusive file allocations, so the purge can be run in batch while users are logged on! This eliminated the long batch window requirements for many purge routines.

At this point, users of other application software packages or custom applications could get a consistent, easy to use purge method that allowed frequent purging and archiving.

ARCTOOLS users wanted more, so DCSoftware added new features to support archive data storage to tape and to provide extensive reporting capabilities on purge and archive jobs.

But the user base wanted still more....  Version 5 of ARCTOOLS included major enhancements, including the initial release of the JoinWizard and the RulesWizard.  With this release, ARCTOOLS supported purging of logical files, including multi-format logical files.  This feature allows a user to purge all the various records in an order header/order detail scenario quickly and easily.  Version 5 also introduced support for referential integrity.  This allowed a purge to be based on multiple files.  So - now you could run a purge such as:

bulletthe order must be closed
bulletthe close date must be less than 1/1/1997
bulletthe invoice must be paid
bulletthe check must be cleared
bulletthe customer must be set to inactive

All this power could be harnessed without programming.  

But alas, the users wanted more...

Version 6 of ARCTOOLS expanded the power of the JoinWizard and RulesWizard.  More selections.  Calculations.  More joins.  More POWER!

After doing all this purging, the users needed a better way to reorganize their files.  Hence, the release of the ReorgWizard, a very powerful utility for reorganizing files without locking the files.

Finally - AS/400 shops can optimize their disk space and base their CPU size on their business requirements, not the requirements for dragging around all that old data!

David Shea, the President of DCSoftware (and chief architect of ARCTOOLS) has been working with the AS/400 since the product line's introduction in the 1980's.  He has over 15 years experience in the field of Information Technology. He has held various positions over the years, including Director of Information Services for a multi-national manufacturer, Director of Information Services for an international pharmaceutical company, and Director of Information Services for a medium-sized biotech firm.. He also spent 6 years with one of the largest systems consulting organizations in the world, working in the commercial and defense manufacturing industries, software development, sales and installation.

 
Copyright © 1996 - 2008 by DCSoftware, Inc.
Last modified: November 05, 2008  

ARCTOOLS, ARCTOOLS/400, ReorgWizard, PurgeWizard, JoinWizard, RulesWizard and ARCDATA are trademarks of DCSoftware, Inc.

All materials (c)1996 - 2003 by DCSoftware, Inc.  All rights reserved.