I wanted to move an accounting program from Excel to AS/400.
That was the idea in November 2024. I had already written an Excel VBA program for an organisation close to me. VBA is a programming system used to automate work within Excel.
Now I wanted to build that functionality in the AS/400 environment I knew so well.
My place to experiment was PUB400, a public IBM i server accessible over the internet. After configuring the connection software and logging on, I started by making the menu screens.
At first, I was thinking of an accounting-only application.
Then I considered the master data it would need, and the scope began to grow.
Master data is the basic information that other operations refer to repeatedly. A list of category names is one example.
At the time, I thought it would be better to manage that information consistently. I identified the master data needed for accounting, then considered other applications that could use it too.
From accounting to shared data. From shared data to other operations that would use it.
That led to two screens: an overall main menu and an accounting menu within it.
I had set out to build accounting software. Now the menu seemed to be telling me I had more things to build.
There is an important distinction here, though. Having an item on a menu does not mean the operation behind it is finished.
In the old blog, I wrote that making just the screens had taken about thirty minutes. I then considered the database design, requirements and application development that still lay ahead.
I had not built an entire accounting system in thirty minutes.
Looking back, the menu served both as an entry point and as a way to think through the design. How would I organise the basic data? Which operations would use it? Arranging those operations on the screens widened my view beyond accounting alone.
And after estimating the development time, I remembered one more task.
I needed a naming convention too.
The things I was about to build needed names, just as the menu items did. Even in the familiar world of AS/400, that step could not be skipped.
First I made the menu. Then I could see much more clearly how much work was waiting behind it.
Adapted from my November 5, 2024 blog post. This story covers planning an accounting migration and making the menu screens; it does not report a completed system or production deployment. For an introduction to PUB400, see its official information.