User`s guide

PC*MILER-AS/400 MVS User’s Guide 7
The Advantage of Using Multi-Version Switch
ALK’s PC*MILER products are the de-facto industry standard software solutions
for determining mileage and toll costs between locations. Thousands of over-the-
road carriers as well as shippers use our products as a means to determine mileage
that can be agreed upon for billing purposes.
During negotiations between shipper and carrier, a particular version of
PC*MILER is identified that will serve as the standard by which mileage is to be
determined. Sometimes, the carrier has a certain release but the
shipper wants to standardize on an older version of the product, despite the fact
that ALK’s support may be limited to the latest major release of the product plus
one major version back. This can create an issue for the carrier because in order
to support their many customers, they must support multiple versions, even some
versions that are no longer supported by ALK.
To add to the issues, ALK’s products are designed to replace certain access files
(the DLLs) when they are installed. This means that if, for example, you have
Version 21.0 on a server and then install Version 22.0 on the same server, you
would overwrite the access files for v. 21.0 and would then be unable to access
that version. This is a large issue for the carriers who want to integrate all
versions of PC*MILER into their current Transportation Management System
(TMS) for billing with one call to one server, not multiple servers.
An example of how some of our customers are currently utilizing
PC*MILER|Connect is depicted below in Figure 1.1.
Figure 1.1
Transportation
Management
System
ALK’s
PC*MILER|Connect
SERVER A
PC*MILER 19.0
Integrated
SERVER B
PC*MILER 20.0
SERVER C
PC*MILER 22.0
SERVER D
PC*MILER 21.0
Manual process Manual
p
rocess Manual process