Press Room

Seagull Introduces Direct Support for SAP in BarTender Upgrade

BELLEVUE, WA, USA—September 18, 2000—Seagull Scientific has announced the release of version 6.1 of their BarTender label software, which includes their next generation enterprise software support. Among the featured additions is the ability to directly print labels using data from the standard IDoc data format of SAP's R/3 software package.

SAP is the largest developer of enterprise applications software for large-scale corporate operations. However, until now, users of major label printing software packages needing to print labels using data from SAP had to go through a complicated sequence of data format conversions, including custom SAP programming.

"By directly reading IDoc data, BarTender greatly simplifies the job of printing labels from within SAP," says Don Ray, President of Seagull. "Because IDocs are a native format already used by SAP for storing and transferring data, we've eliminated the need for complex data conversions and custom programming. Quite simply, that means BarTender integrates with SAP more easily and prints faster than other label software."

Seagull says that a critical component of their next-generation enterprise strategy also centers on Commander, their new software integration utility included with the enterprise edition of BarTender. Commander is specifically designed to allow software programs to launch and control other programs, especially BarTender, without there necessarily being an explicit interface between those programs. Commander's primary use is to wait for the creation of certain user-specified files on a network and then "wake up" BarTender with instructions to print labels using a specific label design and data source.

"It is really the dual-capabilities of our direct IDoc support together with Commander that make BarTender so ideal for integration with SAP," says Jeremy Seigel, Seagull's CEO. "Commander lets BarTender print automatically in response to data generated by SAP, and our direct IDoc support lets BarTender process that data without any messy conversions. What's more, with BarTender able to run "in the background," its operation becomes completely transparent to the user. It's as if the labels were coming right out of SAP."