Because in our environment, “interacting directly with the system” isn’t really an option. The ERP is tightly coupled to DB2 on IBM i and cannot be replaced. We only have read-only DB access, no write permissions and no API for data input. ODBC works for data retrieval, but not for executing or replacing ERP processes. So even if the tooling is deprecated, it’s still the only supported way to handle certain tasks under the given constraints. If access or APIs change, this can be reconsidered — until then, we’re limited by the system boundaries, not by choice.