Re: What makes Java so special? -- JAVA400-L

>> If my Java code talks to some AS/400 specific widget, then it's not
>> portable. If it's not portable then I can't very well re-use it, no matter
>> that the byte code can be  interpreted by another hardware platform.
>
>The point is, yes you can. 

This is the bit that I can't follow.
I can't test it on my PC (P75, 24 meg RAM) because IBM's VA-Java
insists on 32 meg of RAM.  

I have 2 identical databases, or, more accurately, I have one database
spread across 2 machines.  One is an AS/400 and one is an NT server.
The AS/400 contains name and address information for end-users,
and the NT box has name and address information for vendors.
Here's what I *thought*  I had to do to use data queues to communicate 
from the Java client to the AS/400 (please excuse the terminology...):
1. In the Java client, call a routine that sends a request to the data queue
2. In the AS/400 server, receive the DTAQE, query the DB and send the
    results back to the DTAQ
3. In the Java client, call a routine that reads the DTAQE, parses the
    results and displays them.
Did I miss something?

Now, my Java client's routine is writing to/reading from a data queue.
How can I use this identical code to get the exact same information
from the NT server?

-snip-

>No. As long as the code is 100% Java, you can choose your client platform.
>The nit you are picking has to do with choosing to talk to a specific
>server. There is no requirement to.

In theory I guess I don't need to talk to a server, but where do I get my
data from if I don't?

>Some people might not want to just toss out all they have running right now
>and rewrite it.

You and I couldn't agree more!
I only wonder how many people are actually running Client-Server code
where the client and server communicate via data queues.   I've got
a huge number of "old style" applications, and a mere handful of
client-server ones...

>> If you're the designer, and you have the opportunity to write both sides
>> of the application, why would you write platform limited, um, I mean
>> platform specific code?
>
>That would depend on the requirements of the application. If you are writing
>from scratch, you would obviously start out wanting the most independant
>code possible. 
>
>But I think that not too many AS/400 shops are starting from scratch. 

We have literally tons of legacy code that were written before
the client server model became fashionable.  Even now, there are
thousands of AS/400 shops that are using the older model to write
applications.  These folks *are* starting from scratch when it comes
to GUI/Client Server code (which is what I meant...)

Buck Calabro
Commsoft

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