Re: IBM getting rid of RPG

[Don <dr2@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Rewrite?  NAH, they'd wing some conversion tool at us and give us a few
months to convert before pulling out the rug...:)

And, then, there's ALWAYS those incredibly knowledgeable, loyal to the
user, WELL POLICED BY IBM and impecibley credible "business
partners"........



On Sat, 28 Jul 2001, John Rockwell wrote:

> One of the problems where this penalty comes into play involves a large 
>number of
> programs built to provide us with an Executive Information System.  It would 
>take
> a significant amount of time to rewrite those programs just to get back to 
>where
> we were when we started from a presentation point of view, time that 
>management
> may not feel too pleased about providing us with.  This system is written
> entirely in RPG and displays various business trends in offsetting colored bar
> graphs.  Its used to encourage peer-to-peer management (competition) among
> multiple plants instead of making the plant managers respond to seemingly
> arbitary directives handed down from above (it gets rid of the  'you don't 
>live
> in the real world' arguments because they're competing against people who 
>live in
> the same world that they do).  There's also a drill-down function built into 
>the
> bars on all of the graphs so people can see where the numbers came from.
> Re-writing code for file maintenance programs will be considerably easier.
> 
> 
> Joe Pluta wrote:
> 
> > There are ways around the interactive tax.  In fact, I'll be doing a seminar
> > on exactly that topic at COMMON.  The basic idea is to modify your programs
> > to run in batch and talk to a data queue instead of a display file.  Once
> > you do that, you can pretty quickly attach a user interface, either thick
> > client or thin.  A thick client can be written in VB or Java, or you can use
> > a servlet engine such as WebSphere or Tomcat to run your applications via a
> > browser.  It's fast, powerful, flexible and relatively painless.
> >
> > This way, your primary business logic is still written in RPG, which I
> > contend is the best language for defining business rules in the business,
> > primarily because of its tight integration with the database.  And, once
> > you've started separating your business logic from your presentation, you
> > can start looking at moving towards a true client/server architecture, which
> > is where I believe the iSeries will truly outpace any other platform.
> >
> > Joe
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: owner-midrange-l@midrange.com
> > > [mailto:owner-midrange-l@midrange.com]On Behalf Of William A Pack
> > > Sent: Saturday, July 28, 2001 11:09 AM
> > > To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
> > > Subject: IBM getting rid of RPG
> > >
> > >
> > >       I liked Mr. Rockwell's comments.  IBM is trying everything
> > > to get people to
> > > abandon current applications and migrate to something they want to sell,
> > > like Java or Domino.  They are good alternatives for new apps,
> > > but if I have
> > > a business running for 5-10 years on good software, why should I
> > > change just
> > > because IBM wants me to?  IBM is going to piss off quite a few customers,
> > > who will remember the favor that IBM did them by jacking up the cost of
> > > interactive workload.  If they have to change applications, my
> > > guess is they
> > > will be implemented on a cluster of Wintel boxes, just to return the favor
> > > to IBM.  I really want to now the technical reasons IBM has for costing on
> > > interactive features.  They claim it is harder to do 5250 now that 3 years
> > > ago.  Why?
> > >       The System 3/x family was sold as a programmerless systems.
> > >  The AS/400 was
> > > sold as a system that will maintain investment in applications
> > > and business
> > > practices.  Now, the only thing that sets the 400 apart from the sea of
> > > Intel based clones is the single manufacturer.   Looks like the future
> > > belongs to Wintel and C#.
> >
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