Re: EGL and JDBC was Re: Marketing the platform

[Joe Pluta <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

James Rich wrote:
> On Fri, 22 Feb 2008, Joe Pluta wrote:
>   
> > Note that I say you don't need any JSF/Java/JavaScript.  That doesn't
> > mean that such knowledge won't help!  EGL is a true 4GL that generates
> > 3GL code, namely Java, JSF and JavaScript.  The more you know about
> > those technologies, the easier it is to understand the generated code
> > when necessary (typically in debugging when something isn't working the
> > way you thought it would).  But you can get started on it without that
> > knowledge.
> >     
>
> Can EGL use classes I've already written?  Or does it make those obsolete? 
> I've spent a lot of time creating classes and factories for many of them. 
> I feel that those classes follow a fairly good design and I'm quite 
> pleased.  Does EGL make all that irrelevant?  I'm not trying to hang on to 
> work for sentimental reasons, but rather I don't want to repeat work I've 
> already done.  My factories do use JDBC, however I could write factories 
> that call RPG programs using the java tookit instead.  Would EGL be able 
> to use my classes and just create new factories for them, or is that 
> looking at things the wrong way?
>   
EGL has phenomenal capabilities for integrating existing Java.  I hope 
I'm not talking out of school, I can't remember how much was in RBDe, 
but I know that in RBD 7.1 (and 7.1 is very close to GA) you can define 
an external type that basically defines the prototype of your Java 
classes (not unlike the RPG prototyping capabilities) and then you can 
directly invoke those types and their methods.  In fact, I used it to 
create a global static variable in a static class that all my EGL can 
access by simply importing that prototype.  It's awesome, man.

Joe