Re: Latest EGL Features -- MIDRANGE-L

Rick DuVall wrote:

Hello Michael,

I would still love to try EGL. Unfortunately, given the new
pricing/delivery models, I may or may not do so. Hell, I can't
even manage to get it! I downloaded a trial and gave up trying
to get it installed and working. My thinking is tending toward
'why tackle trying to succeed at the so far, difficult 'get and
install' of something with a learning curve (however small, Joe)
when it seems likely that IBM will price it out of my reach
anyway?' I have enough trouble getting the time to install and
try EASY stuff. I'm pretty disgusted with the stability of the
wdsc product these days anyway. I honestly don't know where to
go... I just see my precious time being eaten by quirks and
things that don't work the way I would think they should. Maybe
it's me... <Rick dives back into the morass of fixes and
improvements he'd like to make but seldom has time to effect>

I don't know what to tell you, Rick. I use WDSC and RDi and RBD all day every day. I don't have a single issue. What sort of instability are you seeing? I only saw one issue this year, something about SQL errors.

The pricing for RDi-SOA is going to be about $1200 a seat above your normal cost for RDi or ADTS. With RDi-SOA, I can create full-blown SOA applications using web services in minutes - web services that can then be consumed either by others in the organization (e.g., the Windows folks) or by EGL itself for stunning (there's really no other word for it) rich graphical applications.

You say you have to learn a new language (EGL), but what if in the process you do NOT have to become an expert in: HTML, CSS, Java, PHP, SOAP, XML, and so on? The problem with advanced software today is that it requires so many hours just to nail down the basic plumbing. With EGL, it's all done for you. So, how many hours is that worth? What if it saved you, say, two hours a week not having to hand-code WSDL documents or debug XML or fix an angle bracket in an HTML page? That's 100 hours a year. SWMA for a seat of RDi-SOA is $240 more than RDi or ADTS alone. Is your time worth two-fifty an hour?

Of course, you also have to pay for the initial cost of the product, but that's a one-time charge. If you can't justify a capital expense of $1200 to upgrade your tools, then I agree it will be a hard sell.

But anyway, that's the cost justification exercise. If you're not doing any web stuff, then you don't need EGL. But if you're trying to make the System i work and play in the organization, then RDi-SOA will probably pay for itself in a few months. My guess it would save you 50% of your time (if not more) on your first non-trivial web application project. Remember, ANYTHING can be used to throw a list of records on the screen: Net.Data, PHP, JSP, RPG-CGI, you name it. The real cost in web application programming is how long it takes to expose a piece of RPG business logic as a web service (either SOAP or REST), so that the rest of your organization can use it using standard tools. EGL reduces that cost immensely.

Joe