Re: 4GL's -- MIDRANGE-L

There are several such outfits out there.

Think "screen scraper".
Provided they have access to the source code used for the green screen, they
have conversion programs that create the same stuff only webified.

But for most places, that's not good enough.

Let's suppose you need to maintain (update with new features) the code to
both support the green screen users and the web users ... do you modify the
green screen code, then run the modified result through the webifier again,
or do you modify both versions? Can you modify both versions?

Then we get a new version of some OS ... do we have to run everything
through the webifier again so it works on the next browser version of
Windoze?

For some standard packages, you can buy webified that has rethought the
application. For example, we are a manufacturer & we would like our
customers to be able to view data in our system regarding what we are doing
for them. The green screen software security is setup so that people can
either see items, costs, product structure, or not. It is not setup to
restrict access based on customer or vendor, but if we want to give access
to our data to customers & vendors, then we surely might not want customer-A
to see our data on customer-B.

Thus it is not a simple matter of webifying or screen scraping, the
application security access needs to be rethought if a different kind of
user to be involved.

We have a license based on # users of the software, at our company.
If the software is webified & potentially hundreds of customer personnel
looking at our data about them ... what does that do to the license?

The license to use software ... it gives our company staff permission to
modify the software ... does that permission extend to outside consultants,
or their webifying conversions, who may not have signed any confidentiality
agreement with the oriignal source code provider?

On Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:09:37 -0400, Jeff Crosby wrote

I have to chime in a bit here. Many many years ago I went with
ProGen Plus from BCD for generating subfile programs. For a couple
of years after that, I was worried because I could no longer write a
subfile program from scratch. I got over that. I couldn't care
less how to do one from scratch. ProGen Plus does everything I need
in the way of subfiles in literally 1/10 the time. I care not one
whit for all that plumbing.

If I ever convince both myself and the powers that be here that we
must "webify" everything, I have no intention whatsoever of learning
the nitty gritty details of HTML, JSF, J2EE, etc. There will have
to be something that does for "webifying" that ProGen Plus did for
subfile programs. I am not a computer geek that works for a
business, I am a businessman who likes to use computers to solve
business problems.

Last week and next week I am attending an online web class (free)
put on by IBM about EGL I'm spending 6+ hours a day hands on
finding out/learning what I can about EGL. The depth and breadth of
what EGL does is astonishing and I've only scratched the surface. I
don't even know enough yet to be dangerous. The powerpoint for the
first class alone is over 1,000 pages.

Both Joe Pluta's ("international authority on System i technology
and EGL") and Pete Helgren's names are mentioned on the foils. I
don't know if EGL will be for us, but it is indeed impressive.

--
Jeff Crosby
UniPro Foodservice/Dilgard
260-422-7531
Opinions expressed are my own and not necessarily those of my
company. Unless I say so.

Joe Pluta wrote:

david gibbs wrote:

You're 80% of the way there.

You are correct ... I don't trust generated code any further than I can

spit it. I far prefer to use code that I wrote or at least can reasonably
maintain myself (which is why I'm not adverse to using a code Wizard to
create a starting point).

I understand this point. But I hope you agree this is purely a personal
stand - David Gibbs prefers rolling his own, although he will accept
help from the friendly Wizard <grin>. I understand that position, and
even agree wherever practical. However, I hope you'll also agree that
lots of shops don't have the time to address their application backlog,
much less rewrite existing plumbing code, and that there are valid
business situations to use proprietary and/or generated code. We all
rely on code we cannot maintain to one degree or another, especially
those of us who use Windows (much less those who program for it).

So, the idea that the code is generated shouldn't be a showstopper for
everyone, even if it is for you. For people who don't have the time to
reinvent or even reimplement the wheel, generated code can actually be a
positive thing because it allows them to concentrate on the business
logic rather than the plumbing.

The rest of my dislike is half the quality of the code they

generate ... and half being tied to a single companies product to generate
the code. Heaven help the company who used a code generator to develop a
major application ... have the generator's author go out of business ... and
then have something go wrong with the generator due to an OS upgrade. Yes,
in the case of EGL, I know the likelihood of this happening is vanishingly
slim ... but not with other products.

So you agree that your other issue is one that really doesn't apply as
much to EGL.

Let me pose a question: do you think there's a larger contingency within
IBM backing EGL or RPG? I know it's not quite an apples-to-apples
comparison, since RPG is likely to be around as long as the platform,
but I'm just pointing out that EGL has as large a commitment from IBM as
anything. Rational has its own conference, and it's a big one. EGL is
prominent there, and getting moreso.

I guess I'm saying that while the idea of EGL (or indeed any technology)
being orphaned is not a completely unjustifiable concern, it's harder to
justify when your primary development choice is RPG and the i.

Joe

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