Re: EGL RichUI Was:Re: From RGP to ¿Java?

[Pete Helgren <Pete@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Well, I am  familiar with EGL although those skills have atrophied a bit 
but I DID take a look at RUI, even sat in on a webinar that you gave.  
So I sat down at the toolbench and decided to fire up an RUI equivalent 
to an existing EGL app I had. In fact, I expected (wrongly) that all of 
the DB I/O infrastructure could be used for the RUI app but I came to a 
dead end.  My expectation was that I could just put an RUI front end on 
my existing EGL web application.

So, I'll wander over to the Cafe and see what is new since I last 
checked out the RUI tools.  What I want is something that is just as 
easy as EGL web application development.  Build a project, point to the 
file, drag and drop the DB fields on the page and generate.  It didn't 
seem *quite* that easy with RUI the last time I checked it out.

Pete

Joe Pluta wrote:
> Nope, you didn't miss anything, Pete.  The fundamental difference 
> between rich clients and thin clients is that with a thin client, all 
> logic is on the host, including generating the user interface.  That's 
> why simple scripting languages like PHP and RPG-CGI can handle thin 
> client.  With rich client, the UI logic resides on the client in the 
> browser.  You in effect send down a program that builds widgets (this is 
> actually fairly close to what Aaron Bartell is pushing for), and then 
> that logic requests data in chunks from the host.
>
> It is those requests for data that require AJAX and thus a web services 
> approach.  Now technically you could write those services however you 
> wanted and parse the data yourself, but with EGL you simply specify the 
> record layout - using the SAME syntax at both the rich client and the 
> host level - and EGL does all the plumbing for you, formatting the data 
> into either XML or JSON on the host, sending it down the wire, 
> disassembling it on the client and populating the records for use in the 
> widgets.
>
> You have to see it to believe it.
>
> Joe
>
>   
> > One follow up question Joe.
> >
> > It seems to me that EGL RUI requires a web services interface layer.  Is 
> > that correct?  Most of my "hand tooled" RUI apps use AJAX/JSON to talk 
> > to Java servlets.  Would I be writing RPG service programs wrapped by 
> > web services for my EGL RUI apps or can I write directly to the DB?  My 
> > question stems primarily from the ease with which you can create a CRUD 
> > app that goes "direct" to the DB in EGL vs using a RUI to access the 
> > data.  RUI seemed to unnecessarily require a web service to handle the 
> > DB access where the non-RUI EGL method basically allowed you to point to 
> > the DB tables and it created all the I/O infrastructure quickly and 
> > easily.  I was looking for the same "point to the table and go" ease of 
> > development in EGL RUI. Did I miss something?
> >   
> >     
>
>