Re: Is RDi really a "new" product?

[Joe Pluta <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dean, Robert wrote:
> The big selling point of Rational's tools is that although they can be used in standalone capacity, they don't require it or even encourage it.  They are designed to be co-installed.  You could install concurrent versions of RAD + RSA + RDi + RBDe and expect it all to work.  According to the announcement letter, RDi provides System i-specific enhancements to RAD's web tools.
>   
Starting to wander far afield here.  The original issue was whether RDi 
is built on top of Eclipse 3.3.  My point is that it doesn't need to be 
because it's not a web application development tool.  If you are 
questioning whether RAD and RSA are built on top of Eclipse 3.3, then 
that's a different question for a different list, and probably not a 
midrange.com list.

And I'm not sure which announcement letter you're referring to.  The RDi 
announcement is pretty clear that it's solely meant to develop 
traditional i5/OS (i.e green screen) applications.

*http://tinyurl.com/28g7ou*

Next, you can look at the RBD announcement, which is IBM's Rational 
Business Developer; that's the tool that builds EGL applications. Again, 
not meant for full blown web development, but targeted solely at writing 
EGL applications.  RBD and RDi togother are RDi-SOA, which is IBM's 
strategy for writing web applications that use ILE business logic.

http://www-306.ibm.com/software/awdtools/rdi/

Nowhere are these described as enhancements to RAD; in fact, the whole 
point of the repackaging is that they unbundled the System i tools from 
the RAD product.  Prior to the unbundling, WDSC indeed included all the 
components of RAD; that's what I wrote about in my WDSC: Step by Step 
book.  Now, though, you only buy what you need.

Joe