Aaron Bartell wrote:
The possibilities with that type of a framework would be
endless and would also keep shops from having to learn a second full fledged
language like EGL.
I'm going to stay out of this discussion about what should be done,
because I think you and Thorbjorn are a little bit nutty. He talks
about using only open source yet he uses the OPM COBOL compiler and you
complain about learning EGL yet the amount of work required to do any of
your options is ridiculous.
But I have to respond to this: "...having to learn a full fledged
second language..."? Give me a break. EGL is the easiest language in
the world to learn - most of the work is done for you! It's more
abstract than anything .Net has to offer, and certainly far more
user-friendly than Java or PHP or even RPG. You right-click and say new
Service, fill out the wizard, check the box that says "deploy as web
service". You get a skeleton where you can write your functions. A
library is even easier; right click and say New Library, and you get a
skeleton where you can add library functions.
In fact, I'll say this: if you can't learn EGL, then you better stay
away from ... well, anything else! Because if EGL is too hard, I
guarantee that RPG/PHP/Java/Pascal/Ada/SNOBOL is too hard.
Here's the reality: In EGL I just created and deployed a web service
that uses an RPG back end for business logic to write records to a
database. It required me to write two functions in EGL - one in the
service, one in a library, with a total of seven lines of code. This is
for a fully functioning web service, mind you. All of the plumbing is
done for me. In fact, I'm actually wrappering JSON requests inside a
SOAP envelope, so that a later tool can use RESTful communications
without having to rewrite a line of EGL. But all of that is done for me.
The client is also written in EGL, but I didn't do that. In fact, the
design is being done by email and the development is on machines in
different parts of the country. RPG programmers talk data structures,
client-side programmers talk XML or JSON, and EGL converts between the
two with a single line of code. RBD deploys the web service and
generates the WSDL on my side, consumes it and generates browser code on
the client.
To my knowledge, there is no other environment that works this easily.
Joe
midrange.com
