Re: justifying RDi when WDSCi 'still works'

[Joe Pluta <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dave, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but given your pushback 
there's no reason to switch to RDi from WDSC.

Of course, there's no reason to switch from ADTS to WDSC, either, is 
there?  I mean, really, the "it isn't broke so don't fix it" mentality 
is almost impossible to beat when it comes to IBM i programming.  Heck, 
I don't understand why we use externally defined files - internally 
described is so much easier and you don't have to recompile all the 
time!  And FMTDTA is really fast these days; why clutter up the system 
with all those logical views?

And don't even get me started on SQL....

I know I'm being sarcastic here, but the points Mike makes below are 
absolutely the ones you pound on.  RDi is getting all the investment 
dollars.  RDi is getting all the upgrades.  RDi is getting all the cool 
capabilities. That's why you switch.  Not because RDi is a revolutionary 
leap ahead of WDSC; it's not.

I use both WDSC and RDi all the time; I can tell you that while RDi is 
incrementally better, it's not the same productivity enhancement you'll 
get switching from ADTS to WDSC, or even from WDSC 5 to WDSC 7.  The IBM 
i GUI tools matured with WDSC 7, now it's more about repackaging and 
repurposing and enhancing.  The only major enhancement you're going to 
see in RDi will be the WYSIWYG designers for display and print files, 
and possibly some more wizards.  But think about it - what more exactly 
do you expect to see from a development tool?

Joe


> How about the fact that WDSCi is at end of life, there will be no additional enhancements to it, none of the new addons to RDi like EGL or Concert will work with WDSCi, IBM will stop supporting it at some time and any time spent on learning more about WDSCi will be wasted money. 
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: wdsci-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:wdsci-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Dave Shaw
> Sent: Friday, August 21, 2009 12:00 PM
> To: wdsci-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [WDSCI-L] justifying RDi when WDSCi 'still works'
>
> The few of us who use WDSCi here are trying to convince management that we 
> should purchase a few licenses for RDi now that we've gone to V6R1.  The 
> pushback we're getting is that WDSCi still works fine, so we need to justify 
> spending the money.  Has anyone else successfully done this, and if so, what 
> approach did you use?
>
> Thanks!
>