Re: ASNA VRPG for .net or Websmart or RPGsp or something else? -- WEB400

Mary,

I think you will see that there are many ways to go to the web with iSeries
applications.  Since it seems as if you're talking about internal
development, then I think the real questions are:

   What are the skills of your developers?  Are they primarily coders that
   do cut and paste, or do they tend to be more of the, "each program is an
   original" type?
   What tools / platform / product would encourage / excite your
   developers?  Are they still using SEU / PDM, or are they using WDSc?  Do
   they want to use new tools?
   What type of learning curve will be acceptable?  If you need results
   now, then picking a "familiar" product would make more sense.

Based on the answer to these questions you could start developing a roadmap
(IBM's "answer" notwithstanding) as to where you want to go.  I would also
encourage you to get your developers involved.  After establishing your
tool requirements, have one or more evaluate a tool and rate it (using the
requirements list).  Then maybe take the top two or three and do some "head
to head" competition.  Also don't forget the "free" solutions like IBM's
WebFacing tool.  It does a pretty good job of allowing you to create
screens with hotlinks, buttons, etc. while still having most of the
development done in a "green screen" environment (i.e. CODE Designer).
However, if your group doesn't know WDSc then it will have both learning
curves to contend with (which can be a BIG obstacle to some!).

Personally I don't know why some of the responses you have gotten seem to
be so "anti-function keys".  Most good visual / GUI solutions I've seen
(regardless of the platform or presentation style) have supported both
mouse and keyboard shortcuts.  Whether they continue to be function keys or
some other key solution should be based on your customers' (users')
expectations.

Regarding the transfer of information to an Oracle database, hopefully you
are aware that DB2/400 can interact directly with Oracle (at least per
IBM's announcement).  So the question becomes do you need to capture the
presentation or the information it contains for transfer to the Oracle
database?

I realize I've probably only muddied the waters, but there are merits in
all of the solutions proposed thus far.  Ultimately it comes down to what
you think will deliver the best product / performance for the price.


David R. Sager
ITS Project Leader, BPMS
Office:  (847) 482-2627
Cell:      (847) 489-4941
AIM:  drsatpca

___________________________________________________________________________
Mary Koetting wrote:

>We're a small shop (5 RPG/COBOL programmers) with an I5 Iseries (Apache
>server) and we're researching a new tool to write web applications and
would
>appreciate any input you have on the subject...we have some visual RPG
>experience and have a couple of web applications using Brad Stone's eRPG.
>
>There will be forms entry, maintenance, automatic emailing, real time
>updating with about 100 users and it would use at least 30 files...would
>also love to have something in place that would capture the form as a
>scanned object and pass it to an Oracle database....we spend a lot of
effort
>feeding forms to a scanner. Don't know if this is even possible but would
>save a lot of work.
>
>We want to be able to use function keys to move from one screen to
another.
>
>We would like to get cut down on our interactive workload and also need to
>keep track of who does what...we have a lot of PHI information (HIPAA) so
we
>have to know when, how and who changed the information. I've seen a little
>of the Nexus Portal and I'd like to know if anyone has experience with it
>also.
>
>We greatly appreciate any and all guidance...thanks!
>
>Mary Koetting
>
>Senior Programmer Analyst
>
>Missouri Consolidated Health Care
>
>573-526-2856
>
>