iSeries applications deployed as portlets

["Mike Cunningham" <MCUNNING@xxxxxxx>]

We are looking at installing a portal and are evaluating Websphere
Portal (running on either iSeries or Windows) against Microsoft
Sharepoint. We have seen demos of both and both appear to have all the
features we are looking for. Websphere has the upper hand in some areas
Sharepoint in others. One major issue for us is that all of our
administrative systems run on iSeries and we do a lot of our our
development. As with many iSeries shops we are moving from green-screen
to browser application development and are using RPG CGI and Websmart
initially and starting down the Java path. My biggest concern with
installing a portal is how do our iSeries applications get deployed as
portlets. In the Websphere demo we were shown iSeries apps running as
portlets, and a 5250 emulation portlet that would run any green-screen
application. In the Sharepoint demo we were told we could either use
.net and do odbc connections to get at the iSeries data or use .net to
create the portlet code that referenced the url of the iSeries browser
application. No real world demo. 
 
Is there anyone who has developed iSeries apps deployed as portlets to
either of these portals and if so how difficult is it to learn and do ?
Are there any issues related to portal development that you would do
different if you could go back in time ?
 
Mike Cunningham
CIO
Pennsylvania College of Technology
www.pct.edu
mcunning@xxxxxxx