Re: Vendor presentations -- WEB400

<!-- DIV {margin:0px;}-->Bryan,

I got a glimpse of the RPGsp IDE at a recent midrange user group meeting in 
Utah, and I can understand your enthusiasm for it.  Interestringly, the 
presentation was part of a discussion about PC based IDE's -  not Web 
interfaces.

Our presenter was so hooked on PC based IDEs that you probably couldn't pay him 
to go back to PDM and SEU.  Is your aversion with HTML templates more a case of 
an aversion to PDM and SEU?  If so, you might consider whether editing and 
debugging in WDSC might change your opinion.

As far as model based wizards and code generators are concerned, I think they 
have a place.  Most tools I've looked at seem to be based on program models and 
templates that are rather primitive, which I wouldn't be happy deploying under. 
 It may take just a few hours to adapt a vendor's model to your database, but 
if the new Web interface isn't an improvement over existing interfaces (usually 
5250), then why bother?




----- Original Message ----
From: Bryan Yates <byates@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Web Enabling the AS400 / iSeries <web400@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, May 24, 2006 2:38:51 PM
Subject: Re: [WEB400] Vendor presentations

Nathan,

You may have already  done this, but before you make a final decision, I
would recommend that you download and try some of these solutions. Most
have at least a trial period product that you can download and use. If
you want to try java, use the WDSCi client and try out the development
environment.

We use JSP & servlets on a portion of our website, but our more robust
applications are coded using RPG and the RPGsp tool. I have tried the
cgidev model and quite frankly, I hated it. In my opinion, it is slower
in development and harder to debug. The RPGsp tool lets me view my code
in WYWSIG, html&rpg code together, or with the rpg code isolated. I can
debug from inside the IDE. Using the wizards, I can create a simple
application in a minute or two. A more complex application (like this
one http://www.collincountytx.gov/rsp-bin/pbkr125.pgm) which pulls
together wide  combinations of data can be done in a few hours.
 
In respect to application maintenance, RPGsp is the hands down winner,
despite the recompile. Pop it open, make your change, press the compile
button, your done. I can change from development, to test, to production
environments with a couple clicks of the mouse. Product support is
excellent.

We have written about 18 complete applications comprising around 700
programs using the tool for both our internet and intranet sites and
could not be happier with another product.

As for speed, I'm more concerned about development time than response
time in general, but we replaced our Java servlet case lookup with the
RPGsp version because the CGI application is faster. I cannot speak to
Joe's model of a jsp page to a rpg backend, because we never tried it.
The idea seems good, but I wonder if I would not have the same hate for
it that I do for the template model.

That's my  opinion on things, but I'm just a dumb ol' country boy who has
never written a book or published an article in an industry rag. I just
hoe my row.

Bryan Yates
SR Systems Analyst/Programmer
Information Technology
Collin County Government
http://www.collincountytexas.gov
mailto:byates@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx