Re: Opinions on "good news/bad news"... picking Websphere or MS .ASP or .NET

[Pete Helgren <Pete@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Dave,

My 2 cents would be (as others have said) "It depends".  Even though I 
use Eclipse/MyEclipe/WDSC daily, I find that Visual Studio 2005 is 
pretty nice.  I had to write an SOA example using .NET for a Common 
presentation and I was impressed at how easy to use it was.  So, on the 
tool level, I still think MS has a leg up on Eclipse, but then it only 
supports a few MS specific languages.  But I am liking the Eclipse 
platform more and more.  It certainly supports more languages than 
VS2005 (duh!) and has a huge amount of muscle behind it. My bias that 
leans to MS on this one may have to do that I used VS6 for many many 
years on VB and .ASP projects so it is "comfortable".

When it comes to ? vs IIS, I am a WAS/Apache/Tomcat guy because it seems 
to work very well and it is platform agnostic.  I move between WinXP, 
Linux and i5/OS all day long so being able to know where to look for 
stuff, regardless of platform, is nice.  Keeps the learning curve short. 

The combination of Eclipse plus WAS/Apache/Tomcat is great because 
development and deployment doesn't change as I move from platform to 
platform.  Again, one IDE, one web server technology, multiple 
platforms.  To quote Bob Marley "One Love, One Heart, Let's get together 
and feel all right" I feel alright with this stuff.  And its all free.  
I think that Apache and it's brethren own 60% of the web server market.

Of course if you only run Windows clients and only run Windows based web 
servers and feel that MS licensing is fair and reasonable, VS and IIS 
will be just fine (although Eclipse and Apache run fine in Windows 
environments).  You'll find plenty of resources that can help you 
develop .NET apps.  Get yourself a nice IXA or IXS server and you can 
rock and roll with your .NET app accessing System i data.  If learning 
curve and resource cost and availability are a concern, I'd probably go 
with Microsoft (I say, gingerly...).

Friday PM musings.  Perhaps with with some ruminating on this over the 
weekend I might be able to strengthen one or the other position.

Pete

Dave Odom wrote:

> Gang,
>
> Is this the proper forum to ask about comparing/contrasting starting
> Web development against the i5 in Websphere vs. MS .ASP or .NET?   We
> can go either way as we have both environments even though some here
> lean toward the MS environment because they don't like IBM and because
> MS has been "marketed" better and seems to have a better set of
> development tools (ease of development, learning curve, etc.).
>
> Our web applications development has started out slow and limited as
> there's not much skill here to build anything more than simple web site
> pages and some .ASP applications getting/sending data to the i5.   So,
> I'm concerned about "ramp up" time (creating the environment, learning,
> getting productive) to do some simple apps that display results of
> queries (multi-row displays like reports users can scroll through), some
> single row display, insert and update.  Of course, I expect the typical 
> insatiable "need" for more function/feature over time.  Development will
> not be in RPG so we don't have to worry about that added learning curve.
> Most i5 apps are "turn-key" vendor apps and while in RPG, we will not
> develop skills in this area.   
>
> So, opinions please on both development environments vis-a-vis, ramp
> up, short and long term directions, what it takes to set up a Websphere
> development/support environment vs. MS and any "tid-bits" you all would
> care to offer.
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Dave 
>