Re: Ruby On Rails on the iSeries -- WEB400

Natthan, et al

Have you looked at IBM's EGL that is included in the WDSCi product? I have
only began working through the EGL tutorial but since you mentioned WebSmart
I thought this might be an alternative. As it is, EGL will generate Java or
Cobol code to implement the full application but what got me interested is
that it appears you can use EGL for developing the view and the
controller and hook it to RPG on the backend via the JT400 toolbox for
implementing the model. IBM held an EGL user's conference recently that had
a session on EGL and RPG but I wasn't able to attend and have not been able
to find the handouts from the session.

If anyone has worked with EGL and has opinions as to its viability for
developing web apps on the iSeries I would like to hear them.

Kind regards,

Brian


On 8/11/06, Nathan Andelin <nandelin@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:


The name "Ruby on  Rails" is quite appropriate, IMO.  Ruby could have been
just another OO language  that faded into oblivion - like SmallTalk.  But,
add a database interface, an  HTTP interface, scripts for generating shells
for basic Web applications,  following a model/view/controller design
pattern, and license everything under  open source - it's like putting a
language on "rails", where it can go places,  so to speak.

The part that  interests me the most at the moment is the idea of using
scripts and  templates to generate basic Web components.  One of my
colleagues created a utility  for running CL source members interpretively,
as opposed to compiling CL source  members into programs.  We use it to
automate the process of compiling, binding,  and building ILE applications,
which generally consist of a number of modules  and service programs.

One idea we've  discussed is using CL scripts for generating HTML and RPG
source members,  providing a shell for basic Web applications, following a
model/view/controller  design pattern, given just a few parameters like the
name of the application and  the table or view that needs to be maintained.

A tool like  Websmart generates HTML and RPG source members for Web
applications, but  requires significant training and understanding of a
proprietary scripting  language, logic constructs, and a Windows based GUI
editor and design tool to be  proficient.

If you already  know RPG, you may not want to learn an additional
higher-level scripting  language, just to generate RPG code.  And you may
not want  to go back to a Windows based tool to maintain the application,
and regenerate  the RPG code.  What if you could just edit a CL source
member, and run a command  to generate HTML and RPG source members,
providing shells for basic Web  applications?

It's just an  idea.  Another approach we've discussed is having a Wizard,
providing step by  step prompts, at the conclusion of which, a set of HTML
and RPG source members  would be generated.

It looks like Ruby  on Rails takes more of a command line approach, which
is  interesting.

Perhaps PASE and a toolkit  for system interfaces, similar to what Zend
did for PHP, would be the  key to porting Ruby on Rails to the platform.


Nathan M.  Andelin