Re: Ruby On Rails on the iSeries -- WEB400

As you'll see in your thread history I recanted my original post to convey a
more direct approach to how I was associating Net.Data and EGL.

Regardless of that, your comments have peaked my interest - specifically
that EGL generates JSF behind the scenes and that you have access to the
source when it is all said and done.  That is intriguing because it would be
nice to use EGL to start a project and then leave it behind once you got up
and running with the JSF and DAO's in place(assuming once you go into the
generated code you may lose the ability to go back up to 4GL?).

Couple of questions
1. Does EGL come with WDSC v6?  I searched the help and found some comments
on it and even directions, but I can't seem to find the EGL project wizard
like the help is stating.

2. What version of the JSF spec are they using?  My biggest beef with JSF is
how the binding of components to backend POJO's happens.  You have to be a
full fledged JSF programmer to get a HTML page composed using components
like <x:datatable> which 99.9% of the population knows nothing about (say
Dreamweaver designers).  As I was making my decision to move away from JSF
somebody recommended looking into JSF portlets and that would somehow fix my
UI component woes, but I neglected to go that route just because JSF was so
new at the time and I just didn't want to spend another 5 hours trying to
figure out what someone contrived to be a good approach for Dreamweaver
designers to use JSF with.

Aaron Bartell

-----Original Message-----
From: web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Joe Pluta
Sent: Tuesday, August 15, 2006 9:21 PM
To: 'Web Enabling the AS400 / iSeries'
Subject: Re: [WEB400] Ruby On Rails on the iSeries

I think you're totally off the beam on this, Aaron.  EGL is nothing like
Net.data.  It's a full-fledged 4GL with a drag-n-drop JSF designer.  It
makes building web applications as easy as building VB programs, except that
the database integration is WAY better.  You define an array of customers,
drop the array on your JSF page to paint a table, and then in the page's
load routine you put "get customers" and it automatically generates ALL the
code to access the database, load a bean, and display it on the page.

It's not the silver bullet: no round trip generation, and it's not entirely
amenable to RPG business logic, but it IS very easy to extend with Java
functions and more importantly IBM is really trying to make it better.

I just gave a seminar and EGL was part of it: I can create an entire CRUD
application in about five minutes.  The jury's still out on some parts of
it, but I'm working very closely with the EGL team to present my
requirements (which exactly mirror Brian's take on the situation: you can
use EGL to VERY quickly develop thin front ends that then use RPG as the
business logic).

Finally, everything that it generates is Java, so even if IBM decides to
stop going that way, you still have the generated Java code and the working
JSF pages, so you won't be entirely abandoned.

Joe

From: albartell

I took a class in it at iSeries DevCon two years ago.  IMO, EGL is the 
next Net.Data and will most likely die the same death.  How many of 
you Net.Data people that are vested are appreciating IBM's decision to 
drop it?

From: Brian

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



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