Advice about moving to a Web-environment

[Ewout N Boter <ewout.boter@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I post this message because I would like to get some advice of other 
people who have made the transition from a traditional 
5250/RPG-environment to a Web/Java-environment. 

At our shop, we are only developing 5250-applications. We use ILE RPG in 
the way ILE was intended for, i.e. we have created a lot of procedures to 
encapsulate business rules, we use service programs, activation groups, 
etcetera. Thus, we have adopted some of the modern features of ILE RPG, 
but we are still stuck with 5250-applications. We now want to make the 
transition to GUI- and/or Web-applications, but we don't know how to 
proceed. We have bought some books about using Java on the iSeries, one of 
us is doing a course on WebSphere Application Server, we have some 
thoughts about a Web-application we would like to build, but we are not 
feeling confident enough to really get going. Therefore, I would like to 
know how other shops have made the step to modernization. I think that we 
might learn a lot from the experience of others who have travelled along 
the way we have ahead of us. Any response would be greatly appreciated.

Ewout