From: Aaron Bartell
those initiatives have died (i.e. EXUI opcode or something like that)
EXUI is gone at least in part because it's a bad idea. RPG is a business
language, not a UI language. It has never been a UI language. Even 5250
was a graft; it required a completely different language (DDS), special
opcodes and a powerful dedicated client machine (the 5250).
The correct architecture (which as far as I know we've all agreed on for
some 15 or 20 years now) is to use RPG to build your business logic and then
attach it to your UI using some sort of SOA attachment. Web services, data
queues, RPC, I don't care. But the business logic should be entirely UI
agnostic, and that's what EGL does for RPG. Even green screen programs
should be written so that the UI doesn't have business logic in it, right?
Given your love for RPG, can you say you have heard cool things coming
down the pipe for that language?
Yeah. Multithreading, for one. Ought to make Steve happy. I think I heard
that you will be able to pass files between procedures, which could make for
some very interesting encapsulation capabilities.
But be clear, I'm not an IBM employee. I know a lot about EGL because I am
one of a group of business partners who work closely with the EGL team. I
don't work with the compiler team the same way, so I don't know what the
specific future of RPG holds. I can tell you though what I know from
discussion with various IBM officials, and RPG and i5/OS are both still
strategic. A bunch of us just met with Marc Dupaquier, and while I'm under
NDA on the specifics of the discussions, I can guarantee you that i5/OS is
still a major part of the future.
Joe
midrange.com
