Re: The Truth About EGL -- WEB400

<<The majority of our customers need more than the 5250. They must have
(not an option) robust Web applications>>

The very important pieces in the client part of the web apps are
html+css+js.
then why RPG is not able to develop robust web applications?
We need "only" mechanisms to read/write variables in similar way to
DDS/SDA/5250, sure the lack of stateful persistence can be also resolved,
and so with other minor differences between 5250 and web modes, but at least
you are using the very standard knowledge in the client side and the
language you trust in the server side.
Also when starting to learn html,css,js you've really a lot of info
available, you can start ease and later incorporate more js stuff as ajax,
using js libraries, components and so on, but using the world standards with
the power of your RPG.

Why wait years, learn hard stuff during months only for frustrating
developing simple query-like mini applications when you can use all the RPG
experiences (even existing code parts, program calls, CL, dtaara and so on)?

Sure the way of html+RPG could be hard to some peoples, but not so hard as
all the myriad of language and tools existing.

and, smile, thinking in IBM and IBM BP & ISV community be sure of one thing:
if the users have graphical/web apps running in RPG these applications would
not so simply convert to an non System i environment, thus protecting really
the environment.
or are you sure all the people thinking in develop in php, java, python, R&R
are tending to use the System i as the main Server?

Regards,
Guillermo Andrades
http://RpgForWeb.com

On Dec 17, 2007 7:05 PM, Nathan Andelin <nandelin@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

<snip from Bob Cancilla>
Aaron,
Nathan, your argument about the value of DDS and ease of development for
5250
UI is certainly true, but... The majority of our customers need more
than
the 5250. They must have (not an option) robust Web applications and
they
must be able to interoperate with customers and trading partners via web
services.
</snip>

It was a little surprising to see my name mentioned with Aaron's in this
context. I understand that a lot of RPG developers have been pounding on
IBM to come up with a new opcode comparable to EXFMT that produced HTML or
some other GUI output, but I haven't been one of them. I think Aaron is in
favor of it, however.

A couple years ago I demonstrated a prototype using a SPECIAL file with
READ and WRITE opcodes to interface with browsers, which was cool in it's
simplicity, but I quickly dropped the idea because I felt it was too
confining. IBM was also promoting Webfacing at that time and I didn't see
much difference between Webfacing and my SPECIAL file prototype, except that
my prototype ran entirely under the native virtual machine, which removed
Websphere from the mix, but I've never promoted that type of interface, and
still feel that it's overly confining.

I tend to develop user interfaces with multiple inline frames, where
multiple frames may be active concurrently, so a browser version of EXFMT
wouldn't work for me. While I use RPG for Web applications, it just
wouldn't work for my programs to be waiting for a input via EXFMT type
opcodes, which would be geared more toward traditional page at a time user
interfaces.

Nathan.

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