Re: The Truth About EGL -- WEB400

Bob,

I usually try to stay out of these discussions but a couple of items you
mention really cause me concern.

<snip>
As you well know, I was a Net.Data advocate for many years. It was easy and
did the job in the early days of the web with a simple CGI based approach
leveraging service programs to provide some degree of performance.
Ultimately it would not scale. CGI simply does not scale. You need the
advanced system management capabilities of an Application Server.
</snip>

CGI does not scale to what? What is this mystical cut off point? I have had
200+ individual hits over 1 3 minute period for an RPG/AJAX application on a
small 270 (1G memory) - didn't even notice a blip (BTW - resulted in 5 CGI
jobs running). For a small to medium business an Application Server can be
total overkill. Yes, large applications (i.e. many, many hits per minute)
require an application server but it often the solution of an 18 wheel truck
when a small scooter would suffice.

<snip>
Also keep in mind that while I said RPG is far from dead, it is also on the
decline. The number of RPG programmers is rapidly diminishing as is the
case for COBOL also. Many of our customers are coming to us asking us to
help migrate away from RPG or COBOL.
</snip>

And every other programming language is in decline as well. The whole
industry is in decline. How many Java course were cancelled in universities
last year? And just as many customers are going to you (IBM) and asking you
to help them protect their investment in RPG (see more below). Could the
customers who are asking you for help migrate away from RPG and COBOL be
ding it because they think IBM is intending to cut back on support and
development?. BTW - I have yet to come across anyone who willingly wants to
move away from RPG unless it was with the intention of finally moving away
from i5 altogether.

<snip>
Look RPG is an outstanding language and better than it has ever been at the
V5R4 level of the language and will be even better at V6R1 and beyond, but
facts are facts. It is an old language and no amount of wishing or
marketing will turn it into a popular modern language. RPG as I said before
has at least a strong 10 year life, maybe much longer. It is however on the
decline. Just look around your shop. How many young people (20's or even
30's) do you have in the shop? Who is teaching RPG? or COBOL for that
matter.
</snip>

Is that not what IBM's Academic Initiative is all about - to make it easier
for colleges to teach these "old" languages that are still at the heart of
most business applications? Maybe the current lack of young people is as
much down to IBM's apart indifference to the educational institutes over the
past 20 years - it was a lot easier to get a system from DEC then it was
from IBM. Thankfully, the Academic Initiative finally seems to be tackling
this.

I happen to be on site with a SMB client at the moment - 2 programmers in
the shop. I discussed this overall topic with the IT manager at lunch. Here
is his take on it (I paraphrase slightly).

"I have two programmers who know RPG inside out. They have done great thing
on the web using CGIDEV2. If it does become an issue and we need to change
strategy, we will look at EGL and, depending on how much EGL costs, other
solution like LANSA and IceBreak"
"We only have two people to look after our applications - we don't have the
time to invest in getting them up to speed on the so called latest and
greatest just because we are being told it is the latest and greatest. If we
did I would now be employing 5 or 6 Java programmers and these two guys
would be flipping burgers".

Couldn't have put it better myself.

Regards

Paul Tuohy
ComCon
www.comconadvisor.com
www.systemideveloper.com

-----Original Message-----
From: web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Bob Cancilla
Sent: 18 December 2007 14:24
To: Web Enabling the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: Re: [WEB400] The Truth About EGL

Nathan,

Many of the pundits that advocate extending DDS to support Web Apps should
know better. This approach has actually been very carefully evaluated by
experts from both the languges, tools, and i5/OS teams. Nathan, what you
say about extending DDS is true on the surface and would certainly provide
an easy to code approach for RPG programmers. Unfortunately it would not
scale or perform within the i5/OS architecture.

While many customers run 2000 or more 5250 user sessions, our customers have
instances during their day where you have over 100,000 users accessing your
web sites. An i5 machine running 100,000 interactive jobs would be the
System i sales person's dream.

Nathan, look at your DDS keywords and you will find that you can in fact and
have been able to embed HTML in DDS since about 1995. Also keep in mind
that DDS and RPG provides the ease of use that it does because you are
running full conversational code. You send the screen to the terminal and
your program and its supporting job waits on the user for a response and
then execute the next line of code.

As you well know, I was a Net.Data advocate for many years. It was easy and
did the job in the early days of the web with a simple CGI based approach
leveraging service programs to provide some degree of performance.
Ultimately it would not scale. CGI simply does not scale. You need the
advanced system management capabilities of an Application Server. You can
still call RPG programs that are written in such a manner so that you can
call them, and quite frankly I see this as an excellent balance leveraging
existing people and skills.

Also keep in mind that while I said RPG is far from dead, it is also on the
decline. The number of RPG programmers is rapidly diminishing as is the
case for COBOL also. Many of our customers are coming to us asking us to
help migrate away from RPG or COBOL.

Look RPG is an outstanding language and better than it has ever been at the
V5R4 level of the language and will be even better at V6R1 and beyond, but
facts are facts. It is an old language and no amount of wishing or
marketing will turn it into a popular modern language. RPG as I said before
has at least a strong 10 year life, maybe much longer. It is however on the
decline. Just look around your shop. How many young people (20's or even
30's) do you have in the shop? Who is teaching RPG? or COBOL for that
matter.