Impressions of EGL - Part Duex

[Pete Helgren <Pete@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I am going to follow up my post from earlier in the week about EGL.  I 
just finished up my first week of training and my initial impressions 
are holding up.  This is a solid tool for developing web applications. 
EGL *isn't* doing anything I couldn't do on my own.  There hasn't been 
one of those: "Wow.  I didn't know I could do that" kind of 
revelations.  Whether it is web page design or calling Java, RPG or even 
accessing server resources through remote calls, none of this stuff is 
new.  I could do all of it on my own with the existing tools I use.  
But, I am evaluating the switch to using EGL for my future web 
development.  Here is why:

1. Integration.  Just about everything comes with the tool out of the 
box. This is what I like about MyEclipse.  I am using RDB right now but 
when I need to write programs or services in RPG I can jump to RDi 
without too much angst.

2. Great web services integration.  They really couldn't have made 
accessing web services any easier.  One of the tutorials has you call a 
web service from a web page that returns a list of theaters and movies 
and times using a zip code and a "radius" parameter.  It took, maybe, 10 
minutes to build it (less if I had known what I was doing).  After 
running that, I added a Google map interface from another web service in 
about 5 minutes.  Yeah, pretty "easy" to do, but will it hold up as I 
scale to something bigger?  I can't say for sure but I'll find out more 
as I apply EGL to a couple of projects I am working on.  The beauty of 
this approach is that if you expose stuff as a web service, it is a 
trivial task to integrate that service into your web app.

3. Remote calls to RPG.  Almost as easy as the web services 
integration.  I need to dive a bit deeper here but so far using EGL to 
call RPG programs and return data is a snap.

Still too soon to tell whether EGL will be my primary tool for 
developing web applications.  Even with a week's worth of exposure to 
the tool, I feel like I have hardly scratched the surface.  What is 
needed is a EGL "Cookbook" that presents common web application 
development issues and presents solutions.  Perhaps if EGL gains some 
traction, we can post stuff into the wiki.

Taking the EGL tour has, so far, been helpful.  I might just use EGL in 
the interim as a web services integration tool and then slowly move my 
applications to use the UI tools later.  I'll learn more about that in a 
couple of weeks when I finish the course.

So far, I like what I see.  Perhaps not with the passion that Joe Pluta 
has, but if you develop web apps, RPG based or not, EGL is worth more 
than a cursory look.

Pete Helgren