Nathan,
Your friend who works for the shop generating PDF files on the Windows server must have a very poorly designed PDF generation system as a decent Windows server can match and typically outperform the iSeries in PDF generation.
If they need assistance tuning their PDF generation send them our number.
Architecture definitely matters :-)
Regards,
Richard Schoen
RJS Software Systems Inc.
Where Information Meets Innovation
Document Management, Workflow, Report Delivery, Forms and Business Intelligence
Email: richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Web Site:
http://www.rjssoftware.com
Tel: (952) 736-5800
Fax: (952) 736-5801
Toll Free: (888) RJSSOFT
-----Original Message-----
From: web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Nathan Andelin
Sent: 08 December 2012 17:14
To: Web Enabling the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: Re: [WEB400] Web Enabling Applications
I wouldn't deprecate HTML yet. Dynamically generated brochure-ware is still needed and growing across the globe. About 25% of the menu items in our Web portal generate reports, which I think in our case are 100% HTML plus CSS (no JavaScript). We're currently getting more requests for new reports than new interactive applications, and we expect that over time the number of reports on our menus could tie or exceed the number of interactive applications.
Speaking of reports, a former close colleague of mine now works for a company that wants to generate customer account statements in PDF format in batches of 25-30K statements per cycle. They developed a process that runs on a Windows server that extracts data from IBM i and produces PDF files. They have not deployed it, however because in testing they estimate that it would require 3 days to generate that many statements.
It makes me wonder where the bottlenecks may be? Under IBM i, and using RPG, we generate student report cards and transcripts at a rate of 3-4 thousand PDF files per minute. I think architecture matters.
I've had one very good experience in teaching RPG to a former PHP developer. I agree with prior comments about looking for people with good browser UI skills and training them in RPG, which under the right circumstances comes easy.
On the other hand, we recently pursued a partnership with another developer who is in the school software market with us. I think he is using a JavaScript framework for the UI. He is using "JSON RPC" to communicate with Python under Apache/Linux, and using Python to communicate with MONGODB (database). So, he's into a full open-source stack from browser to database. I proposed that we merge our databases under IBM i and that we provide an IBM i JSON RPC based web service to support his browser UI. We were flatly snubbed. There would be no moving him off a complete end-to-end open-source stack.
-Nathan
midrange.com
