RE: Java questions

Frank,

I'm listening too.

Goddard is a small college in Vermont and we are a tiny IS shop (me and a
part time programmer on the administrative side and me and two staff to
handle academic and PC stuff).  Nevertheless we have continuously developed
our administrative systems in-house after an intial purchase of an
integrated package for the S/34 in 1981--moving on to a S/36, an AS/400 E10,
and now our 600e with V4R2 and V4R3 waiting to install.  So I know some RPG,
but in later years we have relied on Progen for most new application work
(it still generates RPG though).  We have just completed the implementation
of our Y2K compliant systems in October.  Now we play!  Like many of us, I
suspect, we had to lay aside the GUI/Java stuff until Y2K was complete.  (We
had a brief month or two of distraction with GUI last Spring when the
Development office threatened to jump to a windows application and we had to
demonstrate graphical potential...) Now, my colleague Booth (who works three
days a week) has resumed work on a next generation of applications using
Visual Age RPG.  Booth was able to make progress seemingly easier than I did
when I wrote some Java JDBC code hitting the 400 using JBuilder last spring.
After that I decided to join VADD and buy the IBM Java product.  At the same
time we invested in the VARPG product.  Today, in fact, I am just starting
to look into Java again, and downloaded V2.

My plan is to carry on a two pronged attack on AS/400 GUI applications; let
Booth pursue the VARPG path, while I see if I can do anything useful with
Java.  We would love to be able to provide secure browser based and
controlled access to our AS/400 data, but Booth has already produced working
applications with VRPG--which nevertheless require installation and the
runtime library (I just bought a ReWriteable CD drive to make installation
of the runtime library easier).  Anyway, I am interested to hear if anyone
else is also comparing or working with Visual Age RPG, and if, so, how it
compares to Java.

Other questions I have:

Am I a fool to try to develop applications using AS/400 data with only
Visual Age Java Professional, and not the Enterprise product?  Does anyone
on the list have the Enterprise edition? Are you VADD members?

When I looked into V1 it seemed there was a dirth of examples; perhaps V2 is
better.  Can anyone point to the best source of examples?

A basic question seems to be whether to try to use the Toolkit and record
level access, which seems more like something an RPGer can get their teeth
into (I just want to chain to that record!) or to use JDBC and the SQL
model.  We have never used SQL on the 400, but did purchase the IBM SQL
product last June (another thing set aside until Y2K was complete).  Last
June I never had any success with IBM Java, while at least JDBC and JBuilder
let me build an application that sort of worked, except, minor detail, it
crashed a lot.

Thanks for listening.  I assume there must be more members of the list than
respond, so, moderator David Gibbs, are you listening?  How about telling us
how many members are in the list.  Does the list let us request a listing?

Ravi Nielsen
Director of Information Services
Goddard College
Plainfield, Vermont  USA

P.S.  I'm emailing this from my personal business account, Maple Hill
Software.  We have been developing and selling software for handweavers for
DOS and Windows since 1984.  So my background includes knowledge of OOP
through use Borland Pascal for Windows and later Delphi to develop our
Windows weaving program.  I'm also hoping that my knowledge of Windows and
OOP will help reduce the learning curve with Java.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-java400-l@midrange.com
> [mailto:owner-java400-l@midrange.com]On Behalf Of DeSarro Frank
> Sent: Monday, December 21, 1998 11:25 AM
> To: java400-l@midrange.com
> Subject: Java questions
>
>
>       I have two questions.  First, there seems to be very
> little activity on
> this java mail list. Could anyone who subscribes to this list
> identify
> yourself.  I promise I won't start mailing you questions.  I
> just want to
> find out how many people are out there listening.
>       Second, if anyone is trying to develop applications
> using the AS/400
> Toolbox for Java, I'm disappointed by the methods provided for the
> KeyedFile class.  Does anyone have a different opinion? The
> class does
> not seem to provide the capabilities that would be useful for
> positioning
> and reading through a keyed file.  I know the class provides
> about a
> dozen methods for accessing records, but when I try to
> actually start
> using them in a real application, I find them to be lacking.  As an
> example, there does not seem to be a method to simply
> position you to the
> end of a file or to read the last record in a file. You can use the
> methods provided to attempt to simulate these functions, but I find
> myself starting to need to make assumptions about the data to
> easily
> accomplish these tasks and others.  Any comments or
> suggestions would be
> greatly appreciated. Thanks.
>
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