RE: Web-Facing Tool

Joe said:
>> Web-facing currently imposes the interactive tax on all sessions.

Phil said:

>It does?!  Then what's the point of using that product?

Buck adds:
The point is that you don't have to change your existing RPG programs at
all.  The WebFacing tool converts your DDS into Java beans and jsp's, which
get served by WebSphere.  I am in the process of trying to get Tomcat
running on a small box I have here to see if I can serve WebFaced jsp's that
way.  (Does that make this an on-topic post?)

The ability to maintain the existing RPG programs becomes somewhat important
when the RPG source is generated by a CASE tool like Synon.  We're literally
looking at any alternatives to 5250 green screen where we can keep the green
screen for customers who don't want GUI.  Joe's server/client method is
essentially the same as WebFacing, except that you need to change the RPG
(however little) whereas WebFacing uses an internal OS400 switch to send the
I/O to either the 5250 engine or the servlet engine.  (Yes Joe, I'm aware
that there are significant differences; I'm speaking here only of the
server/client methodology and how to get the RPG to "talk" to a Java
client.)

Synon is reputed to give us the ability to extract the "logic" of our
applications and make it into callable routines.  If this is the case, then
we may well be able to home-grow a Java version using Joe's methodology.

  --buck