RE: Free OS/400

My belief is that what has not yet been developed is an application
development strategy that takes into account both the concept of
revitalizing existing legacy systems while at the same time enabling the
transition to true distributed applications.  Webfacing, like most of the
other prettification options, focuses on the interface, not the application,
and thereby craetes a technological dead end.  The work applied to the GUI
is can't be reused in a distributed architecture.

So, if you believe as I do that the correct architecture for new
applications is a distributed client/server architecture, then the ideal
toolset provides the following:

1. A way to quickly place a graphical front end on an existing application
2. Support for browsers, thick client and XML
3. A standard client/server framework for new development
4. Work done revitalizing legacy systems can be reused for new development

I was disappointed wth webfacing because it addresses only the first goal,
and even that is pretty much in beta mode right now.  Jacada provides both
thick client and browser, but their browser interface is very weak,
requiring a lot of custom code.  My technique at least supports options one
and two, and is designed to support three and four in the near future (the
VERY near future, if things go as planned).

But even so, we still have a long way to go to achieve an open standard for
tools to work together, which would be required for a industry-wide
implementation of these goals.  To that end, we've begun discussing the
basic frameworks of a three-pointed architecture:

1. CLP - Component Level Protocol - defines business-aware UI components
2. ALP - Application Level Protocol - defines communication between a client
and a server
3. ADL - Application Definition Language - defines a generic UI and
application data flow (it builds on ALP and CLP)

If we focus on these, we can indeed have an open set of application
definitions.  Discussions have begun over at www.i-a-i-c.org on these
topics, although right now it's just two people: jt and yours truly.  These
ideas are also being incorporated into my toolset, which is getting very
close to release, at which point my website front page changes... instead of
green to GUI in four hours, it will be green to GUI in four SECONDS.

Joe Pluta
Pluta Brothers Design, Inc.
www.plutabrothers.com
"Adapting Tomorrow's Technologies to Today's Applications"


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jim Damato

> Nonetheless, I don't think it pertains to what folks have been complaining
> about on this particular sub-thread.  Joe, do you feel that IBM has failed
> to provide an iSeries migration path to client server and web-based
> solutions?
>
> It seems to me that the expectation is that the iSeries should make web
> programming as easy as what we've been doing for years -- coding
> RPG in SEU
> and display files in SDA.  My contention is that the environment is a bit
> more complicated that that.  Currently so many AS/400 developers
> take their
> platform for granted, because they can.  I meet so many programmers,
> analysts, project managers who are one step above the "Start a career in
> Data Processing" types educated from matchbook university.
>
> Besides, any tightly integrated development environment IBM
> creates would be
> labeled "proprietary" and would fail in the "open" (as long as it's
> Microsoft compatible) world.

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