RE: Who Uses WebSphere Express?

Mark since I think for the most part you and I are in "violent agreement"
I'll just comment on a couple of points:

 >> I think you could come to accept that is just a matter of learning the
environment.

No argument.  But most of the docs are on the system are written to a
specific assumption of knowledge.  The Unixese flavor of some of this new
stuff is just plain confusing.  You allude to this in your own remarks about
Apache.  The point I'm trying to make is that I can debug an RPG CGIDEV2 app
with my RPG skills.  You pointed out originally that one doesn't really have
to know much Java/J2EE to make WAS work for you.  My comment was that that
is only true when things are working.


 >> but I do not really recall them bashing CGI

Well I don't know who you have listened to - but both Phil and George (who
has now seen the light) used to do this regularly and they were among the
more RPG friendly of the IBM disciples out there.  Every customer I talk to
has been told by IBM at some point that "CGI won't scale - it is a dead
end - don't go there".  I know of one BP who is in difficulty because he
believed them and didn't attempt a CGI solution (which could have reused 90%
of his code) and instead opted to move to a JSP/J2EE environment.

 >> I think you have exaggerated this slightly.  Either that you just are
not that experienced with it in real usage.

I'll accept that my production experience is 2 years out-of-date.  You are
certainly also correct in stating that the worst part is when you are
getting started.  That's part of the problem.  My point is that IBM have
convinced many people not to even try CGI (JSP/J2EE is just another form of
CGI but we'll ignore that).  If they then try WAS (or look up the
documentation for WAS hardware requirements) they quickly tend to give up -
and move that part of their future app development to another platform.

Badmouthing _anything_ that might get the average iSeries shop of its a@@
was just plain stupid in my mind.  IBM seem to have woken up at last - but
it is too late for many shops.

Jon Paris
Partner400

www.Partner400.com
www.RPGWorld.com