Re: VARPG (was Design Change Requests)

Apparently its a non-issue in Windows World?

Joe Pluta wrote:

From: rob@xxxxxxxxx

I think it boils down to distribution.  Keeping people on current versions
of Notes, MS Office, etc is a PITA.  Now, compound that with a VARPG
version of your ERP.  I would think that sites with employees active on
these lists (like us) would have frequent changes to their application
suites.  Already it is a PITA to get people to sign out of a screen to put
out a new version of order entry, etc.  Now compound that with
distributing the new version to a few hundred PC's.  That's why terminal
emulation or browser based applications appeal to people.

This is a huge point, Rob.  The idea of UI distribution is one of the big
thorns in the side of thick-client interfaces, and always has been.  That's
why some of the big screen-scraper vendors run into problems scaling up;
picture a few hundred users signing on at 8:30 AM and all of them having to
download tens or even hundreds of megabytes of new screens.  Even on a
gigabit LAN, that's going to mean a REALLY congested network for a while.
On a 100MB LAN, you may as well go get breakfast.

A 5250 interface and a web browser interface share the same concept of a
centralized UI.  There are some thick clients that are stretching in that
direction, but none of the technologies are mature yet.  And the alternative
of having the host do all the GUI rendering is not cost-beneficial given the
relatively high cost of iSeries CPU cycles vs. workstation CPU cycles.

So until something like XUL (XML UI Language) becomes standard, I don't
think you'll be seeing broadly distributed thick-client applications;
instead they'll be relegated to power users responsible for executive
decision making who really need graphical representation of data.

Joe