RE: opinions on "good news/bad news"... picking Websphere or MS .ASP or .NET

Hello Mark, 

Thanks for your input. 

1.) The RCP stuff does look intriguing and we may definitely use it for 
some Java GUI stuff down the road, but those samples still look pretty 
Eclipsish :-)

2.) I think in terms of dev environments it's all what you work with the 
most. In my case since I started with VB back in 1994 when VB3 came out I 
just developed a preference for the Microsoft Dev Environments.  I am 
quite proficient with WDSC/Eclipse, however I haven't developed much of a 
love for it yet.  Getting there :-)

One thing I really do love about Eclipse is all of the cool plug-ins 
available. 

3.) I was hoping J# would do exactly what you were describing, but no joy. 
 Then I stumbled across IKVM while surfing for new technologies about 6 
months ago. It appears that IKVM has been around for a while and it's not 
GPFed once for me in the 6 months I've used it.  The only errors I have 
discovered were made by me when using the JT400 stuff and creating our 
high level wrappers.  Those were easily fixed :-)

We wouldn't have rolled it out into our commercial desktop offerings if it 
wasn't super stable.  If you have a need to do GUI .Net Windows apps I 
wouldn't hesitate using it.  No CA/400 or iSeries Access.Net drivers 
required for deployment.  Just copy IKVM and JT400 DLL's into you app 
folder and you're ready to go. 

Of course lot's of testing is also good to make sure it meets your needs 
and works as expected :-)

We will be providing support for our customers who use it with our apps. 

4.) I forgot about two other subtle side benefits of the .Net stuff 

- We now have XCOPY deployment just like we did back in the DOS days. 
Create one copy of the app files and all users can run from a shared 
network copy of your .Net app. No more worrying about OCX registration 
either.  I know Java apps work pretty much this way already, however this 
is a cool Back to the Future item that was added when Visual Studio .Net 
was released. 

- In Visual Studio 2005 you can make code changes on the fly just like 
back in Visual Studio 5/6. I don't know if WDSC/Eclipse has edit and 
continue yet for Java development.  Not from what I've seen.  This is a 
HUGE benefit when debugging and testing code. Make a tweak, step back in 
the code and continue.  How nuts do we go when we have to stop a program, 
make a change and then re-start the program and step back to where we 
were.   Ahhhhhhhhh......................

Regards,
Richard Schoen
RJS Software Systems Inc. 
"Providing Your....iNFORMATION NOW!"
Email: richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Web Site: http://www.rjssoftware.com
Tel: (952) 898-3038
Fax: (952) 898-1781
Toll Free: (888) RJSSOFT
-----------------------------------------

message: 3
date: Sun, 9 Jul 2006 14:31:29 -0400
from: Mark Phippard <markp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
subject: RE: opinions on "good news/bad news"... picking Websphere or
                 MS              .ASPor .NET

midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote on 07/09/2006 01:35:42 PM:

1.) You're right on the RCP client stuff.  That looks cool.  Haven't had 

much time to play with it yet, so this could have some merit. The only 
problem is that all your apps will look Eclipsish from what I've seen 

:-) 

That is not true at all.  At its most basic form, RCP just provides the 
OSGI infrastructure for plugins and other Eclipse features.  You can use 
this and SWT to make a UI that is 100% your own.  That being said as you 
start to use more of the pieces from Eclipse, such as the UI View and 
Editor framework, your app certainly starts to look more like Eclipse. See 

this site for some examples of RCP applications and what they can look 
like:

http://www.eclipse.org/community/rcp.php

2.) I agree on the preference thing for the dev environments.  I have 

over 

12 years on MS environments and just over 2 on the Eclipse/WDSC stuff, 

so 

of course there is a built-in bias for the MS stuff.   I continue to 

force 

myself to use the Eclipse stuff because it's needed for developing Java 
stuff.  It's kind of like eating asparagus.  I don't always like the 
flavor, but I will eat it :-)

Seriously though WDSC is pretty good. 

I have no idea why, but I have always found Eclipse very easy to use.  I 
have read enough Blogs and articles to realize not everyone feels the same 

way.  I recently have tried using Visual Studio 2005 and feel completely 
lost in it.  On the one hand I can sort of tell that it probably has a lot 

of stuff that people that feel comfortable in VS really like, but for me I 

just never feel comfortable.  I imagine that is how a lot of people feel 
in Eclipse and WDSC.

4.) In .Net you can use VB.Net, C# or J# to accomplish almost the same 
things because they all ride on top of the Common Language Runtime. 

Pretty 

cool in my opinion.  VB.Net can definitely be used for Enterprise Class 
Apps because it's the CLR that everything compiles down to just like the 

Java bytecode stuff, so once compiled language no longer matters.  It's 
all about the bytecode man !!  Very cool stuff !!

OK, I have ever used J#, but I had to include it because it's available. 

Actually with IKVM I can use most of the base Sun Java 1.4 stuff 

including 

JDBC, so J# will  not be needed by me. 

I wish J# had been more like IKVM.  Let me take any JAR file and it can 
convert it to .NET automatically.  Then let me write 100% Java compatible 
code.  The difference with J# would be that it compiles it to CLR code 
instead of Java Bytecodes.  But I should be able to take any Java source 
code and just compile it, and likewise take my code out and run it as 
Java.  Otherwise, I do not see why they provide this.  C# and Java are 
similar enough that I do not see the value in J#.

7.) Well, so far the IKVM stuff with our compiled version of JT400 has 
been ROCK solid.  You're using JT400 in your Java apps, right ?   Well 
we're using it in our .Net apps and since we do have access to the 

source 

if needed we can support it ourselves.  Not all shops can do that but 
since we develop commercial software and also understand the IKVM/JT400 
stuff I think it's safe to say that we can commercially support it.

I think that IKVM is pretty cool, and being able to use JT400 almost makes 

.NET worth looking at for me, but I still think Joe has a good point on 
the support issue.  Suppose you build an ASP.NET app where you are using 
this, and the app starts crashing or really slowing down under load. Where 

are going to turn for help?  The problem might have nothing to do with 
IKVM and JT400 but you have very little resources available to figure this 

out.  That being said, I'd use it it in smaller single-user app, such as a 

pure C/S thick client app where I felt confident I could adequately test 
it.

Mark