RE: Moving from Green screen app to GUI because of push back -- MIDRANGE-L

Scott,

Could not agree more...or, and I've lived this at my last company, they buy
a package only to customize it, and then having to live with the on-going
battle of having to address those customizations with every update to the
out of the package software.

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Klement [mailto:midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2017 8:09 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Moving from Green screen app to GUI because of push back

Moving off-platform is expensive, I agree. But, even staying
on-platform and replacing the application with a package (which is something
a lot of companies consider) is also very expensive.

Many companies have really good internally-written applications,
designed exactly for them. And, that's a competitive advantage that
they often don't realize.

Switching to a package not only costs many times more than purchasing a tool
like Profound UI -- but it also throws away that competitive advantage.

On 12/13/2017 6:54 PM, Jon Paris wrote:

But compared with the alternative that several people noted that shops
were taking i.e. moving off platform - it is cheap.

You have to compare at that level surely.

Jon Paris

www.partner400.com
www.SystemiDeveloper.com

On Dec 13, 2017, at 5:11 PM, Justin Taylor <JUSTIN@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"E" may give good ROI, but the up-front costs can be ridiculous.

-----Original Message-----
From: Jon Paris [mailto:jon.paris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:jon.paris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]
Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2017 3:40 PM
To: Midrange-L Midrange-l <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>>
Subject: Re: Moving from Green screen app to GUI because of push back

It is not a question of _can_ you do it without third party tools Booth.

It is a question of value for money and how far you can go for the $.

There is a learning curve no matter what you do.

To me the biggest advantage of going beyond "roll your own" is that other
people have already made the mistakes for you. That alone is worth a lot
of money in time saving. IBM i shops reinvent the darned wheel way too
often.

So what are the options? And the related "costs"? Well for example:

A) If I use raw CGI APIs I have next to nothing in the way of pre-canned
tools available to help me. There is also a real shortage of code samples
and other education. In order to use jQuery or other similar tools to
produce truly modern apps I have a very heavy learning curve.

B) If I use CGIDEV2 (or Brad's CGI package - although that has a cost
associated with it) I get some pre-canned tools and a bit more in the way
of tutorials etc. but using jQuery etc. still requires some significant
effort.

C) If I use PHP (I could also say Python or node.js or ...) I get lots of
education, massive numbers of pre-built tools (free and fee) that can
save me hours and hours of work. Ready access to staff who know how to
program for the web ... I can call back into my existing RPG logic, etc.
etc. Many of the tools will offer me an easy way into jQuery which brings
me to ...

D) If I use a low-cost tool like PHPGrid on top of my PHP I can increase
my productivity by another order of magnitude and also get easy
interaction of jQuery capability into my apps. If you are interested in
seeing PHPGrid take a look at this article and then tell me how much RPG
code it would take to do this:
http://ibmsystemsmag.com/ibmi/developer/modernization/grid_tools
<http://ibmsystemsmag.com/ibmi/developer/modernization/grid_tools>
<http://ibmsystemsmag.com/ibmi/developer/modernization/grid_tools
<http://ibmsystemsmag.com/ibmi/developer/modernization/grid_tools>>

E) If I use Profound UI (or any off the many other tools in this arena) I
am buying into years of experience of building web apps in RPG using an
extended 5250 model so that I can readily take what I have and move it
forward. Does it cost $s ? Yes but you can test drive for free. I am far
from convinced that such products do actually cost $s in the long run -
the enhanced capabilities and RPG orientation make them reasonably easy
to learn and you become productive very quickly. I've seen this happen on
client sites with Profound, Lansa, Look, Rocket, and CNX to name just a
few.

Any and all of these approaches can be used in combination. And I do. But
personally I would never go down to A or even B again. I might use a tool
like Renaissance or powerExt - which are CGIDEV2 "extensions" but if I'm
trying to modernize existing green screen apps then I'm going to start at
C and work upwards depending on my code base, available skills and depth
of pocket book. Most of the E level are worth every cent in my book - but
if the budget is really tight then I'd use a more conservative approach.

All of this of course ignores what might be considered a more important
aspect of modernization like the database but we're talking green screen
here so ...

Jon Paris

www.partner400.com <http://www.partner400.com/>
www.SystemiDeveloper.com <http://www.systemideveloper.com/>

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