Re: What do I use?

Hi Tim, just few words about VARPG:

Pro:

It's RPG and with carefull coding you can reuse service programs as DLL on
your client application

Very flexible handling of subfiles

Direct use of I5 objects (Files, external DS, DATAAREA...)

The GUI understands "Fields Definition" based on hosts files (and, if
requested, con generate the code updating the references)

You can interact with PC applications and use files on the client side

The actual version is stable

It's free (comes with WDSC)

Against:

The communication buffer for calling program on the Host is 32Kb (the
parms must fit in that length)

You cannot generate parts (client side) on the fly, all your parts have to
be present at DESIGN TIME, of course you can control if they are visible
or not, enabled or not and so on

Cannot call service programs on I/5 the must reside (as DLL) on the client
side (there is a method but the result must be numeric and the parms are
limited so no practical use)

It's not fast. Loading components, especially if the windows are complex,
is not as fast as other PC application. But not terrible.

VARPG developing is frozen, I mean that the language is quite up to date
with ILE RPG on I/5 but I don't see any real activity since long time

Maybe the last point is the worst one but keep in mind that if you use
VARPG as an interface and the logic is on the host what you get is a
client server application. If the client side is just an interface you
will not have problems the day you (or IBM on your behalf) decide to
switch to something else.

HTH
FM

Hello,



I will be creating a new system that will be GUI, no green screen, not
web-based.



I am trying to decide what to use. I primary work in RPG/ILE but also have
done extensive work with VB.NET and began playing with VARPG. I have
version
7.0 of WDSC, but have little experience using it.



The new applications I will be writing will be using some java interfaces,
such as for credit card processing and such.



Thanks for your input.

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