Re: Switching to RDI from SEU

Tom Liotta wrote:

Thank you, Brian, for volunteering to be the straight-man for my "lighthearted" diatribe.

So, the feature in the product for updating the product is only to be used for updating parts that aren't part of the product. Did I get that right? (And, yes, I'm still not somberly serious. If I was, I'd include a description of the latest run of Installation Manager! (And don't ask how my unrelated iSeries Access V6R1 service pack update went.))

Once again the question boils down to "This is the 'LITE' version?"

IMO, the update is a wonderful example of how SEU/PDM has been made easy for developers.

WDSC is not the lite version of anything. WDSC was the version of software that didn't take advantage of the advanced packaging capabilities of Installation Manager. RDi truly is the i-specific version of WDSC, and it's quite petite, all things considered.

As to using Installation Manager rather than Eclipse update, while Eclipse has a pretty powerful update component (Europa is way cool), it's much more focused on discovering and installing new components and updating them and really not geared towards packaging and processing commercial applications. Installation Manager, on the other hand, rocks for that particular task.

I've got four different installations of RDi, RBD and WDSC on my machine, ranging from WDSC 7 to RDi 7.1 to RBD 7.1 to RDi-SOA 7.5.1. All four exist simultaneously on my machine and I can update each individually, although I don't use the 7.1 versions anymore so I haven't tried to update them in some time.

I haven't run into any issues updating any of them.

One last note: as to the menus being complex, I don't find it so. I guess I'm used to PC software. I'm typing in this email and it's got 60 or 70 menu options - FOR AN EMAIL. Menus on desktop applications are garbage dumps. What I like about RDi and RDi-SOA is that I really don't use the menus. I can go an entire day doing nothing but pointing and clicking and using the context-sensitive menus that come with right-clicks.

Joe