Re: deployment/debugging

DeLong, Eric wrote:

Joe,

With due respect, and understanding that you are more involved with EGL
than most, I find it hard to believe that many RPG shops are really
USING egl. Interest is there, certainly, but I have yet to see anyone
using it for more than proof of technology projects.

I don't know the numbers, Eric. You'd have to ask IBM. But I do know that lots of Z shops are using EGL, and moving from COBOL to EGL (or to VAGen, and then EGL, as many have done) is an equivalent process.

But, there's still a lot of slop in the product. Take the last call for
help for example. Calling QCMDEXC via JT400 in Tomcat... How many days
did it take to confirm that it just didn't work as expected? This
should have been a trivial exercise, that any i shop would be expected
to use a great deal. I believe IBM needs to develop i-specific training
and support if they want to bring us along.

I really didn't follow the whole thread on this one, Eric, so I'll take your word that it was an onerous deal. But I have to say that the only thing i-specific about EGL is calling RPG from EGL, and once you get that down the rest is pure EGL, so I don't know how much i-specific training is needed.

What may be needed is how to write server programs in RPG that can be called by a web application tier, but that's the same whether you use JSP Model 2, EGL or even PHP. I agree that there is a need for more training there, but nobody wants to pay for it.

Here's what's happened to me since we bought our first license for
Rdi-SOA:
1) Installed from CD, but update packages did not recognize my base
package Ids, so I could never update.
2) Installation of Rdi updates without applying egl updates hosed the
whole package (JVM update issue), requiring reinstall.
3) Finally get things working at RBD 7.5.1.1, but missing features (Site
Navigation) forced another update to 7.5.1.2
4) Even after update, site navigation still did not show up for projects
touched by an earlier release, forcing me to start from scratch (again).

This was just the lead in to the EGL foundation course. Not really
satisfying, imo. We hired a Java programmer to help up move forward
with EGL...

That stinks, Eric. But I've got to reply with the fact that I've managed to install and run multiple copies and versions of RDi and RDi-SOA and WDSC with nowhere near that many issues. At the same time, look at all the problems Kelly is having getting PHP to just copy a file. It's a learning curve no matter what, I guess.

Joe