RE: EJB versus RPG/COBOL

["Joe Pluta" <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: Dieter Bender
> 
> Mixing RPG and Java is worst for maintainability, you will need both
> skills forever and your Java design is driven by rpg prerequisites.

This is actually not true, especially in shops with RPG/COBOL skills.
In most cases your RPG/COBOL programmers will know your business rules
already.  By keeping your business rules in a native iSeries language,
you leverage your legacy programmers and at the same time you don't have
to train Java programmers to learn your business.

In my 25 years of development, it has become very clear to me that there
are two different types of developers: business developers and GUI
developers. People who develop GUIs (be it in VB or Java or C#) are
younger, usually college trained, and almost always somewhat lean on
business application knowledge.  They can code the heck out of a
servlet, but they don't have a clue what an aged accounts receivable is,
and generally its harder to teach business rules to a programmer with no
business background than it is to teach a new programming language to a
business application developer.

Your business programmers know your system.  They are most comfortable
in RPG or COBOL and can listen to a user's business requirement and
translate that to code almost immediately.  These people should be the
ones maintaining your business rules.

By combining Java and RPG/COBOL programmers, each assigned to their own
area, you can have the best of both worlds.  There is little training
required on either side; both should be immediately productive.  The
overhead is in proper design of the interfaces between the servlets and
the business rules, but there are many ways to skin that cat, from
direct calls to RPG/COBOL programs to data queues to stored procedures.

So why so some people push to an all-Java solution?  I don't know.  To
me, it doesn't make sense.  Use the right tool for the right job.  If
the only tool you have is a hammer, pretty soon everything looks like a
nail...

Joe