Re: A Dialogue

[Pete Helgren <Pete@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Roy,

I have had some experience with this.  Particularly with developing a 
cross platform solution (Windows, Linux and i5/OS).  I have a post about 
it in imho.midrange.com.  Part 2 might answers some of your questions: 
http://imho.midrange.com/2007/06/19/system-i-evolution-part-2/  It's a 
good place to look for other published insights as well.

The biggest issue is that PHP and Java will probably your best bet in 
the "build once, deploy everywhere" context and both those skills will 
be a radical shift for your developers.  Not impossible, just radical. 
The System i is a fine platform and RPG your best bet if you plan to 
always have one in your hardware mix.  However, if you want to move to 
something that would be deployable across Windows, *NIX and i5/OS with 
no System i required, then you have some work cut out for you.  You'll 
need a cross platform DB (DB2, MySQL, and the like) and you'll need a 
language that can run either "natively" on each platform (like Java) or 
something that can be hosted in PASE (like PHP, Perl, Ruby /Rails).  
Like I said, Java servlets and PHP are probably the most likely solutions.

Expect to double or triple your development time, even once you have 
settled on a language and have become proficient in it.  The browser 
world is a whole new animal (HTML,CSS,Javascript,XML, browser 
compatibility and the like).

Pete Helgren



Roy Luce wrote:
> Systems Plus has a green screen application installed at a significant
> customer's location.
>
>  
>
> That customer has told us that to secure any substantial new business we
> must deliver a GUI version of our application.
>
> We been told further that the application must be reside totally on the
> iSeries and support a browser based user interface.
>
>  
>
> If we are going to deliver a GUI version we want to do the programming once
> - meaning we want a version that can be delivered to the iSeries environment
> as well as Linux, Unix and Windows.
>
> Research over the past few days indicates few viable options are available
> to meet this objective.  One of those options is programming in Java.
>
>  
>
> I'm looking for feedback relative to Java on the iSeries (suitability for
> our purposes, etc.) and the portability of the code to other environments.
>
>  
>
>  
>
> Roy Luce
>
> Systems Plus - Midwest
>
>  
>
> Direct:   847-540-9635
>
>             800-913-PLUS (7587)
>
> Cell:      847-910-0884
>
> Email:   rluce@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>  
>
>