RE: OO benefits? (was Re: Fast400 Value to iSeries community is less than zero )

===> But here's my deal:  I've done a quick pass on what's available, and find
it wanting.  What I'm looking for is C/S and Webprogramming that's as easy as
green-screen.  That's what I believe the industry needs (though may not want).
I believe the market would pay for it, if they saw it with their own eyes.  I
don't see a lot of INSURMOUNTABLE technical difficulties, but don't want to
minimize them either.

There are a large number of generators on the tools web site that do what you
want;  in fact, they completely separate the definition and maintenance of the
business rules from the user interface layer, and most of them can generate
multi-tiered applications without requiring the business programmer to
understand the underlying communications layers.  My personal favorite is LANSA,
but I know people using almost every tool listed on that site who claim their
tool of choice is productive and successfully shields them from the complexity
underneath.  Of course there a number of people on this list whose lust after
architectural elegance and purity will always lead them to disdain such tools;
after all, if business programming was actually easy, who would need programming
gurus???  My question is whether our goal should be the ability to quickly build
robust business solutions that support flexible deployment models (which I
continue to assert is possible and affordable today), or to argue over what RPG
or DDS semantic should be at the top of the wish list for the future...  And for
those of you that have moved on from RPG and DDS, into the brave new world of
Java and XML, I don't quite see that as a business language either!

From: Janet Krueger      507 529 8777 ext 110
Andrews Consulting Group       www.andrewscg.com