Re: Lansa vs. Plex -- MIDRANGE-L

"Mark Villa" says:
> I was disappointed that Lansa did not have a wizard to convert existing
> native screen formats to the WEB.
> I was disappointed that the deployment does not include data in files
unless
> to the same platform type.

Lansa is a development tool for new applications, or for reengineering
existing applications. They DO have a solution to convert existing green
screens to the web - they sell the looksoftware suite of products which
includes newlook and centric.

There has always been a lot of confusion about what these products do,
primarily due to mis-information from competitors and mis-understanding
about how this ~new~ generation of webfacing tools works. However, this
suite does many things with an emphasis on enhancing and extending green
screen applications - one being webfacing and web deployment, another being
cross-platform integration, which includes multi-platform database access.

I think the biggest misunderstanding in this thread is that we are all so
familiar with green programming tools, that anything that takes us beyond
that, into the web or multiple platforms can be a little difficult to
understand from our singular iSeries perspective. There is a place for all
of these tools. You can gain a huge advantage in developing new applications
from scratch with tools like Lansa/web. And there is a place for
non-intrusive webfacing and extending tools like newlook and centric. There
is even a place for tools that allow you to remain solid in your green
screen skill set forever.

The solution is harder to uncover in this forum, since most of us are biased
towards our own technology knowledge, and the business reasons for moving
forward are often ignored here.

Trevor

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Villa" <markvilla@knology.net>
Subject: RE: Lansa vs. Plex


> ~~~If you want to be really webby, you will eventually end up
> ~~~coding some HTML
> ~~~and Javascript.  I don't use Lansa/web much, but it happens
> ~~~I am doing a
> ~~~project right now.  To be honest, I don't see much advantage
> ~~~of Lansa/web to
> ~~~an Iseries RPG shop who is looking to go web over Brad
> ~~~Stones E-RPG or Joe
> ~~~Pluta's webfacing tool.
>
>
> Lansa for the Web can be deployed to a Windows server from an iSeries Web
> Server without coding one extra stitch of code (if you don't get too
fancy)
> For someone that can not avoid 2 or more platforms, this alone might be
> justification. It does not work in reverse. I was amazed deployment &
> compile actually worked, it took days to let that sink in. The code base
> obviously needs to be recompiled into c++ instead of RPG but performance
is
> unbelievably similar.
> The test of a true 4GL.
> On the iSeries (if you want) you can alter the source/get the RPG
listings,
> and you can do this also in C++ on Windows.
> My understanding is Lansa is going to make compiles C++ and/or Java on all
> platforms. With that said, after the first couple of compiles, I never
> looked at anything other than return codes.
>
> I was disappointed that the deployment does not include data in files
unless
> to the same platform type. It is partially addressed with file transfer
> mechanisms.
>
> I was disappointed that Lansa did not have a wizard to convert existing
> native screen formats to the WEB. The only re-use is by calling 3GL
programs
> (which is easy and 5250 or batch) and the existing database can be
imported.
>
> Email me offline if you like if web work or multiple platforms is key.
>
> Mark Villa in Charleston SC