RE: Who Uses WebSphere Express?

I think it is too bad that discussions have to degenerate to this all the
time.  I am working at a bit of a disadvantage here since I cannot see the
actualy discussion taking place but I still cannot help comment.

I have nothing against RPG-CGI.  It could be a good solution, even the
right solution, in a lot of situations.  As for scalability, I think the
problem is that it is hard to define what that term means.  I think when
the Internet world decided that CGI was not scalable the problem is that
they were defining the problem on the eBay/Amazon.com type scale of
traffic.  I doubt that either CGI or JSP would have trouble handling the
kind of traffic that most business apps generate, even in large
organizations.  What I prefer about the JSP solution is all of the options
it gives you, such as running the business rules server and application
server on separate physical machines.  You can sort of do this with
RPG-CGI, but when you do the RPG coding gets a lot more difficult and you
are no longer using RPG for what it is best at.

As for WebSphere, I have problems with all of the people that want to bash
it.  Installing WebSphere involes running RSTLICPGM.  Is that hard?
Configuring WebSphere is the matter of running a wizard with almost no
questions other than a name to use.  Is that hard?  Understanding every
aspect of J2EE is far from easy, but you have very little need to
understand even a little bit of J2EE.  I do not see how basic JSP is any
more difficult to learn than Net.Data which everyone seems to love so much.
Start there and learn stuff as you need to.

As for any attacks on my credibility, all I will say is that I am not
"pitching WebSphere" I am defending it and I think that is a difference.  I
have not criticized anyone or their choices, I am simply asking that others
do the same.  If you love RPG-CGI, fine.  Go tell the world about it and
how great it is and how you use it.  But in doing so why is it necessary to
spread FUD about WebSphere?  It sounds defensive to me.  If RPG-CGI is the
way to go, then it ought to be able to stand on its own merits.

Using RPG-CGI was never an option for my app.  I knew before I started that
there were customers that did not and would not run the app server on their
production iSeries.  Java and WebSphere gives us the most flexibility.  As
a tools vendor, we do not have the ability to dictate platform choices to
our customer as a big ERP app might.  We need to work with what the
customer has and wants.  WebSphere lets us do that.

Mark




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