Re: Green-screen versus browser

[Scott Klement <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> You have no idea how upsetting it is to me personally that we gripe and moan
> about IBM and what they offer, then they give, literally give, us VARPG
> which works, and the iSeries community  turns it down with barely a look.

Not just VARPG. They give us a free Web server. They give us CGIDEV2 for 
free. They give us Tomcat for free. And Java.  For the same price we pay 
for VARPG, we get access to a plethora of other tools, many of them GUI.

IBM has given us TONS AND TONS of options for GUI and Web applications.

> Of course there are othe solutions too, which is right and proper, but if a
> company has RPG programmers, a good data base they like, and are using
> Windows, VARPG is a much easier growth step than Visual Basic, plus you get
> deliverables in weeks instead of months.

The problem with VARPG and how it fits into this discussion, is that VARPG 
is really a PC programming language rather than an iSeries programming 
language.

If you want to move all of your applications to run on the PC, and just 
use the iSeries as a database server, then you're losing out on a lot of 
the advantages of the iSeries. (Just my opinion!)  Not only that, but 
you're marrying yourself to Windows, since that's the only platform they 
make VARPG for.  (Yes, I know, VARPG can compile to Java bytecode that 
runs anywhere... but you still need Windows for development -- and unless 
you specifically test your code on all platforms, you still have a lot of 
room for incompatibilities)

I'd much rather see web applications that actually run on the iSeries 
(using the browser to render the results) so that you get all of the 
advantages of the iSeries!  Stability, job logs and other diagnostic 
tools, all of the advantages that go with the design of SLIC and the 
single level storage model, the security model, etc.

If everyone switched to VARPG, why would we need the iSeries?