Re: Re: Accounting Vendors -- MIDRANGE-L

I do ride a motorcycle, and I do not have a kickstart. Or a hand crank on mycar. I guess I am not a fule...? And I am not expecting my bike to fail. Ido not get into my car with the expectation that it will break down on thisdrive - I have regular service to prevent that. Same as my server.

An advantage of "a bunch of extra technology" - er, multi-tierarchitecture - is that things are modular. There are smaller sets of codewhich are easier to maintain, and if a component fails, you can replace thatcomponent quickly than having to wait for the whole server to restart.

Green-screen interfaces are NOT simple. They certainly transfer a smallamount of data, but traditional data entry screens are complex so that theend-user can key EVERYthing in one transaction. Certainly, green-screenterminals and emulators have key-ahead functionality, but you do not needsignificant amounts of JavaScript for speeding up HTML to handle data entry.

Timesheet entry for me - since 1998 - has been via entry over the web. Noheads down data entry to repeat/interpret handwritten text. Not sure why youchose that example.

RPG and COBOL will not be replaced by Java - they will co-exist. This debateis not about RPG vs. Java...

----- Original Message -----From: "Hewitt, Rory"

Subject: RE: Re: Accounting Vendors


Trevor wrote:

Why would anyone buy a NEW application with a green screen data entry
function? Seems like buying a car with a hand crankstart.

If you rode a motorcycle, you'd know (as any fule know), that you always geta bike with a kickstart in addition to an electric start because sometimestechnology fails... By the same token, web interfaces are great (I designweb-enablement tools for a living), but rely on a bunch of extra technology,any bit of which may fail. Green-screen interfaces are simple and fast. Ansthey include 'functionality' which is almost impossible to duplicate on anHTML page without using significant amounts of JavaScript - totally freecursor movement, for instance, to enable you to use the cursor-up/down keysto move to fields immediately above or below the current one. Using the Tabkey to move like this just doesn't cut it on screens with lots of fields onthem.

Now if your question is more basic - i.e. Why do companies still use manualdate-entry, well then I'd say it's because they have neither the time northe resources to change. And some areas are just difficult to change -timesheet entry will probably aleays be manually entered, because someoneneeds to interpret handwriting. It's the same reason they're still using RPGand COBOL rather than a "new" and "fancy" language like Java<suppressed-smirk>


Rory