Re: Native GUI (was Saving the System i: Fight Rather Than Switch)

On 12/11/06, Jones, John (US) <John.Jones@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Mark,

I think the sticking point is that I don't think 5250 or fat clients are
the way to go if one wants the iSeries to have a modern look & feel,
which is what triggered this whole native GUI discussion.  And
developing for more than one of the three options is by necessity going
to take more resources (time/people/money) than developing for just one.
Anything that takes more resources will reduce profitability unless one
can demonstrate a positive ROI on the additional work.

Really, there's nothing inherently wrong or incorrect about any of the
approaches.  But if it's reasonable to expect a browser to be on the
client and not reasonable to expect consideration to be made for a dumb
tube, emulator, or fat client, then developing for the browser first and
possibly only becomes obvious.

have not used it, but ClickOnce deployment might be the way to address
the problem of keeping all your desktop client software in sync and up
to date.
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/t71a733d(vs.80).aspx

A big advantage to not using the browser is the application can be
written entirely from the client's perspective and to their
specifications.  The central DP server department only has to provide
ODBC access to the system and documention of its interfaces.

-Steve