RE: IBM not investing in i5/OS was: iSociety

From: Nathan Andelin

How is IBM copying Microsoft?

Developer tools and distributed architectures. Eclipse and Visual Studio
are quite comparable feature wise.

Oh, the whole IDE thing. Yeah, see, that's pretty much Borland's bailiwick,
actually. Everybody is copying them.

The runtime environments are quite comparable too, but in that case
Microsoft was the copycat. Microsoft patterned their application servers
after J2EE architecture. Microsoft also followed IBM's lead and bet the
farm on OO languages and tools.

I agree, but how is that relevant to the traditional System i customer
base?

I guess it depends on your definition. To me, the fact that IBM is opening
up the System i so that it works and plays well with (and in fact is capble
of completely assimilating) other servers is crucial to the ongoing
existence of i5/OS as a platform. That would seem to be relevant.

If you're calling EGL legos, you're way off base, Nathan.
EGL is not legos.

You call it plumbing. I call it Legos. That's not necessarily a bad
thing. Legos is a successful product. It appeals to a certain mindset.
Like Legos, EGL gives you a set of pre-fabricated parts that have well
defined attributes and behaviors. You can do a lot of useful things with
EGL's component library and building anything with them is intuitive -
like Legos.

Yeah, but see, my term is correct, because what I'm explaining is the fact
that what EGL does is hide the underlying complexity of the end technology,
whether it's JSF or MQ-Series. The fact that the same record construct can
be passed directly from an RPG program to a JSF page is the unique
cornerstone of the EGL philosophy. And that same record can be used in
non-JSF user interfaces as well.

You're confusing the widgets of JSF with the language of EGL. And even
then, you miss the point, because you can build as complex an interface in
JSF as you can in CGI, because in the end, you can create any HTML with JSF.
Point to one single thing you can do in CGI that cannot be done in JSF.

Well, if you're happy with that type of user interface, then what can I
say? You can get an essentially comparable user interface from a lot of
application generators from various vendors including Computer Associates,
Lansa, BCD, Profound Logic, Planet J, and others.

You're missing the point. EGL is the starting point, Nathan; it removes the
grunt work of getting a page started. But you can design your JSF pages
however you want. The JSF tooling in Rational allows you to move between
WYSIWYG design and source-based editing with the click of a tab. You can
then tie your data from EGL variables to the table, but that's got nothing
to do with the application design. If you're saying that EGL is a bad UI,
then you're essentially saying that JSF is bad, and that's a heck of a
statement since JSF is the recognized standard for J2EE development.

In fact, if you're anti-JSF, then the whole conversation is moot, because
you've essentially written off all J2EE development.

So you and Aaron can complain all you want. I'm done arguing with you until
you actually use the tool, go through the tutorials, do the due diligence
required to knock a technology. I've at least programmed CGI and PHP and
Python and VB and even a little ASP.

I'm going to promote EGL as a viable option to anybody who cares to listen.
There's a whole group of people at IBM who will help people get the hang of
the product, and I'm pretty sure that upcoming announcements will make it a
very attractive option.

Joe