RE: A quick EGL example - Configuring database connection

Joe,

Thanks for the reply. I considered using Cloudscape because I was hoping
for quick gratification: actually being able to complete an IBM tutorial 'as
is', without getting sidetracked on some configuration issue!

Am still trying to _understand_ everything that I _know_ about this new
world where it takes more than an "F-spec" to complete the plumbing between
the database and the language and I likely have many misconceptions. Please
feel free to correct me if it looks like I'm starting to lurch into the
ditch.

1) In order to run EGL inside of WDSc on a standalone PC, some sort of local
database is necessary. If Cloudscape is deprecated I'll take another stab at
it using Derby instead - there was mention of Derby in the Tomcat .ppt on
the jsayles website. This should suffice for the tutorial and initially
getting familiar with the IDE.

2) Yes, the ultimate goal is to connect to data on our iSeries. Since the
DDS to DDL conversion is not yet complete, I suppose they are they are
technically still QSYS files instead of tables, but that is another issue
for another time. Did I infer correctly from your reply " move straight to a
DB2 connection " that EGL can access DB2 data without Tomcat or WAS as an
intermediary?

3) Might I suggest another article in your series on EGL: a conceptual
overview and a bullet-list of the steps necessary to d/l, install and
configure EGL geared towards us RPG-o-saurs? On the one hand is the surplus
of trivial WDSc articles on the wonders of color-coded opcodes in LPEX and
how to change library lists in RSE. On the other hand are intense debates
about the relative merits of JSF vs. JSP development and other things I've
heard of but don't understand the implications of.
Our business slacks during the holidays so I have the luxury of
research time. Over the past week, though, I've probably spent six or eight
hours just scouring newslists and article archives to get to this point. If
you hadn't mentioned that jsayles.com/ibm site, I probably would have
shelved this project on Monday afternoon and gone back to tweaking yet
another green-screen subfile...

Many thanks, JK

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:midrange-l-
bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Joe Pluta
Sent: Friday, November 30, 2007 11:09 AM
To: 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'
Subject: RE: A quick EGL example - Configuring database connection

From: JK

Q1) To complete the tutorial, I'd intended to use the Cloudscape 5.1

that

WDSc should have installed on my PC.

Okay, a few little things.

First, I'm not a Cloudscape guy, so I'm speaking from a bit of ignorance
here, but that's nothing new, eh? Anyway, why do you think you should be
using Cloudscape? Cloudscape is deprecated and has been replaced by
Derby,
which WDSC 7 actually pre-configures for you in the Data Perspective. You
should be able to use that with no problems, although I'm unsure where the
Derby database is initially installed.

If you want to use DB2 on the System i instead, I can show you how to hook
that up, although there are some issues (the primary one being that it's
easier to hardcode library names at the beginning).

Q2) The next step would be to connect to our iSeries. Since Tomcat is
already in use on our small-ish 520, I thought it might be preferable to
use it instead of firing up WAS Express.

Actually, I'd start out by getting the system running inside of WDSC. The
beauty of WDSC is that it has a fully functional internal testing
environment that allows you to do all of your testing without having to
deploy the application to a host. And if you configure your database
connection to use DB2 on the host, it will actually access the data there
while running on your workstation.

Sweet!

A .ppt on the jsayles site describes
how to configure Tomcat once it is installed. How can I determine which
version of Tomcat is running on our box and whether it is recent enough

to

work happily with EGL? Then, after Tomcat is added to the "Runtime
Environment" and the sample database is replicated to the iSeries, I
assume you'd have to reconfigure the "EGL SQL Database Connections" to
point to the new Derby manager?

This is another good reason to move straight to a DB2 connection, since I
assume that's your ultimate goal (to use DB2 data). But in any case, EGL
is
designed to run fine on Tomcat, you'll just export your project as a WAR
file and deploy it as normal. As long as your JDK is high enough on the
host, you should be fine, although you want to be running Tomcat 5 at the
very least. Tomcat will show you its version in the initial welcome page
if
you haven't changed that.

Again, if you've configured your project to talk to DB2 on the host, you
won't have to change anything to test it (although eventually you'll
probably want to use the native driver rather than the standard
multi-platform JDBC driver).

Joe