From: Buck
Yes, I understood that to be your goal. I don't believe it is the
official IBM positioning for EGL, although that wasn't my reason for
adding to the thread.
Well, to be fair, there is no "official" IBM anything for EGL. IBM is an
amorphous entity and while there are some folks in Rational who think EGL is
all you'll ever need for programming, most of those folks don't even
consider the System i as a platform, or if they do, it's as a big database
server.
Luckily, there is also a very strong contingent within IBM that really
understands the power of the System i. I can say that for a fact because
there was a feature dropped into the latest beta release of EGL that is
there only for us System i folks. It took some wrangling to get it in
there, but I'm pleased to say the System i faction is alive and well in the
EGL family <smile>.
I don't have any objection to EGL at all. Your original complaint was
that people are slapping web sites together that are fragile -- too
fragile for production. They're doing that because they think that they
can bolt a few widgets together and they're done.
Yeah, but that had nothing to do with EGL, and I want it clear that I don't
in any way connect those two particular dots. EGL is NOT a "bolt-together"
language and really has nothing to do with the Open Source mash-up
mentality. You're the one who tied those concepts together.
EGL is one of those tools intentionally designed to hide the technology
infrastructure from the programmer.
Well, so are compilers. And operating systems, for that matter. Otherwise
we'd all be toggling in machine code from the front panel. But beyond that
obvious hyperbole on my part, the beauty of EGL is that it generates pure
3GL code - JSF and Java - which you can debug provided you know those
technologies, just the same as you could debug Synon-generated RPG.
In fact, I'd say the generated Java code is about as ungainly as generated
Synon code, or at least generated AS/SET code (I don't remember the Synon
stuff quite as well). It's readable and actually reasonably well commented,
and about what you would expect from a generator.
I wouldn't want to write business logic using that generated Java, but since
I use that Java for little more than calling RPG, I don't care whether it's
generated code. In fact, I recommend that even if you're using JSP Model 2
talking to RPG with data structures that you mechanically generate the
interface classes that convert the data structures.
And while the generated Java code is pretty ungainly, the JSF is quite
straightforward. If you know JSF (which is an industry standard, not an IBM
standard), you can pretty easily work your way through the code and make
whatever tweaks you need. Even better, you don't have to because you can
use the WYSIWYG editor.
Like any number of frameworks and
semi-automated tools, when something gets knocked akimbo, the
WYSIWYG-only programmers will have a hard time righting things.
Maybe this is the problem. I never said anything about WYSIWYG-only
programming with EGL. I say WYSIWYG for the UI and code your business logic
in RPG. Which part of this don't you like? Are you against WYSIWYG editors
for web pages?
I understand you don't like the idea of writing applications in EGL. I
don't either. I suggest EGL as the front end and RPG as the back end. Do
you have a problem with that design philosophy?
Joe
midrange.com
