RE: And so it continues...

If that were true, Microsoft's Internet Explorer and .NET could be

considered open source (Explorer uses HTML, javascript, XML, and C# is an
ECMA-controlled language).

I see where you are coming from Luis, but it would be more correct to say
that IE uses open source software vs. it _is_ open source software. One
could consider a browser to be an ultimate OSS mash-up as it relates to
things that happen client side.

HTML, CSS, Javascript, JSP, JSF, JDBC, and XML by definition are

standards: not software.

Correct, that is why I put the word 'spec' in my comments, though I
neglected to put 'spec' on HTML, CSS, and XML - my mistake.

And, thinking about it, almost every technology stack out there has a bit

(or a lot) of open source code. So even if EGL had some open source in it,
it would not be nothing exceptional, but part of a rather increasingly
common practice.

Agreed.


It will be interesting to see the IT landscape in 20 years. Having
standards committees is great for moving forward interoperation at a fast
pace, but it slows individual companies down to a crawl concerning
innovation as they have to wait for standards committees to come up with
next versions instead of developing them in-house. Their other option is to
force new versions on standards committees, but those days are starting to
go the way of the buffalo (thinking about Microsofts Office XML efforts this
past year - they tried hard to bend the rules, but people are bending as
easily as they did with SOAP).

What we are seeing in the Silverlight/AdobeFlex/JavaFX space is a nice
medium I think, because it gets away from so much reliance on browsers and
their adherance to specifications (i.e. HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc) and
instead has the user download binary (and for the most part proprietary)
browser plugins, and simply use XML and the like to communicate back to the
mother ship.

Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Luis Colorado
Sent: Friday, January 04, 2008 8:28 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: RE: And so it continues...

How is that not a mash-up of open source?

Well, something governed by a standards committee (like W3C or JCP) is not
necessarily Open Source Software. If that were true, Microsoft's Internet
Explorer and .NET could be considered open source (Explorer uses HTML,
javascript, XML, and C# is an ECMA-controlled language). HTML, CSS,
Javascript, JSP, JSF, JDBC, and XML by definition are standards: not
software. Open Source means that the software's source code is available to
be freely modified.

And, thinking about it, almost every technology stack out there has a bit
(or a lot) of open source code. So even if EGL had some open source in it,
it would not be nothing exceptional, but part of a rather increasingly
common practice.

Luis

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Aaron Bartell
Sent: Thursday, January 03, 2008 5:22 PM
To: 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'
Subject: RE: And so it continues...

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 utilizes the following technologies to come up with an end result:
- HTML (governed by W3C)
- CSS (governed by W3C)
- Javascript (Netscape/Mozilla?)
- JSP spec/implementation (Sun)
- JSF spec (Sun). IBM provides their own implementation here.
- JDBC spec (Sun)
- EGL WYSIWYG (Eclipse)
- XML (governed by W3C)

How is that not a mash-up of open source? I would say EGL is a product of a
group of IBM engineers using OSS to their benefit. Sure they have a lot of
proprietary code built in there, but the basis mostly resides in the OSS
realm. This is a fundamental difference between the software stack for EGL
vs. green screen. Not necessarily a bad difference as they each have their
strengths and weaknesses.


Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com


-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Joe Pluta
Sent: Thursday, January 03, 2008 4:01 PM
To: 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'
Subject: RE: And so it continues...

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