Re: EGL RichUI Was:Re: From RGP to ¿Java?

Alan Campin wrote:

Our company tried EGL (Not the Rich UI version) and found it wanting. Bigger
problem I saw was the interface to the backend AS/400 code. Required you to
write code for program calls, different for service program, different for
data queues, etc and returning data was a big problem so what I did was
abstract the AS/400 interface away.

By abstract, I mean we wrote a single java class that received the name of a
service program, library, procedure and parameters as text and did a single
send. Results were returned as arrays of text strings that could be fixed,
XML, delimited, whatever.

Why couldn't you do that with an EGL library function? I think the concept of an EGL library function is the best of both worlds! It's an encapsulated piece of code, but without the technical minutiae of creating a Java class hierarchy. You pass in a record (and a record can contain other records or even arrays of other records) and the library function fills it with data. Whether it's a call to an RPG program or a call to a web service on another box, the UI doesn't need to know!

And of course, if for some reason you really need to use Java, it's very easy to create an external type in EGL to directly access your Java classes.

Did you work with IBM? Did you talk to Jon Sayles? Did you work with any of the EGL support team? Because the sorts of issues you're talking about (abstraction, encapsulation, simplification) are right in EGL's sweet spot.

Joe