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

We wrapped the Java Class in a EGL library function. I think the concept of
the AS400Interface was just what you are saying. The EGL library function
took care of the interface to the AS/400. If you changed a property, it
would send via a data queue, change it again and it would send via a program
call or change it again and it would call a Stored Procedure. The backend
code never changed and has no idea how it got called and the results were
received by the same no matter how they got sent. The caller never knows how
the data got sent back.

We had an IBM consultant out here for months working with the company on
EGL. Brought a guy from India because IBM didn't have anybody in the states.
The problems they ran into he couldn't seem to solveed except by going to
the Rich Ui version which was just being released and they decided to go
with Spring, Hibernate and Flex instead.

On Fri, May 8, 2009 at 8:55 AM, Joe Pluta <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:

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
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