Re: open source IBM i. was Re: From RGP to ¿Java ?

I have not been on a sales call, but most ERP vendors these days do offer a
GUI. It's usually just ran through something like Seagull and in general I
don't usually like them, but it's there.

There are several GUI options. You can write a nice GUI in .NET, JavaSever
Faces/Pages, Swing, or even CGI.

Well, they (IBM) had VisualAge RPG which not many people seemed to adopt
(before my time so I don't really know why). They have HATS and WebFacing,
not really a great option but it's there. Now there is EGL.

The main problem as I see it is that most vendors don't usually want
re-write all their displays. That's what really needs to happen. I don't see
any feasable way to convert DDS to some fancy GUI. A native GUI needs to be
event driven which DDS and usally the controlling RPG are not. When someone
presses F3 you can't just lock the screen up and do what you would in RPG.

So, you would have to re-create all your DDS and display controlling
programs anyway. Why does that have to be native? Why would it not make just
has much if not more sense to use an already created and proven technology?

--
James R. Perkins


On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 21:04, M. Lazarus <mlazarus@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

James,

At 5/8/09 01:06 PM, you wrote:

I personally don't think that RPG needs a nice GUI like others do.

Why do you say this? Have you gone on a sales call where your
competition has the GUI and you don't? I have and it's not
pretty. The non-GUI software barely has a chance. That's just the
reality for most decision makers. They want brand new software that
looks and feels brand new.

In the past IBM has tried to give us this and very few people did
anything with it, so they gave up and how can blame them.

Did anyone find out WHY it failed? Was it too expensive? Too
difficult to implement? To resource hungry? Too limited in functionality?

I'm betting that it was one or more of the above reasons. That
does NOT mean that we don't want / need a native GUI to make us
competitive. The same way that IBM woke up and included TCP/IP as an
integral part of i5/OS or risk losing the entire midrange business,
they need to recognize that an integrated, native GUI is crucial to
remaining viable.

-mark

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