RE: Mono on IBM i - Porting Mono to AIX and IBM i -- MIDRANGE-L

Joe,

As I see it there are two significant benefits, as Scott pointed out it allows us to port existing applications to the IBM i from other places and provides yet another way to build applications. My own preference would be to build the UI only and allow DB2, SQL, RPG, etc. to do what they do better than anything else out there.

I agree with Scott that I would not choose Mono as a development platform as a first choice, but if it keeps the data in DB2 on IBM i, then I pay that price. Besides, once someone starts using the platform they usually adapt to it and don't look back.

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Jim Oberholtzer
Agile Technology Architects

-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L <midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Joe Pluta
Sent: Tuesday, April 16, 2019 11:30 AM
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Mono on IBM i - Porting Mono to AIX and IBM i

Agreed, Jim. I'm all about business logic on the i, and then access from the entire infrastructure.

I've worked with Visual Studio in the past and I agree that it's a very cohesive and powerful environment. It's also not without it's own management quirks, and adding a new tool suite is always an issue. That's why I'm writing my current articles about using Eclipse for Linux development; it keeps you in the Eclipse toolset.

So I'm just trying to get a feel for what .Net on the IBM i gets you. User interface in .Net is definitely well developed. But I get a little fuzzy here. Would you actually program user interface via Mono on the IBM i or would you do user-facing development on a different machine?

Anyway, this is good stuff. This is the sort of expertise I count on from this group.

On 4/16/2019 11:21 AM, Jim Oberholtzer wrote:

I have several customers with strong IBM i / POWER infrastructures in their data center. Several of them have hired younger development managers who are asking why use this RPG "stuff" when I can use "___ fill in blank___"

My answer is always to keep DB2 and use RPG or existing languages for the business logic, or at least the heavy logic, and build APIs in RPG/SQL. Use whatever makes you happy for the user interface. Mono fills in quite a gap in the arsenal and makes the system more attractive to more organizations. Richard will argue that .Net with Visual Studio is the or nearly the best development environment available, and I must agree with that assessment. So, adding Mono to the bag of tricks is vital in my view.

--
Jim Oberholtzer
Agile Technology Architects

-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L <midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Justin Taylor
Sent: Tuesday, April 16, 2019 10:50 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: RE: Mono on IBM i - Porting Mono to AIX and IBM i

Perfectly valid question. I think most of the FOSS dev options are to attract/assist people who already know those environments. For an i-native dev, why should they use option "x" instead of RPG? The answer I hear most often is to utilize existing utilities/libraries. I guess that depends on the kind of work you do. Virtually everything I do is so specific, everything has to be custom anyway.

(You could insert a different traditional language instead of RPG, but RPG is pretty much synonymous with IBMi.)

-----Original Message-----
From: Joe Pluta [mailto:joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, April 16, 2019 10:24 AM
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Mono on IBM i - Porting Mono to AIX and IBM i

Richard, I know I'm lobbing one over the middle of the plate here, but can you give me a brief list of the top 5 benefits of .Net over all of the other options we have on the IBM i? Obviously if you have Windows development talent in-house, it's a pretty easy call, but what about for shops that don't? What about the .Net environment intrinsically benefits me as a developer? Why would I (Joe Pluta) want to take the time to broaden my .Net skills?

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