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As a designer, developer, and vendor of transportation management software,
I have a few customers moving selected functions to a GUI (Profound
Logic). But 132-column green screens can do quite a lot and are friendly
to the high transaction count applications required in my specialty (LTL,
or "less than truckload", software). I watched one biller enter 600 bills
of lading (with shipper name/address, consignee name/address, bill-to
name/address, reference numbers, and commodity pieces/weight/descriptions)
in an eight-hour shift--she had her tabbing down to a science. My
experience--and I've been working in this industry for 50 years--is that
users who type extensively like 5250 while less frequent users prefer GUI.
A GUI might be better for a sales rep filling out a rate quote request (and
you get web enablement as a bonus) but the people in Traffic and Cash
Application who bang on their keyboards all day won't give up their
5250's.
Replacing a transportation management system is a huge undertaking
(multiple years, because you're talking about affecting everything
operational aspect of the business) and customers are unwilling to go
through that expense for little apparent value, with the possible
exceptions of (1) the availability of cheap programming from offshore
sources and (2) preparation for the i's inevitable end-of-life
announcement. My approach--design highly functional 5250 apps with
context-sensitive help, detailed error messaging, and strong programming
standards--gives existing users a better experience and provides high
quality candidate programs easy to convert to a GUI.
I suspect others share my dilemma: I don't know enough to know what I need
to know about GUI. It's a cacophony of vendors; in the past, IBM has
provided some guidance and technology to help bridge major changes, notably
with the arrival of the AS/400 and S/36 mode (some will disagree with any
suggestion S/36 mode was related to technology). Perhaps the real issue is
that many members of this community are used to dealing with the one vendor
who offered a complete and integrated technology solution while most of the
rest of IT (non-maninframe, non-i) is used to dealing with multiple vendors
and interface issues.
It's going to be interesting.
On Sat, May 24, 2025 at 9:22 PM Daniel Gross <daniel@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Marco,invested
Am 25.05.2025 um 03:07 schrieb Marco Facchinetti <marco.facchinetti@xxxxxxxxx>:
nobody will ever buy that model again.
Daniel, once again: I wrote a ton of "display file - program" but
That's true from your personal perspective as an ISV and consultant. In
fact, it would be very hard / impossible today, to sell a customer a new
application package with a 5250 user interface.
But this has nothing to do with an "superior programming model" - web UIs
are just shiny and new and have a lot of bling. And in some cases really
add value.
But the reality in small and medium businesses is, that they have
a lot into their code bases over time - and they don't just throw thatdoesn't
away, because someone say, it's "bad technology". Other than big
enterprises, the SMBs don't jump on every train.
The company I work for (logistics and transportation) has a core
application from the early 1990s - of course green screen. But that
hurt, because the average user, never sees it, as our web developmentteam
created specific UIs for many user centric tasks that communicate withour
code modules.decision
But when it came to a new business process (processing incoming invoices
vs. internal pre-calculation) the stakeholders wanted us to create a new
5250 application. In fact the ladies who have to work with it, liked it
better - and asked for it. This wasn't my decision - is even was made,
before I entered the company - and maybe I wouldn't have made that
- but now it's like that.so
So again - from the perspective of an ISV / consultant it's clear, that
you don't develop new software based on 5250. But from the perspective of
an internal developer or freelancer - not working for an ISV - it's not
clear, as you have to deal with what is on hand.a
Kind regards,
Daniel
P.S.: I've only seen the screenshots of "Galileo" at your website -
doesn't look mediocre - and I think Patrik didn't reference to you
application. But there are a lot of bad web GUIs out there - I have seen
lot in the last 20 years - and I have seen a lot of good, bad and ugly5250
screens too.list
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