Re: [IBMiOSS] XMLSERVICE, RPGLE & Java error

Thus my point about something like officially supporting DB2 Connect on IBMi or a more official included ibmdb2 CLI driver (not libdb400 which appears to have its own issues) being supported for PASE and open source language projects (like is done for IBM i Access Drivers and JT400-maybe ibmdb2 drivers for PHP or a few others) on IBMi

Don't make us all re-invent the wheel forcing us to create our own Microservices or rely on a new potential new microservice framework that may or may not get completed.

Not trying to diminish the open source work Liam and other people want to do, but if IBMi is our beloved DB machine and IBM is embracing the open source world, give us stable DB Drivers needed to write the stuff we need using open source languages and don't make us cobble this stuff together.

I was actually surprised when XMLSERVICE was included in the OS, because that adds the "officiality" to it being supported by IBM, even though as you mentioned it has its own issues.

Like it or not XMLSERVICE has currently become a standard unless you guys (IBM) help to lead the way to a stable alternate DB access path for i.

Now of course I know none of the internal politics, so I know there are always hurdles to be dealt with.

And I put my time where my mouth is as I've built supporting infrastructure for .Net to use XMLSERVICE, but that's not always enough to convince developers to use it because it's still considered non-standard and endorsed.

I'm always happy to have a discussion with you or your team about this. I don't want to just rant because lots of this stuff works well. But we need a more consistent future for native and PASE DB access on the i from other languages.

Regards,
Richard Schoen
Director of Document Management
e. richard.schoen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
p. 952.486.6802
w. helpsystems.com


-----Original Message-----

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message: 1
date: Tue, 11 Dec 2018 17:33:58 +0000
from: "Kevin Adler" <kadler@xxxxxxxxxx>
subject: Re: [IBMiOSS] XMLSERVICE, RPGLE & Java error

There are a multitude of problems with XMLSERVICE. It's over-engineered
and contains many hacks for various things thrown in willy-nilly. This
creates a combinatorial problem of supporting it and adding new features,
especially without breaking existing users. The project basically started
as a hobby project by Tony to show what could be done from RPG; I don't
think he ever intended for it to become what it has become: the bedrock on
which customers are running their businesses from PHP, Python, Node, .NET,
etc...

It has served fairly well, all things considered, but in order to have
something sustainable and maintainable going forward we need to take the
lessons learned from this project and build something leaner, cleaner, and
all around better. This seems to be heading towards ILEusion, which is a
project designed around RPG microservices. Personally, I'd have rather it
be written in C, since I think it is the best language suited for this
type of project (at least that's available on IBM i, especially within
ILE), but AFAIK nobody from the community (including vendors who use
XMLSERVICE within their products/toolkits) stepped up to help out with
XMLSERVICE/DB2SOCK. Meanwhile, Liam is chugging along.


----- Original message -----
From: Richard Schoen via OpenSource <opensource@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent by: "OpenSource" <opensource-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "opensource@xxxxxxxxxxxx" <opensource@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Richard Schoen <Richard.Schoen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [IBMiOSS] XMLSERVICE, RPGLE & Java error
Date: Tue, Dec 11, 2018 10:30 AM

There seems to be some new open source projects starting up with intent
to replace XMLSERVICE, so nothing official or near imminent I don't
think.

Personally I would say improve on XMLSERVICE rather than do a full
re-write, but I didn't create XMLSERVICE. I just use it so I don't know
the complexity.