RE: Is RPG available on any other platform ?

The one question that always looms in my mind is why would you want to have
something that emulates a different language so incredibly close, yet you
don't get all of that language's benefits?

For instance, if you are needing to develop GUI's for your company and you
have the option to use languages that tout they are very similar to VB, why
not just use VB?  I can't imagine that ASNA's Visual RPG gets as many timely
updates as VB or VB.net and you also don't have as large of a community
(Please correct me if I am wrong on either of these points).

If you are using this as a stepping stone to get to VB someday I would
consider that a heavy price to pay.  Now you have a lot of coding invested
in a language that is rarely taught and may hold you to some of the
restrictions that RPG imposes on you.

**note** I am not a VB programmer, nor am I a ASNA's Visual RPG programmer
so please correct me if you are not held to any of RPG's limitations, but I
am guessing you are because of the fact that RPG is in the name.

I compare this argument to people wanting to use Webfacing which is even
worse, because you first need to develop your app like you normally would
with DDS and then you also have to support a JSP of sorts, and if you change
the JSP outside of the DDS your changes will be lost or mis-placed.  Unless
there are other ways to do Webfacing now vs. when I was taught. . .

One thing that I have found to be interesting is that some people's reason
for going GUI isn't for additional functionality but instead for looks.
YIKES!!

Aaron Bartell
Mankato, MN

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Landess [mailto:steve_landess@hotmail.com]
Sent: Monday, December 30, 2002 5:01 PM
To: rpg400-l@midrange.com
Subject: Re: Is RPG available on any other platform ?


I have ASNA's Visual RPG (AVR) 4.0 for Windows.

I think AVR is an outstanding product for standalone, client/server, and web
development.  They are currently working on a version that will be
.NET-compliant.

1) The IDE (Integrated Development Environment) looks/works almost exactly
like that for VB6/Visual Studio.  However, because of its built-in database
handling (using RPG-like file operation codes), IMO it is _much_ more
productive than using a product like VB6 with ODBC or OLE DB.

2) It comes with an iSeries-like database (Acceler8DB) for developing
standalone applications under Windows.

3) It has the ability to access the iSeries database using RPG file
operation codes with ASNA's DataGate/400 database engine (sold separately).

4) It can also perform iSeries-like RPG access to SQL Server 2000 databases
(using CHAIN, SETLL, etc.) with DataGate for SQL Server (sold separately).

5) It can also perform database access to databases such as Oracle using OLE
DB.


(No commercial relationship with ASNA)

Steve Landess
Austin, Texas
(512) 423-0935