Re: RPG and Web.. (was Using OO concepts in RPG)

[Hans Boldt <boldt@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Brad Stone wrote:
> ...
> If RPG is so wrong for the web, it should be easy to say
> why.  So far, I haven't heard anything of the like.  Just
> the normal tangents and ramblings and twisted quotes we
> always have.  <laugh>

Brad, there's a big difference between "it's possible" and "it's 
preferable". Clearly, it's *possible* to do web programming in RPG 
in the traditional CGI style, even though other tools provide 
concrete advantages.

We've been around this debate a long time ago, but the last time I 
looked at the subject, there were problems in educating RPG 
programmers on CGI programming. As I pointed out before with my RPG 
to Python rewrite example, I wasn't so much concerned over the size 
of the Python code, but rather that the RPG program contained such 
obvious bugs. I studied other examples and found the same bugs in 
them too, which suggested the problem was widespread.

OK Brad, I admit it's been a while since I studied CGI-RPG 
programming, so the situation must have improved since then. So now 
please please please tell me that the current version of CGIDEV2 
contains procedures that the RPG programmer can use to avoid those 
particular bugs, and I'll be much happier about RPG programmers 
doing CGI applications. (In case you don't remember, the issues are 
the escaping of text included in an HTML document and the proper 
encoding of special characters in query strings. Certainly not 
rocket science, but can clearly cause problems if not done properly.)

Cheers! Hans