RE: i5 GUI

From: Scott Klement

Same thing with HTML interfaces. IBM could make a screen designer in
WDSC that makes it easy to lay out a screen, and knows about input and
output fields that will come from a program. They could give RPG the
ability to easily display those screens. Right now the closest thing we
have is CGIDEV2 -- which is very good, but not as integrated. You still
have to design the HTML separately, then go back and modify it to have
the sections and variables, then call extra APIs to get the input, etc.
Plus the extra work of creating your own session keys, storing session
variables, etc. Tell IBM you want this stuff, they tell you to use
WebSphere or PHP or something like that. "Use the right tool for the job."

EGL does pretty much all of this. You define "records" which are in effect
data structures, except they have much more metadata (including everything
from prompts to validation rules). You use a WYSIWYG painter to paint these
records onto JSF pages, and then you can call an RPG program and pass the
entire record as a data structure. It's not quite the same as an EXFMT;
instead, you are encouraged to encapsulate your business logic in servers
that are separate from your UI (which is good MVC design, anyway).

The downside is that EGL is an extra-charge item (for now). The upside is
that the latest release includes rich client capabilities that are actually
as good as all but the very best thick clients.

Joe