Re: Today's COMMON Open Access for RPG webcast

Hi David,

Regarding Profound UI, I also listened to the Webcast. One thing that I thought was quite innovative and also congruent with RPGOA was that their screen designer actually generated *DSPF DDS. It didn't appear to define screen positioning in the traditional way, but rather inserted JSON formatted text in the area beginning in column 45 to define the properties of GUI components. Nevertheless, the DDS appeared to map record and field names to GUI components, and used to build display files congruent with an RPGOA interface.

I generally steer clear of tools that generate tight bindings between UI widgets various data sources. I know that architecture is super popular, but I've run into too many constraints, using Microsoft's tools. But give Profound UI credit for a design that fits well with RPGOA. I agree, this is a step above traditional screen scraping.

-Nathan.



----- Original Message ----
From: "dmosley@xxxxxxxxxx" <dmosley@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: RPG programming on the IBM i / System i <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wed, April 21, 2010 7:02:08 PM
Subject: Re: Today's COMMON Open Access for RPG webcast

We watched it also, and were also impressed that it wasn't the normal
'screen-scraping' cr@p.

I have alot a questions, that I'm everyone is going to have, like costs
and addition JS/VB code to name a few.

Aside from the Developer tool, which they were giving away, it appears the
only thing left to sell would be their custom 'handlers' for your RPG,
which, after researching, you could actually build yourself. Which makes
the Open-Access for RPG that more intriguing. And upon research of
that, it's our understanding that IBM's not giving that away for free.

I would like to discuss this with other in more details if anyone has more
detials of the Profound product, or even the Open-Access RPG handler
stuff. I can't seem to find any examples of one, in how they look/work
whatever.

David