Just an FYI,
This has been a great back and forth discussion. I'm in the
same boat as Steven. We are a small shop (1-2 IT people). We are running
BPCS 4.05cd on the system I in a manufacturing environment. Over the years
the company has modified close to 90% of the original BPCS programs in some
way to suite their business needs. This really excludes us from upgrading
to the latest version of BPCS. This has not helped in the modernization
process either.
I've watched over the last 15 plus years as modernization
options have seemed to come and go trying to determine where I want to put
my foot down and move forward. Based on IBM's relationship with ZendCore I
thought PHP was the answer. After this discussion I'm not so sure.
Obviously we are looking for the smallest learning curve, least cost(free
software), most productivity.
I've saved the discussion with the links to EGL etc. and
will review.
Thanks,
Jeff
-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Steven Spencer
Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2012 9:54 AM
To: RPG programming on the IBM i / System i
Subject: Re: EGL and RPG in the web world
Hi,
Joe Pluta,
No, you've pretty completely missed the point. I primarily use EGL as
SDA for the web
Steven
Ok, but then you are not usually using it as a 4GL, (earlier I got the
impression you were emphasizing its 4GL lineage, see below) ...you are using
it as a way to avoid the whole CGI, PHP, Java coding environment that has
many independent experts learning a variety of languages.. In other words,
you are not doing much generating programs using the data dictionary and
various tweaks, you are making up for the RPG deficiency of not writing to
the web (which is one method of writing to the PC).
As an SDA for the web alternative, if it works on my QS36F data, then I
could give it a look-see. I am not asking as an adversary, but simply to see
if it is worthy of serious consideration. One of my goals is to consider
alternatives to make a degree of nice modernization without running through
a potpourri of languages. Method are:
1) full 4GL. (Lansa, Magic, WinDev and maybe others) --
2) EGL as the web communication language.
From what I can see so far these are superior, in my environment, to :
3) Open Access alternatives - (requiring RPG-ILE and external screens)
4) CGI, PHP, and any other languages combined to do the job.
You are, as I understand, saying that (2) is much more logical than
(4) since it works with an IBM supported native tool set that has some
robustness. If so, that makes sense to me.
Note: There are also some other possibilities, like simply building
modernization into limited query utilities like NGS, and leaving the RPG
alone. However, in the long run, you really want PC people to have
PC-button and pop-up and tab sorting capabilities, which is a full language
thing, at least on many programs.
So I think my 1-2-3-4, for now, is a reasonable summary. Any major
alternatives omitted ?
Joe Pluta
(although the EGL people hate when I say that). It's a little more
than that, but if all I did was to create the user interface and call
services which in turn call RPG programs, then I would be fine with
that. In many cases, though, it's faster to write the SQL query to
load the UI using EGL rather than writing an RPG program which I call.
Steven
Again, though, you are talking about the less complex applications.
Joe Pluta,
I would NEVER touch the generated code. That's just crazy talk.
Steven
Mabye in EGL. However it is not in all environments. And if the generated
code was RPG and you could modularize the enhancement, you might consider
some tweaks to the code. The fact that it is "crazy talk" is simply an EGL
limitation. Granted, some 4GLs simply do not generate accessible code, so
this is not a criticism, per se, just a discussion. I gave the Clarion
example (not really functional on the
iSeries) as a code generator that is designed for code tweaking through
hooks.
Joe Pluta,
Especially since EGL does let you easily call RPG or Java to do those
things which EGL wasn't intended to do. As to the "net-PC"
interface I'd suggest reading any of my columns on EGL
Steven
Yes, that I have done.
Joe Pluta
(or even buying my book <grin>)
Steven
Sure, if we seriously begin to go that route.
Joe Pluta
which shows exactly how easy it is to call an RPG program from EGL.
EGL provides all the plumbing for your client code (written in EGL and
generated to JavaScript running in the browser) to call your server
code (written in EGL and generated to Java running on the
host) which in turn calls your RPG code running on the host. Really, it
would take longer to write a post explaining multi-tiered EGL/RPG
architecture than it would for you to write a sample EGL program. I
have always championed using EGL as the UI for business logic written
in RPG. You call it a limited function, I call it using the right too
for the job. RPG doesn't do web, EGL doesn't do MRP.
Start here with an article I wrote on the topic nearly five years
ago:
http://www.ibmsystemsmag.com/ibmi/developer/rpg/Using-EGL-and-RPG-Toget
her/
Steven
One thing I had noticed there:
"I'm not even scratching the surface of the vast capabilities of EGL as a
true 4GL development environment. The EGL team has made it almost criminally
easy to create entire applications from the ground up, with Unified Modeling
Language modeling capabilities and SQL schema inspection and auto-generation
of code - the list goes on."
That is where I got the impression that you would be trying more to use EGL
as a 4GL than as SDA-web.
Anyway, here is my question about the EGL - RPG mix.
(An example.)
Say you want to put a field pop-up (F5-inquiry) on an external file lookup,
and you want to have the lookup file able to be sorted in two ways, number
and alpha, (mouse hits the tab at top to change the
sort) ... and then to place the desired item number into the field. How do
EGL and RPG interact for such a need ?
Granted, this is a techie question, but from my perspective a lot rides on
the response.
Oh, I might have a "B" question about EGL taking data from the data file and
outputting a templated email or word document.
Steven Spencer
Queens, NY
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