Re: IBM i 7.6 Development tools

Am 23.04.2025 um 19:04 schrieb Marco Facchinetti <marco.facchinetti@xxxxxxxxx>:

I'm sorry but IBM made the right decision in letting go of the customer who wants to have a solution based only on the old paradigm of a programmer an application (Rpg + 5250).

Nobody wanted this - OK maybe some - but they wanted a consistent "path" to something "similar", because a) the application architecture was/is so and b) not every business process is a perfect match for a stateless/connectionless protocol like HTTP.

In fact HTTP is a terrible protocol for all kinds of business processes. The application servers have a lot to do, to provide a "simulation" of some kind of session - e.g. session tokens/ids and cookies.

Today, and in truth for many years, the market asks that the interface can be chosen by the customer based on needs and not on IBM's prepackaged ideas (Visual Age and EGL).

Well - those are not the customers who really WANT an IBM i, because if you want to choose, take the OS you want, the database you want, the web app server you want and so on.

And in fact, there is NO CHOICE of the application interface - it's HTML+CSS over HTTP(S) or nothing at all. There is no real alternative to that today.

Whoever does not accept this paradigm is out of the market and IBM is right not to indulge them.

That's a very shortsighted PoV - IMHO.

I would bet, if IBM would stop supporting 5250, they would cut back their user base probably by 50% if not more. It would be a very dumb decision to do so.

Please take a deep look at IWS. It's free and works great.

It's not bad - we use it a lot, but it also has its weaknesses.

Am 23.04.2025 um 19:42 schrieb Justin Taylor <jtaylor.0ab@xxxxxxxxx>:

IMO, IBM was trying to provide options, but the vast majority of customers refused to budge from 5250.

Not at all - IBM didn't provide a solution that had only a fraction of the depth of integration, that RPG (or COBOL) and DDS display files had. And IBM changed course so many times, I have lost count.

Kind regards,
Daniel