Re: IBM i 7.6 Development tools

Hi Daniel

Il giorno mer 23 apr 2025 alle ore 20:16 Daniel Gross <daniel@xxxxxxxx> ha
scritto:

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.

Please give me a situation in which doesn't match.

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.

Maybe this it the problem: while HTTP is stateless/connectionless in any
modern UI the client part is handled via REST and it's very similar to
5250. Of course the client side is the dumb one and the backend (RPG) the
smart one. Handling a session is trivial, remember that on IBM i we also
have (free) Websockets thus we can easly check if the client part is active
or not. The same thing 5250 "protocol" does to keep session state. And
while 5250 is waiting for input the device it's locked and no
communications are allowed, instead since Javascript is non syncronous the
backend can notify the client in any moment. This is what people expect
from a modern UI.

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.

I choose and I want IBM i even (and better) without 5250. I don't want to
give up a stable, safe OS and thousnd of programs only because I don't know
how to evolve them.

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.

It's not HTML+CSS over HTTP(S), it's REST and Javascript with dozens
of avilable frameworks.

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.

Eliminating or supporting? I guess we are talking about not implementing
further 5250.

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.

We have (+/-) 1.200 active services published on 3 IWS instances and we had
0 problems in the last 5 years so, please, tell me about IWS 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
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