Re: VARPG

VARPG will not do any automatic conversions of your DDS to GUI. You'll have
to do it all manually.  And anyway, you probably wouldn't want to have it
done automagically for you anyway as each screen and application would still
need a serious amount of manual tweaking.

I have no experience with ASNA's product although I understand it's really
good, but VARPG from IBM is very easy to use and you can create some really
nice apps with it.

You can access DB2/400 files directly and very easily using VARPG and READs
and CHAINs, but I don't know that that's the best way to go. What you'd
probably be better off doing is using stored procs on the AS/400 and
accessing your data through SQL calls.  But really, it's going to depend on
a case by case basis of each of your existing apps you are going to convert.


Depending on what you want your Wintel based apps to do, you might be better
off going with VB6 or VB.Net instead of VARPG. You have a lot more granular
control over the available functionality by using one of those tools and
really, they are not at all hard to learn.  VARPG, while mostly Win32
compatible, isn't 100% compatible and you will probably find, as do all of
us who have used VARPG, that at some point you will need to access some low
level windows API or other function and realize that VARPG doesn't have the
hooks to allow you to do so.  

If all you are doing is simply accessing and presenting and updating AS/400
data from a PC, however, then VARPG is a very good choice and it has an
extremely low learning curve for a traditional RPG programmer. 

Shannon O'Donnell

-----Original Message-----
From: wdsci-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:wdsci-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Roy Luce
Sent: Tuesday, June 06, 2006 4:45 PM
To: wdsci-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [WDSCI-L] VARPG

Is there someone on this list who has experience with both VARPG and ASNA's
Visual RPG?

 

We are an ISV looking to make the move from anAS400 based product to one
that operates on Windows based servers.  Our product is essentially a data
warehouse with packaged inquiries and reports.  In operation the application
extracts data from an ERP database to create the warehouse.  We want the
extraction process to run on an Intel server and the inquires to operate
with a browser interface.  In short the end result we are looking for is
code that will run on an Intel server with no tie back to an AS400/iSeries
server.

 

We are looking for input regarding the suitability for these 2 products to
support the process.

 

We think we understand the VARPG compiler runs on an AS400.  Can someone
confirm this?

While VARPG can create Intel objects we think we understand VARPG's sweet
spot is creating client apps that access the 400.  Is our understanding
correct?

How much of the green screen to GUI conversion effort will VARPG handle?

 

Roy Luce

 

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