Re: WebFacing - Is it ready for primetime? -- WDSCI-L

I recently switched from a consulting job where I had to keep up on
WebFacing, HATS(WDHT) etc so here is a summary of what I understand.

WebFacing applications used to be free and for the moment still can be until
certain things happen.
Once V5R4 is no longer supported the free WebFacing applications will no
longer be supported you will have to have a WDHT license. They are
integrating the HATS and WebFacing technologies. Still different
development perspectives in WDSc but once licensed with WDHT you can have a
HATS application or a WebFacing application where you don't necessarily
convert every screen and it will use a type of HATS technology in it. This
give you the ability to also include IBM system screens such as wrksplf in
your WebFaced application. This integration piece is somewhat new and can
use some work. They say it looks seamless and picks up the overall look of
your WebFaced app but there were differences.

You can run free WebFacing applications on V5R4 as long as you don't apply 2
ptfs that are specific to WDHT(sorry I don't have those handy) and until you
upgrade to the next OS release. If your OS is V5R3 or later you don't have
to worry about the ptfs and of course only need to worry about when IBM will
no longer support those versions of the OS. So for all pratical purposes
WebFacing if it is to be used in the future should probably not be viewed as
free.
There is a processor fee structure. This then means you license WDHT and
you can use both HATS which is now WDHT and WebFacing.....separate or merged
together.

Currently you can play with both as WDSc has a 2 license developers copy in
it.

As for being ready for primetime......I have seen improvements. I had some
government clients web-enable the applications with WebFacing to give the
public inquiry access. These worked okay but it wasn't high internet
traffic used. We have a WebFaced application here done by the vendor of the
Accounting System we use. I was impressed that a larger application was
webfaced and did quite well. And before I came here they webfaced several
smaller applications. Most of these application do not have more than 50
users accessing them at a time. They work fine. We do run these on a
Windows server with a version of WAS Express instead of off of the iSeries.
Some of the applications that the government clients I had ran them from a
WAS server on the iSeries.

WebFacing for this company was an intermediate step as now we are stepping
back and will eventually move things to our own java/jsp J2EE applications
reusing RPG logic.

I sounds in your case where the client has a vendor package that they now
have the source code for and can make changes which would make it a
candidate for WebFacing and maybe down the road a mix of java and jsps.

Sorry for the long post.....Hope this makes sense
Cheri