By the way, you never answered my question: since when is 13 not nearly
15?:)
I guess you could say it is nearly 16 also ;-) Fuzzy math is great when it
benefits what you are saying I guess.
Like saying that WDSC is the best development tool available.
This is something that can actually be more quantified. My issue with what
you have stated in relation to RPG CGI is that I haven't ever heard you
talk/digress on the topic and I am making the assumption that your
experience with it isn't as rich as it should be. I don't think you have
changed your opinion of the RPG crowd as they/we have progressed. Sure
there are still people that fit your model, but I am surprised (pleasantly)
of how many of my customers are stepping outside of their confort zone and
moving forward with non-RPG-traditional programming (i.e. RPG CGI, my RPG
and Java tooling - over 120 downloads last month, Excel creation, PDF
creation, etc).
1. An RPG-CGI program can only run on a System i host, so can not be
offloaded to another server.
Same with your RPG business logic. You make it sound like being forced to
run RPG on the System i is a bad thing. With all the advances in horse
power are we still as concerned that the median company will have troubles
running RPG CGI on their System i5?
2. A server running RPG-CGI is by definition open to the Internet. It may
only be port 80, but even that opens you up for DOS attacks.
Isn't that what network appliances are for Joe? Wouldn't many shops, even
if they had their Java on a Wintel server, have a network appliance in front
of it doing all of the DOS stuff for them?
3. RPG-CGI requires templates which are never compiled. And unless you use
certain RPG-CGI helper tools, even the templates have to be arsed every
time.
This is a valid performance point. Some vendors, like Profound Logic, have
addressed it by compiling the HTML right into the RPG object similar to the
JSP/Servlet model.
The primary advantage of RPG-CGI? You don't have to learn another
language.
Just for the record I must say that this is a HUGE benefit! Not having to
entertain another language in your shop can save boat loads of time and
money. The other side is finding RPG talent which isn't the easiest thing
to do. I am hoping the IBM Acedemic Initiative's are making ground in this
area.
The other advantage is that you don't have to have a Web Application
Server, but frankly that's a bit of a red herring, as Tomcat is no more
difficult to install and configure than Apache.
I haven't setup Tomcat on an i5 in awhile, so maybe it has become much
simpler. Does Tomcat come pre-installed on the i5 like Apache? - I know it
was back on V5R1 I believe, but then they gave it an EOL. Can you start and
stop Tomcat with STRTCPSVR and ENDTCPSVR?
Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com
midrange.com
