Re: WDSC on Mac

From: Justin Taylor

I heard on "iMonthly with Bob Cozzi" (in October, I think) at System
iNetwork that rather than developing Vista-compatible versions of WDSc
and iSeries Access, the next versions will be Java-based. If that is
the case, those versions should run native on Mac OS.

Hold, please.

Bob's information is a little sketchy. His basic comment was: Don't buy
Vista because neither iSeries Access or WDSC will work. These are both
untrue. First, iSeries Access not only works with but is supported with
most versions of Vista except Vista Home. Second, many people have managed
to get WDSC to work with Vista, although it's not officially supported.

The biggest problem is that CODE/400 won't work with Vista. I don't think
IBM has fixed that issue and I doubt that they will.

As to a "pure Java" version of WDSC, I've yet to hear word on that.
Although pieces are being rewritten all the time, there's been no clear
target set for rewriting the primary bits.

Also, one minor quibble: WDSC uses the Eclipse SWT for its user interface,
so it will never be "pure Java". Unlike Swing, which is Java's standard UI,
SWT requires a native library on every platform, and so there are sometimes
compatibility issues. For example, SWT does not work well at all with
64-bit Windows.

Joe