Re: EGL vs. Java

Brian wrote:

According to this announcement letter http://tinyurl.com/3dsly9, the
new replacement for RBDe is Rational Business Developer 7.1 and appears to
be a stand alone product that no longer requires RAD. Further, it appears
that the RDi - SOA product is just a software bundle that includes both the
RBD 7.1 and RDi V7.1 products.

"No longer requires" is a slightly misleading term. RBD 7.1 is a standalone installable that basically includes all the web tooling of RAD and ni addition includes the EGL tooling. What I really wish IBM would do is identify all the individual components and just draw up a simple grid that shows which pieces go where; it would avoid a lot of these questions.

RDi contains the System i-specific WDSC components; what we called the iSeries extensions back in the days of WDSC. Basically, it's the bits that turned RWD into WDSC and RAD into WDSC/AE; things like LPEX editors and RSE.

RDi-SOA combines them and includes EGL: RAD + RDi (WDSC/AE) *plus* the EGL tooling (RBDe).

A significant change to note with these new per seat developer tools is that
the maintenance will now be handled through Passport Advantage. From a cost
standpoint, this means that you will be paying 20% of the list price of each
seat per year for maintenance separate from and in addition to the normal
SWMA charge for your i5/OS and LPPs.
I recently received an invoice from IBM that included a $300/seat
maintenance charge from Passport Advantage for each of our RBDe 7.0 seats.

I don't know that this is a "change" per se; you buy your software and you pay maintenance on it. Since the seats are unbundled from the compiler, wouldn't you expect to pay maintenance on them separately as well? But I agree that it's important that you factor all of that in.

Joe