Re: WDSC vs. RDi

Joe Pluta wrote:

Boy, the semantics here are really tricky. The bulk of WDSC was not System i development. Because it was built on top of RAD, it included (but was not limited to <grin>): HTML editor, JSP editor, CSS editor, JavaScript editor, web site designer, XML editor, web application test environment, and on and on.

Well, from my perspective (as a System i developer), WDSC is a tool for System i developers. So the *most* important components are RSE, LPEX, SEP debugger, etc.

The other tools: HTML editor, JSP editor, web site designer, etc, are not all that important to most System i host application developers.

The fact that the System i specific components are only a fraction of the package is meaningless ... they are the MOST important part of the package to a System i developer.

I would venture to say that most System i developers (RPG, Cobol, etc) never even looked at the non System i components. I have, but that's only because I was curious. In my daily usage of WDSC (which I use almost exclusively for my development now), I have *never* used the Web editor or it's associated components. I do, however, use LPEX, RSE, and the SEP debugger (along with the Java development tooling) on a daily basis.

So, byte for byte, maybe the System i components of WDSC are a fraction of WDSC's functionality ... but from a usage perspective, I think they are the the biggest portion of WDSC.

RDi basically contains all the WDSC components a System i developer needs and eliminates the components they don't necessarily need (at least for host application development).

JMO, obviously.

david