Re: Trial for RDi SOA

Guillermo Andrades, CPI Software wrote:

Hi Joe,
I don't pretend enteering in an competition with you, we all here in the
list wants the same: the best way for creating web graphical apps in the "i"
plattform, so rest a little.
even my lack of fluent and fast english is more important to read/write here
and I need to simplify and short the arguments.

Me too, Giullermo. In my opinion, EGL is the best way to create graphical applications for the i platform.

even until now I was not seeing your "demo", because I'm not interested in
the details, only in the big and important arguments about the "i"
developers don't going to modernize at least the new apps.

but, well, now I've tested your demo and sorry I don't understand what is
intended to do it.

You went to the widget demo:

Here is a simple demo of EGL Rich UI, showing just a few of our widgets.

Above that paragraph is another paragraph with links to the LAMP and WebSphere deployment of the scheduler application.

my only interest is why the "i" developers don't have an (IBM) approach to
develop modern win or web based apps using only RPG, only the System i (even
html, css, and js in the IFS).

Because it's better to write business logic in RPG and use another language for the user interface. Whether that language is Java (for thin browser applications) or JavaScript (for thick client applications) shouldn't matter to the business logic. Heck, if you want to use PHP or .NET, go ahead, although I think that's a bad alternative.

In my opinion, RPG programmers shouldn't have to care about HTML or CSS or JS (that is, unless they want to). And the best way to do that is to separate the business logic from the UI. This is nothing new; this has been the suggested architecture for many years now, except now it has a new name: SOA. It's just that EGL makes it so easy to call interact with RPG, something most other languages don't do very well.

web2 (even being able to do without problems) is not really the ceter of the
business apps that shops needs, even "simple" but web-based GUI is enough in
the mayority of cases, don't need to complex the requeriments.

javascript is really powerful, but even not needed to know too much js,

Well, we're talking opinion here. In my opinion, the new generation of tools make it just as easy to make a good looking Web 2.0 application as it is to make a less flashy, less easy to use app. Sure, you can use standard techniques for a lot of applications, but when the CEO wants a dashboard with interactive Google maps, it's nice to be able to use Web 2.0, and you can't do that easily in RPG.

Again, please take a look at our application and tell us how long it would take you to write it.

Joe