Re: Trial for RDi SOA -- WDSCI-L

Joe Pluta wrote:

Jim Steil wrote:

I think we need to be fair here. Chris Laffra isn't just some guy off the street that is trying to program business apps like the rest of us. He is the Chief Architect of EGL Rich UI. Come on, that's like you challenging me and my co-worker to fight you and the heavyweight champ. Not exactly a fair fight. I think that if we got the head architect on the .NET side or the head architect of FLEX to help front-end an i-based app, we could do pretty well to compete with your app.
Perhaps. But here's the thing: those people aren't working with the i community, are they? With this little limited partnership between Chris and I, we have a working application that makes the best use of both technologies. Hopefully this shows that the EGL team really cares about the System i. Can you say that about .NET, or FLEX? Nope!

You can come up with reasons why this test isn't fair, but my point is simple: until someone can match what Chris and I have done, there's really no argument.

I'm not here for an argument. I'm here to try to learn what is out there and what EGL can do for me in my environment.

I think the important thing here is that all of this IS possible with IBM tools. Anything claiming to be the 'best' is just someone's opinion based on their experience. Everyone else's mileage may vary.

If you can't program a subfile, then RPG stinks for you, doesn't it? This is a comparison of tools, not programmers, and my position is that this shows there's no tool that can match RPG and EGL in productivity. If you disagree, then feel free to take the challenge! Pick your best technology, bring in whatever ringers you can, I still don't think you can do it.

Why do you feel the need to keep challenging people on this? EGL is obviously a hot technology. But, the 'your dad can't beat up my dad' argument doesn't get people interested in trying it out.

Here's what kills me. Peole have been complaining about there being no web or GUI development for the i. Now Chris and I shown what EGL can do. If that doesn't excite you to the core, if that doesn't open up your mind to endless possibilities of what the i can do, then I can't help you (nor can i <smile>).

Joe

It seems to me that people are complaining because they want to do this web/gui development in plain old RPG. I don't know if they're expecting more display file attributes to support HTML/RUI interfaces or what, but EGL isn't RPG. It plays well (by your account), but it is not RPG. That is why I asked the question (on another thread) about why people are so beholden to RPG. As you've said before, use the right tool for the job. But in my experience, (and this may be blasphemy on this list) RPG isn't the language to be used when writing web applications. I know lots of people prefer it for business logic but it just doesn't feel right to me for web programming.
What do you see as the barriers for adoption of EGL? Here are my thoughts:

1. Cost of entry -> I'm not sure of the cost, is it $750/developer
2. Availability of information - 1 book available at Amazon at this time (one more available by pre-order)
3. Availability of playground. - Need to have access to an AS/400 with necessary tooling (apache at the least) to try it out
4. General developer mindshare - I read a number of trade publications and blogs, and the mainstream (not AS/400 based) publications don't seem to give it any attention

Compare that to Ruby on Rails (which I know little about, but hear about all the time)

1. Cost of entry -> $0.00
2. Availability of information - 200+ titles available on Amazon
3. Availability of playground - Any Windows, Linux or Mac computer
4. General developer mindshare - Can't avoid reading about it in the press

Obviously the second scenario is going to rely on ODBC for i data access, but I agree that is too slow. Maybe IBM needs to focus on speeding that up and playing nicer with others. But I'll say that I agree with you, that EGL seems to be a great way to web enable i-based RPG business logic, and that it is capable of producing rich front-ends. But, you'll have to look to the vendors of other IBM i web toolkits to take up your challenge.

-Jim