Re: RDi and Linux

Rick DuVall wrote:

Hello Joe,

I know I have seen this described before, but I have been looking in
the archives and can't come up with it. I have just been sent a bill
for Annual Software Subscription and Support for 'IBM Rational
Business Developer'. What exactly does that contain/omit? I do green
screen maintenance and occasional development. I do a lot of java
swing. I am dabbling with the EE world in V3 Entity beans and
finally I am interested in EGL. What am I going to be missing if I
get 'IBM Rational Business Developer'? And conversely, what do I
need to be able to develop with the above technologies? Can you
please describe the different offerings and what they contain again?
Sorry for the confusion...

No problem at all, Rick. It's actually relatively simple these days.

RDi (Rational Developer for the i) is the GUI replacement for the green screen ADTS tools (PDM and SEU). It's basically the RPG and COBOL pieces of WDSC.

RBD (Rational Business Developer) is the tooling for the EGL language. That's going to include a lot of other things under the covers, includign the WebSphere Test Environment and the WYSIWYG page designer, but it's not really intended to be used for pure Java EE development.

RDi-SOA is RDi plus RBD. Literally, the two products stuck together make up RDi-SOA. If you're an i shop and you want to use EGL, this is the way to go. Especially since RBD is $3000, and RDi-SOA is only $2000.

RAD (Rational Application Developer) is what you're supposed to buy if you want to do pure Java EE development. To be honest, I haven't looked at it in a while and I don't even think the EGL tooling is included. And it's a hefty price tag as well, at $4000 a seat. But if you plan to go the pure Java EE route, Rational is the IBM way to go. Me, I prefer EGL <grin>.

Anyway, I don't think you ought to be getting a maintenance bill for RBD under any circumstances. If you want to use EGL, get yourself a copy of RDi-SOA.

Joe