Re: Webfacing out, EGL in

Jeff, you can download a 60-day trial of RBD (Rational Business Developer) from IBM. If you have a real application in mind, IBM has free distance learning courses and there is an entire ecosystem aiding people who are getting started, including folks like Claus Weiss and Jon Sayles.

There is a ton of online documentation as well as an entire website (the EGL Cafe) dedicated to the language.

An EGL application is a standard browser application, and currently EGL has a JSF interface (which is what the folks here consider a web application) that will run inside any browser, including most handhelds.

What's really cool about EGL, though, is that it doesn't stop there. The next generation of EGL (the next drop of which comes out this week) includes a powerful rich client interface that easily interfaces to all the popular JavaScript frameworks like Dojo and Google.

While I respect the programming ability of folks like David and Nathan, the truth is that there is no way they will be able to keep up with the new technologies. Heck, Aaron insists that WebSphere is too hard; I can't begin to see how he's going to learn Dojo, YUI, Google and jQuery.

By using EGL as your interface, you let IBM do that work for you. David doesn't like that, because he doesn't have control over it. Valid point. But a lot of businesses they want to see results, and EGL will get you there quicker. Not only that, but David's direction involves hiring help, while EGL's strategy is to encapsulate the complexity so you can do it yourself.

Joe

Joe,

In all seriousness, how should I go about learning EGL?

I'm dyed-in-the-wool RPG (subprocedures, service progs, etc), some SQL (all DDS converted to DDL), a small part of CGIDEV2. We're looking into wireless access for the warehouse. Once that's established (and it's not a for-certain) and we have handheld laser scanners out there, I have a number of applications in mind. These handhelds (Intermec or Symbol or whatever) will have 5250 emulation, but I'm thinking of a web approach for these new apps. The vendors I have talked to so far have never heard of EGL. If the handhelds have browsers, will they "run EGL" so to speak?

Thanks.