Re: justifying RDi when WDSCi 'still works'

Dave, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but given your pushback there's no reason to switch to RDi from WDSC.

Of course, there's no reason to switch from ADTS to WDSC, either, is there? I mean, really, the "it isn't broke so don't fix it" mentality is almost impossible to beat when it comes to IBM i programming. Heck, I don't understand why we use externally defined files - internally described is so much easier and you don't have to recompile all the time! And FMTDTA is really fast these days; why clutter up the system with all those logical views?

And don't even get me started on SQL....

I know I'm being sarcastic here, but the points Mike makes below are absolutely the ones you pound on. RDi is getting all the investment dollars. RDi is getting all the upgrades. RDi is getting all the cool capabilities. That's why you switch. Not because RDi is a revolutionary leap ahead of WDSC; it's not.

I use both WDSC and RDi all the time; I can tell you that while RDi is incrementally better, it's not the same productivity enhancement you'll get switching from ADTS to WDSC, or even from WDSC 5 to WDSC 7. The IBM i GUI tools matured with WDSC 7, now it's more about repackaging and repurposing and enhancing. The only major enhancement you're going to see in RDi will be the WYSIWYG designers for display and print files, and possibly some more wizards. But think about it - what more exactly do you expect to see from a development tool?

Joe

How about the fact that WDSCi is at end of life, there will be no additional enhancements to it, none of the new addons to RDi like EGL or Concert will work with WDSCi, IBM will stop supporting it at some time and any time spent on learning more about WDSCi will be wasted money.
-----Original Message-----
From: wdsci-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:wdsci-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Dave Shaw
Sent: Friday, August 21, 2009 12:00 PM
To: wdsci-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [WDSCI-L] justifying RDi when WDSCi 'still works'

The few of us who use WDSCi here are trying to convince management that we should purchase a few licenses for RDi now that we've gone to V6R1. The pushback we're getting is that WDSCi still works fine, so we need to justify spending the money. Has anyone else successfully done this, and if so, what approach did you use?

Thanks!