Kelly,
I don't recall ever seeing an end-of-support date for ADTS. It's been
unbundled from the big WDS all-in-one development licensing, but I don't
think they've stated that these tools will not continue to function far
into the future. What IBM has stated is that they are not adding new
functionality to the ADTS tools. (And I agree with anyone who questions
why they should end up paying $159 per year per developer to use tools
that aren't being updated. What's the Software Maintenance charge for?)
That said, what additional functionality do you want in green-screen
editing tools? How do you plan to enhance a green screen text editor. It
supports new (6.1) language features. (that;'s got to mean syntax
checking--what else could it do?)
As far as entirely getting rid of the 5250 interfaces, there are simply
too many systems developed on these. The manpower to replace them would
be just as easy to replace with a competitor's product. I don't foresee
IBM ever removing the 5250 interface. On the more recent systems, there
is no interactive tax. The interactive tax was IBM's way of trying to
push people off of the 5250-interface. It failed. They've since dropped
that.
Don't succumb to rumor-mill FUD. (IBM has made major marketing mistakes
and I think they've possibly shot themselves down with the packaging and
support structure for the development tools.) I always try to keep things
in perspective. I read an column in a magazine many years ago praising HP
for how they were giving developers on their HP-3000 MPe system five years
notice before they would need to rewrite their programs. In our shop
(running i5/OS V5R4 on a POWER 6 processor system), we still have running
functional programs which were last compiled about 20 years ago.
It's not a bad principle to develop anything new in an interface other
than 5250 green-screen. But I still smile every time I walk into a
hospital or other organization and see them bring up a 5250-based green
screen to handle their work. The clerk, secretary, administrative person
or whatever doesn't seem overly taxed to handle their interaction with me
while they use a text-based interface. I've yet to see any customer's
walk out because they are receiving service from someone using a
green-screen application. There's a lot of systems with too much code to
simply replace it for the sake of replacing it.
Michael
wdsci-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote on 08/25/2009 12:59:34 PM:
----- Message from "Kelly Cookson" <KCookson@xxxxxxxxxxxx> on Tue,
25 Aug 2009 11:54:13 -0500 -----
To:
"Websphere Development Studio Client for iSeries" <wdsci-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject:
Re: [WDSCI-L] justifying RDi when WDSCi 'still works'
The first step of the roadmap is getting rid of ADTS tools. IBM has
guaranteed that will happen by stabilizing the ADTS tools. Eventually OS
upgrades will break ADTS functionality, and we will have to turn to RDi.
The second step of the roadmap is getting rid of the 5250 green screen
interfaces in favor of browser based interfaces. I wonder if, once IBM
has System i shops moved onto RDi, they will push us off 5250
interfaces? Browser interfaces can be run without the 5250 interactive
tax. Maybe that tax could be used as an incentive to make all our
interfaces browser based. Or maybe the bright folks at IBM could find a
way to limit the number of 5250 sessions running at any one time.
Kelly
midrange.com
