Re: Modernizing

There are a ton of tutorials in the product itself, Brian.

And IBM is way behind it. It helps that EGL is NOT IBM i specific - it works on mainframes and as I noted before, any SQL database. I'm sure we can get you in touch with some IBM folks who would be happy to share lots of happy customer stories.

Joe

Hi Joe,

I will have to look into EGL, but it appears that it doesn't have too many
users. Is this something that is dying out or is IBM behind this?

Also, can you point me in the direction of some good tutorials on EGL?

Thanks

Russell Kalchbrenner
IT Manager
Financial Management Services, Inc.
Phone: 630-353-0312 x113
Fax: 630-353-0030
Web: www.fmsi-contractorscredit.com

-----Original Message-----
From: wdsci-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:wdsci-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Joe Pluta
Sent: Tuesday, October 18, 2011 8:43 AM
To: Rational Developer for IBM i / Websphere Development Studio Client
forSystem i& iSeries
Subject: Re: [WDSCI-L] Modernizing

If you have RBD (Rational Business Developer) and not RDP (Rational
Developer for Power) then you have the EGL tooling. EGL is one of the
most powerful tools for developing web applications available. What's
unique about EGL is that it lets you build applications either directly
from your database using SQL, or by calling RPG business logic. It has
fully WYSIWYG designers both for thin client and rich client
applications, and an incredibly easy drag and drop process.

Real world example: we had an extract program that built a file, and
then the users had to go into Excel and download the file. Not horribly
hard, obviously, but there are various issues with users doing downloads
directly from the database.

We built a web page that showed that data in a table that they could
then right-click and export it directly into Excel (export to Excel is a
built-in capability of IE). The time to create the page dumping the
table? Four minutes. Bring up the tool, create an empty page. Add an
SQL Record naming the file. Tell the tool to bring in the record
definition. Define an array of those records to my web page. Drag it
onto the screen (and in so doing change the column headings). Back into
the web page, write one line of code: get myRecords.

Done.

That's just one real world example of the sort of development you can do
in EGL.

And here's a little extra bonus: the SQL Record uses a standard database
connection. That connection doesn't HAVE to be to the IBM i... it could
be to any database server on your network. Imagine the possibilities,
eh? :)

Joe

I am an old time RPG programmer and am currently using Webfacing for their
web development. Although this has been a pretty good tool for us, it has
its limitations. I am looking for some advice on what would be the best
tools to use to modernize their web development. I currently have RBD and
have some minor experience at Java. I do like the RPG language and would
like to continue to incorporate this in my web development.



Any advice?



Russell Kalchbrenner
IT Manager
Financial Management Services, Inc.
Web: www.fmsi-contractorscredit.com