RE: Who's doing Web work on iSeries? (was: ASP on AS/400 Apache) -- WEB400

-----Original Message-----
From: Joe Pluta [mailto:joepluta@PlutaBrothers.com]
Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2001 6:10 PM
To: web400@midrange.com
Subject: RE: [WEB400] Who's doing Web work on iSeries? (was: ASP on
AS/400 Apache)


>Now, take my response with a grain of salt as well, because obviously I'm
in
>the business of converting traditional RPG programs into web applications.

Naturally! It's a pretty big grain, enough to go around! <bg>

>> The formula in HTML with CGI is 1 screen = 1 program.  At first
>> this sounds
>> horrible, but you realize immediately you are not limited to
>> 24x80 anymore!
>> You can scroll, have popups, open seperate windows, and all kinds
>> of stuff.
>
>This works very well for what I think of as "data mining" applications,
>where the idea is to display data in various ways.  This UI design doesn't
>work as well that for data-intensive operations, where the idea is to key
>data in as quickly as possible.  Point and click is great for inquiries,
but
>nothing beats tab and function keys for data entry.

>This is NOT the best paradigm for an Internet storefront, but it's the best
>way for a data entry clerk to enter data.  And that's the primary
difference
>between enterprise applications and Internet applications; enterprise
>applications are designed to be streamlined to reduce entry time for
>experienced operators, while Internet applications are designed to be easy
>to use for novices.

No argument there... in fact that pretty much addresses the rest of my
point... I was thinking more along the lines of look something up, print
something out... definitely NOT thinking of heads down slam-bam data entry.
One nice side effect of the 1-1 approach is that the programs tend to be
very small and can run pretty quickly.

>With JavaServer Pages as the primary interface, you spend very little time
>writing this type of code.  That's why I prefer it to raw CGI.  CGI that
>uses a lot of service modules to format the data is better, but in the end
I
>don't want my application programmers to worry about, or even have to know
>about, cascaded style sheets or HTML tags.

True, but I think we are also talking about leveraging our existing RPG
knowledge as much as possible.  I know that's exactly why I chose CGI
instead of something like Cold Fusion.  A lot depends, too, on what kind of
shop you are talking about.  It's all well and good to talk about "the
Front-end guys" over here and the "RPG programmer" over there and let's not
forget the "Java guy" in the back and how they don't need to really
understand what each other is doing.  A pretty rosy scenario from where I
sit... alone in my office, "An Army of One".  I've got to do it all, so CGI
was the fastest path for us.  I'm still learning Java (I really do like it),
and I'm about ready to do some jsp/servlet work, so I should get closer to
the Server/Client mentality soon, but for now I got to dance with the one
that brought me... RPG CGI!


>Joe Pluta
>Pluta Brothers Design
>www.plutabrothers.com

Yep, I read the book and *someday* <vbg>...

Thanks Joe,  fun as always...

Joel