Re: Ruby On Rails on the iSeries

I took a class in it at iSeries DevCon two years ago.  IMO, EGL is the next
Net.Data and will most likely die the same death.  How many of you Net.Data
people that are vested are appreciating IBM's decision to drop it?

 Aaron Bartell

-----Original Message-----
From: web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Brian
Sent: Monday, August 14, 2006 1:37 PM
To: Web Enabling the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: Re: [WEB400] Ruby On Rails on the iSeries

Natthan, et al

Have you looked at IBM's EGL that is included in the WDSCi product? I have
only began working through the EGL tutorial but since you mentioned WebSmart
I thought this might be an alternative. As it is, EGL will generate Java or
Cobol code to implement the full application but what got me interested is
that it appears you can use EGL for developing the view and the controller
and hook it to RPG on the backend via the JT400 toolbox for implementing the
model. IBM held an EGL user's conference recently that had a session on EGL
and RPG but I wasn't able to attend and have not been able to find the
handouts from the session.

If anyone has worked with EGL and has opinions as to its viability for
developing web apps on the iSeries I would like to hear them.

Kind regards,

Brian


On 8/11/06, Nathan Andelin <nandelin@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

The name "Ruby on  Rails" is quite appropriate, IMO.  Ruby could have 
been just another OO language  that faded into oblivion - like 
SmallTalk.  But, add a database interface, an  HTTP interface, scripts 
for generating shells for basic Web applications,  following a 
model/view/controller design pattern, and license everything under  
open source - it's like putting a language on "rails", where it can go

places,  so to speak.

The part that  interests me the most at the moment is the idea of 
using scripts and  templates to generate basic Web components.  One of 
my colleagues created a utility  for running CL source members 
interpretively, as opposed to compiling CL source  members into 
programs.  We use it to automate the process of compiling, binding,  
and building ILE applications, which generally consist of a number of

modules  and service programs.

One idea we've  discussed is using CL scripts for generating HTML and 
RPG source members,  providing a shell for basic Web applications, 
following a model/view/controller  design pattern, given just a few 
parameters like the name of the application and  the table or view that

needs to be maintained.

A tool like  Websmart generates HTML and RPG source members for Web 
applications, but  requires significant training and understanding of 
a proprietary scripting  language, logic constructs, and a Windows 
based GUI editor and design tool to be  proficient.

If you already  know RPG, you may not want to learn an additional 
higher-level scripting  language, just to generate RPG code.  And you 
may not want  to go back to a Windows based tool to maintain the 
application, and regenerate  the RPG code.  What if you could just 
edit a CL source member, and run a command  to generate HTML and RPG 
source members, providing shells for basic Web  applications?

It's just an  idea.  Another approach we've discussed is having a 
Wizard, providing step by  step prompts, at the conclusion of which, a 
set of HTML and RPG source members  would be generated.

It looks like Ruby  on Rails takes more of a command line approach, 
which is  interesting.

Perhaps PASE and a toolkit  for system interfaces, similar to what 
Zend did for PHP, would be the  key to porting Ruby on Rails to the

platform.

Nathan M.  Andelin

--
This is the Web Enabling the AS400 / iSeries (WEB400) mailing list To post a
message email: WEB400@xxxxxxxxxxxx To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change list
options,
visit: http://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/web400
or email: WEB400-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives at
http://archive.midrange.com/web400.