Re: Ruby On Rails on the iSeries

I don't want to really get into a debate here, but I do have to answer a few
of these points.

Take the time to work with Rails and you'll find that it, like many other
frameworks, is simply a fast way to do certain things.  And while some of
the concepts may seem cool at first, I find the conventions to eventually be
too restrictive for enterprise programming.  For example, you need to
remember to name your tables plurally.  A reference to another table is the
SINGULAR of that table name with "_id" concatenated.  You don't HAVE to
follow this convention, but you lose some benefits if you don't.

It has some neat features, and it is more complete than some of the other
frameworks, but the exact same components exist for many other languages,
such as Perl.  The "programming by convention" is perhaps a nicety for
people who don't like to type, but I've never been particularly enamored by
something that magically figures out code based on naming conventions;
inevitably I need to break the naming convention and bad things happen.

Moving on, your bit about EGL being heavy is just silly.  WDSC is certainly
heavy, but that's because it's a full-fledged IDE.  Ruby on Rails, for
example, is a primarily text-based scripting environment.  Try renaming
something in Ruby and see if it automatically fixes every reference.

EGL, on the other hand, is about as light a framework as I've seen.  You
define data elements with as much (or as little) metadata as you want, group
those data elements into records, and then use the records to build your UI
and your database access.  Specify something as a key field in a record and
it is used as a key in database access and is protected in the UI when
updating a record.  It's simple, clean and really fast.

I'd also like to dispel some of your WDSC FUD.  Yes, WDSC updates are large.
As are iSeries cumes.  That's because they're large products, and if a
monthly download of a GB is too much for you, then you ought to find another
platform.  Also, you can download the updates and then apply them later, so
you don't have to "worry about the network going down".  Finally, it's been
a long time since a WDSC update destabilized my workbench... and I do a LOT
of work with WDSC.

When is the last time you saw someone do an update that actually broke their
working environment?

Anyway, enough of this.  There's nothing wrong with Ruby.  Or Tapestry, or
Turbine and Velocity, or Zope, or Laszlo, or any of a number of other
frameworks out there.  Me, I prefer an environment that will allow me to
quickly build a thin framework that will in turn access RPG, and JSP Model
II is the answer for that.

The question is whether EGL provides the productivity for JSP Model II that
Visual Studio provides for .NET, and my initial take on it is that it is
headed in the right direction.

Joe

-----Original Message-----
From: web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Nathan Andelin
Sent: Wednesday, August 16, 2006 11:05 AM
To: Web Enabling the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: Re: [WEB400] Ruby On Rails on the iSeries

Rails offers a lot  of time savers.  Scripts for generating default
directory structures for  applications.  Scripts for generating basic CRUD
applications.  Scripts for  generating Model/View/Controller source files.
Built-in components that  generate HTML, which can be used in addition to
a WYSIWYG editor, or as an  alternative.  Built-in  components which are
just extensions of base classes, reducing the programmer  code to a
minimum.  A framework that automatically performs mapping between the
database and the screen, and visa versa, based on naming conventions is  a
powerful concept.

 Interpretive  runtime environments are seductively appealing in the first
place.  There's no  compile, build, or deployment steps.  You can
immediately see the results of  your work on the screen, or error messages
generated by the runtime  environment.  It probably can't be beat for
prototyping and rapid application  development, so long as the
applications are essentially adaptations  of supported models.

 Tools like WDSC  and EGL are HEAVY, in comparison.  Downloading updates
to WDSC are an overnight  proposition.  You hope the network doesn't go
down in the mean time.  The  development and deployment environments are
so massive that you hope an update  won't destabilize your machine.

If Rails is simple, and it works, then it's probably destined to attract
the type of people, and the type of loyalty, that's typical in the iSeries
community.