Re: Advice about moving to a Web-environment

Thanks to all who have responded to my request for advice about moving to 
a Web-environment. You have given me a lot of information. 

Some more information about our current position. We have already decided 
that we won't follow the CGI trail nor the PHP trail. We realize that the 
choice for Java, JSP, WAS Express, etcetera, will confront us with a long 
and steep learning curve, but now that we are planning to leave behind the 
5250-environment, we want to go all the way. 

Because we have chosen to start using Java, the products that can be used 
to create Web-applications with just good old (ILE) RPG are not really 
interesting to us. Those products might be useful when one wants to 
proceed with small steps, but we have the ambition to make one giant leap 
(paraphrasing a famous astronaut).

We already have reasonable knowledge of Java, HTML, and we are quite 
familiair with WDSCi. Those prerequisites are met. Our main problem is 
that we know about the tools and the technologies, but we don't know how 
to really get going. (You might compare it to building a home. There's 
some piece of bare ground in front of us, we have our toolbox ready, but 
we do not have a detailed blueprint to actually start the construction.) 
Reading your comments, I think it might be a good idea to start with an 
application that only allows querying one or more tables. But I am not 
sure if we should start using something like JSF right from the beginning. 
In the end, JSF might make things easier, but the drawback is that it 
becomes more difficult to understand what's really happening under the 
cover.

I will go through all the information you have given me once more, and in 
the meantime I will try to get a simple applet running from the iSeries...

Thanks again for your advice.

Ewout