I've never been able to fully convey to you the concept of a thin JSP. In
my PSC product, for example, a client can have hundreds, even thousands of
JSPs, and they use exactly ONE servlet.
I have not used your PSC product - maybe someday. When you came into my
previous employer you showed us a way to develop NEW non-DDS web programs
that calls for a .jsp AND .java file for each page (.jsp did the connecting
back the .java bean where the conversion was done). So maybe we are talking
about completely different scenarios here??
Concerning the "Java trouble tickets" discussion, I can see now how it
wouldn't really effect the scenario you describe nearly as much as the
scenario I described. Thanks for the clarification.
My point is that it's just as hard to learn JavaScript as it is to learn
Java.
Even after reading your entire section I still don't agree that Java is
equivalent in learning to Javascript, but that may be just because I wasn't
able to pick up Java as easily as other languages. Like another gentleman
said, Java may be easy for YOU, but not for everybody else that is trying to
pick it up. I think you need to look at it from the standpoint of
understanding NOTHING about the environment. You need to think about what
the average RPG programmer would have to do to write programs with Ruby On
Rails. Learn the language, learn the IDE, learn the app server, learn the
MVC implementation concepts, etc.
And I haven't even addressed the myriad benefits of having the web
interface portion of your architecture be platform independent.
I would rather have everything on one box and be locked into the System i.
Do I have Java code that runs on Wintel, you bet, but that was because I
wrote it for resale and I couldn't require a non-iSeries shop to buy an
iSeries simply because my app required it. That maybe is a key difference
here. If you already own an iSeries and have RPG knowledge then doing RPG
CGI is very appealing and would definitely be my first choice.
I also think that when you compare the approaches from a purely
technological standpoint, that you find JSP has significant benefits over
RPG-CGI, not the least of which is the ability to easily move your user
interface processing off of your primary business logic box. This provides
both increased performance and better security.
I won't argue the increased performance because we all know System i5
hardware is not cheap (though you lose ease of hardware maintenance
complexity - two machines now), but how does having your UI layer in a DMZ
with i5 DB2 behind the firewall (the approach I am guessing you are
recommending) benefit your architecture when the communication from the UI
layer is done through data queues and the System i5 has object level
security?
Aaron Bartell
midrange.com
