Hence my question, if anyone is still reading
I read the whole thing :-) I have checked back every once in awhile to see
if the iTeam efforts ever took off, but haven't seen anything on
MyEclipseIDE.com so I figured it moved on.
As you embrace Flex I would make sure to build for change in the UI layer.
I am of the opinion that the world is still deciding what THEY like and
don't like on the UI layer, and so far HTML+Javascript+CSS has been the only
safe technology to use for public facing websites (in my opine).
What's interesting to me is that Databorough has seen that those other UI
layers weren't a good fit for modernizing IBM i legacy code, but yet I get
the sense that Databorough is still on the Java bandwagon which is just as
much the culprit of complexity as those frameworks. I am still waiting for
Databorough, or other vendor, to come through with a solid way to talk to
modern interfaces using RPG+DB2+IBMi. Yes, the language is old, but there
is a reason people still use it. People usually leave the IBMi because RPG
lacks a solid modern UI, not because Java is so much better. I am starting
an article series that talks about this. You can read about it here: *
http://tinyurl.com/ydvgd9x*
If you stay with Java you will forever be competing with others in a very
over crowded market, regardless of what UI layer you choose. Maybe you want
to spend some capital investments on RPGUI to see where it can go? ;-)
Outside of RPG lacking a modern UI the other thing that is lacking is access
to IBM i. IBM is working on that front as is evidenced by this blog posting
by Steve Will:
http://ibmsystemsmag.blogs.com/you_and_i/2010/02/asp-saas-and-i.html
The potential for IBM i to starting *gaining* back market share has me
giddy. I know I need to live in the reality that we are dealing with the
big IBM here, but I can't help but hope.
Aaron/Nathan you can have whatever code you want out of this for your
projects if it's of any use.
I would love to see it! Heck, I would even recommend Databorough get a
little marketing mileage out of it by releasing it as open source on
sourceforge.net.
Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com
http://mowyourlawn.com/blog/
midrange.com
