Re: Why use PHP? What are the disadvantages?

Ouch! Sad but true, I think. I have been wondering if I was missing
something, but Open Access doesn't seem to give us anything we didn't have
before. If anything it adds a layer of obfuscation, and I don't think it
is going to eliminate the need to learn HTML+CSS+Javascript and/or a
WYSIWYG editor for developing browser UIs.

As you mention, we can currently develop event-driven (front-end)
solutions using a framework like ExtJS to call RPG programs/procedures on
the back-end. This seems more straight-forward and is what packages like
Valence are already doing. There probably won't ever be another officially
supported IBM solution, but that may not be a big deal since server-side
languages are more and more being replaced by Javascript or plug-in
technologies for the UI anyway.

Blake



In other words... it's a screen scraper. It's a temporary stop-gap
solution to help us make progress until we rewrite our programs to use
the proper paradigm. At least, it *can* be a stop-gap solution like that
-- provided we pay for it, and we also pay for a 3rd party handler. By
itself, open access doesn't even give us THAT much.

If you think open access gives RPG a future -- I'd say you're high. It
pushes RPG more and more into the ranks of being a legacy language. And
it provides once and for all that IBM doesn't care about RPG enough to
give us a real solution.

A real solution will be event-driven...
What we don't have is a single, common, regular interface that everyone
uses
across the board that's "part of" RPG. And Open Access is making
absolutely NO effort to provide this.