Re: Why use PHP? What are the disadvantages?

I think you're wrong on a couple counts. First, RPG OA is not a screen
scraper, it completely changes the datastream so that the handler can
deliver an appropriate persistent connection. You can write new code
without changing the interactive development paradigm. For developers who
find persistence and host (server) side control to be an advantage, then it
is a game changer for the platform. Secondly, Valence has come up with
nothing new. The looksoftware smartclient has supported new forms with no
associated host screen, RPC, database access, and web service consumption
since R7.0, which was delivered in 2005. Certainly extending one's skills
is important, but learning a WYSISYG design tool is really not painful, nor
is vbscript or jscript for that matter. Take out the pain of middleware
development and you've got a great new opportunity. The application
portfolio of the IBMi is so replete with heritage code that is not viable
for replacement that RPG OA will likely add another decade of life to many
applications. Viva la RPG.

Pete Isaksson
petei@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Business Development Mgr
www.looksoftware.com
+1 678 494-5465 office
+1 678 662-2400 cell


-----Original Message-----
From: web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of BButterworth@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, April 20, 2010 3:58 PM
To: web400@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [WEB400] 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.