Jim
I'm not sure which time warp you are from, but a couple of hours HTML 101
and everything is sorted doesn't seem to me to be quite enough?
Half a day at least!
- Maurice O'Prey
-----Original Message-----
From: web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of jim t
Sent: 29 December 2010 15:21
To: Web Enabling the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: Re: [WEB400] 5250 programmer to web programmer
We were in the same position you are. We have web teams that were developing
non-iseries apps for the web and the users looked at the iseries as old and
antiquated. I looked at several different apps and suggested we look into
Icebreak (
http://www.icebreak.dk/).
We looked into Icebreak because it uses RPG and/or CL to send/receive data
from
the HTML/AJAX - this way the RPG & CL programmers had a small learning
curve. At
the same time we compared at other methods (like CGIDEV, WebFacing, Zend and
more) but Icebreak's performance was much better - at least 10 times faster
response times. Icebreak comes with it's own web server instead of IBMs HTTP
or
Apache server, so the configuration was simple and the web server also
supported
SSL. Our decision didn't require the developers to learn PHP, JS or Java -
all I
gave them was a couple of hours of HTML 101 instructions to get them
started.
When we started to look into Icebreak software it was a capital expense.
Before
we completed our testing phase Icebreak changed to a fee structure where you
only pay the annual maintenance, so this was easier to get our manangement
to
buy into. During our testing phase we integrated AJAX, JS, CSS, SSL and
iSeries
security for Signon & object authorities - with this setup we leaving
nothing in
the browser's cache, have 2048 bit encryption and the webpage's source does
not
show any business data. We also use the users JOBD to set the LIBL and we
allow
the users to run existing QRYS that output to either HTML or XML - the XML
is
then imported into excel as a pivot table. The webpage's output include
images,
graphs (ExtJS), excel, PDF and of course HTML.
To go along with IceBreak we use TAATool commands to get the LIBL,
WebReport/400
for creating the PDFs, DBU/RDB from Prodata to pull live data from
non-iseries
servers and WDSC for development. These are not required it's just that we
already had them on the systems and it made the development & applications
more
robust.
Finally I created a PF on the iSeries that controls what the users sees.
When
the the user signs in the initial program checks to see what graphics are
shown on the page (we have multiple divisions), which RPG or CLP programs
they
have in their menu bar, and if they have read/write/execute in each of the
programs that they can run. I also include this PF in all RPG apps as an
additional security measure.
If you visit
http://www.icebreak.dk/tutorials.htm then you could check out
their
tutorials. If you then want to impress your boss you could download and
install
a free license - I think it is a 30 day license. After installing you start
the
admin portion of the server and configure a development server. Through the
admin function you can create sample apps that will access live data.
Within
minutes you could have apps running (no business logic yet), but if given a
week
you could convert a few existing 5250 apps to web based that include your
business logic. Part of our business case was that the PC Support staff
didn't
have to install iSeries Access, we required fewer licenses of iSeries Access
&
Rumba, that the apps could run from any PC and that the apps could run on
smart
phones. During the demo to management they were impessed that the apps used
SSL,
were personalized
Jim
----- Original Message ----
From: Buck <kc2hiz@xxxxxxxxx>
To: web400@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tue, December 21, 2010 4:10:17 PM
Subject: [WEB400] 5250 programmer to web programmer
This is not a thread about screen scraping.
This is not a thread on moving applications from 5250 to the web.
This is a thread to explore the questions of a 30+ year 5250 programmer
who wants to convince his boss to let him tackle web programming even
though the company has a web programming staff already and I have no
real world web experience.
Let me get it out of the way: my boss wants to screen scrape. He gets
to keep all of his RPG/5250 experts at 100% utilisation and he gets 'web
apps' in a short amount of time. I want to write web apps from scratch
rather than grey-screen our 5250 panels and call it 'web' because the
display device changed.
The inspiration for this post came from a Twitter conversation. I
mention that to note specifically that I'm not afraid of the web nor
modern web apps. I use Scott's socket wrapper API to send tweets from
an IBM i command line. With RPG programs, ha! I have Zend Server
running on my i (I'm testing WikiMedia, the PHP software that runs
Wikipedia) as well as an older install of Perl 5.8.7 (I'm keeping
internal documentation on TWiki, Perl software that does a darned good
job with corporate wikis IMO). All on our i. But these are no
substitute for a portfolio of web sites the boss can look at.
I always thought of the problem of web experience as a bootstrapping
issue. How do I get web experience if the business specifically gives
web experience to the web team? But my conversation with people whose
opinions I implicitly trust inexorably lead me to wonder if I'd done
enough to help myself. The idea is that you start with an open source
project on GitHub or SourceForge, add to it a little until you get
experience in the Ways Of The Web. Maybe start your own project.
I did look some time ago. But the state of most projects is such that
I'm not experienced enough with the language to be able to contribute.
That is, the mindset between my modal brain and the modeless web is too
great to bridge at the same time I'm learning a new language.
So. How did you do it? Did anyone do it? Go from a matching
record-comfy 5250 RPG programmer to AJAX-comfy web programmer by setting
up a home web site? What app did you use to get going and most
importantly, why?
I'm not afraid to learn. But at the same time, I've done HelloWorld in
like a dozen web languages and it hasn't really enabled me to be a
productive web programmer. There must be some middle ground, some
semi-guided trail that will help me move myself closer to the goal. And
the way I figure it, if there is such a path, someone here on this list
has walked it. I don't want to be carried, but I'd like a peek at a
couple of your post cards!
--buck
midrange.com
