Re: Turning green-screen apps into web apps

[Michael Ryan <michaelrtr@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Mike...OP IIRC..

I'm currently evaluating solutions for this very issue. I'm looking at
all the major players, and see them grouped into two main camps - the
screen scraper technologies and the development technologies. The
screen scrapers (BCD-Presto, Profound Logic-Genie, IBM-Webfacing/HATS)
have the advantage of relatively low cost and quick
adoption/implementation. They're not very easily extendable, though
they can be with Javascript and JQuery knowledge. They all seem to do
a pretty good job of converting the 5250 data stream to HTML on the
fly. Some of the issues are double maintenance (if you've customized
some screens, and then make big enough changes to the DSPF, you'll
need to readdress the screen customization), screen recognition (which
is largely a function of screen standardization), and lack of the look
and feel of a 'real' web app. But...it's easy to get your applications
to run in a browser, and everything you need is on the i. The other
solutions vary (and I'm looking at Advanced Business Link-Strategi,
looksoftware-newlook <what's up with the ee cummings format>,
mrc-m-power <more ee>), but include issues such as requiring code on
the client, requiring a separate Windows system, requiring Tomcat, and
the development effort/learning curve of a new application. These
issues aren't insurmountable by any means, but they're there. You can
certainly get a closer fit with the development products than you can
with the screen scraping products.

I haven't completed the evaluation yet, but am learning more about the
products. Feel free to contact me directly if you want more
information.

- Michael

On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 8:05 AM,  <cozzi@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> If you don't have the source, your only solution is something like HATS
> or better yet, Presto from BCD.
> If you have source, BCD's WebSmart might be a great choice.
> I also like using JavaScript/Ajax and HTML. I'm not a fan of PHP, but
> its pretty good on "i" and scales well (if you buy the fee-based
> version, which is worth it).
>
> Tools like my CGILIB in RPGxTools.com (or a smaller package like
> CGIDEV2) can be very helpful and satisfying to RPG programmers as well
> as help avoid the "RPG for the Web" complexities.
> With CGILIB they get to actually write RPG code that does I/O to the web
> rather than simply be a facilitator for another development process.
>
> -Bob
>
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