Re: Single Page Applications

I have a proposal out to use CGI COBOL in our shop. I don't think it's going to be accepted.

We've been running our corporate web site on ASP.NET (and accessing the iSeries as needed) for over 12 years now. We also have a number of custom, in-house web sites written with ASP.NET and accessing the iSeries as needed. The question is what are we going to use to start developing web and mobile applications instead of 5250 green screens.

The question I'm being asked is why would we want to have two ways of developing web and mobile applications? That means we will have to maintain two sets of legacy applications and maintain sufficient staff with the right skills. Add that to the demonstrated success over more than a decade at using the ASP.NET approach. So why in the world would we want to add COBOL CGI to the mix? That's the obstacle I have to overcome to sell a CGI COBOL approach, or an IBM i Integrated Web Services approach, or any approach other than ASP.NET.

Our development teams are organized by lines of business. So the browser UI and SPA developers on the client side, and the ASP.NET web application and services developers on the server side, will actually be on the same team. The team is responsible for end-to-end application development for their lines of business. So pointing fingers at each other gets us nowhere. I think that will be a non-issue for us.

Thanks,
Kelly

-----Original Message-----
From: WEB400 [mailto:web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Raul A Jager W
Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2015 8:53 AM
To: Web Enabling the IBM i (AS/400 and iSeries)
Subject: Re: [WEB400] Single Page Applications

SO, when something does not work as expected, or fais, you can bounce blame betwenn two teams.

I think Nathan sugested using Cobol, this will be by far the best alternative.
More reliable, less downtime, less cost, scalable, easier to develop, easier to debug, faster, better security...

_______________________________________________________________________
On 05/27/2015 01:02 PM, Kelly Cookson wrote:

I would suggest that client-based frameworks such as Angular JS
should not entirely replace server-based frameworks.

In fact, this appears to be where our shop is heading.

Our shop appears to be heading towards a mix of SPAs and tradition server-side web applications using ASP.NET--with the .NET Data Provider to access DB2 files and stored procedures on the IBM i.

And, instead of having individual COBOL developers create end-to-end solutions, it looks like we might divide responsibilities between: (a) coding browser UIs and SPAs on the client side, and (b) coding traditional web applications and RESTful services on the server side. So, in terms of web and mobile development, some of COBOL developers would become client-side developers and some would become server-side developers (on windows servers). It's a different approach for us than individual developers creating the 5250 green screens and the business logic behind them.

Thanks,
Kelly

-----Original Message-----
From: WEB400 [mailto:web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Nathan
Andelin
Sent: Wednesday, May 27, 2015 11:33 AM
To: Web Enabling the IBM i (AS/400 and iSeries)
Subject: Re: [WEB400] Single Page Applications

I think you are suggesting that returning JSON data is not as safe
and efficient as returning the html itself. The latter is what you
would be doing in a traditional cgidev2 application, but we have
dumped that method (although it is still supported) in RNS 6.

Of course Brad can speak for himself, but I don't think he was suggesting that one approach was safer or better than the other; just that there are many alternatives for generating browser pages, including server-based and client-based frameworks/techniques.

I would suggest that client-based frameworks such as Angular JS should not entirely replace server-based frameworks. You might continue to use server-based techniques to generate HTML reports (stream files), transform them into PDFs, and stream either format to browser clients.

You get a much more efficient process, and a much faster development
time, if you use the data model approach (basically the JSON) with
two way binding on the visual components. Now the developer can just
arrange components on the page and bind certain elements to data model properties.

Could you be more specific about the efficiency gains and developer productivity? Are you suggesting that client-side tools and utilities streamline development? If so, then how?

The model gets exchanged between the client and the server, and the
RPG part of the process is now lightweight compared to some of the
complicated
cgidev2 programs we used to have.

I understand that, because browser page (UI) generation is being moved from the server to the client.

Our data grid component can do page by page loading, filtering,
sorting on huge files just as easily as a green screen subfile can.

That's good, but it doesn't sound like 2-way binding. Or is it?
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