...ah, you beat me to it with the RPM tweet!
"Lots of shops are seeing the writing on the wall with RPG and are moving
away from it(n1) and selecting their next generation language. They could
go with the solid PHP, but then they'd be picking a language that's not on
the rise. They could go with Ruby (not extensively adopted on IBM i,
though very popular everywhere else). They could go with Python (another
solid general purpose language, and seeing more adoption on IBM i than
Ruby). Or they could go with the newer kid on the block that offers
something none of the others can, a single language for client and server."
Of course, I agree in principle, but in my experience most places have millions invested in their existing code-base and they simply don't have the appetite or the will to rewrite swathes of it in some new language which they have little or no existing experience in. In any case, such projects have a very high failure rate and I fear, here in Europe at least, anyone contemplating that would also contemplate moving away from the IBM i altogether 😞
Obviously there are many ways to skin the Web Application cat, ranging from the complete rewrite to scraping the green screen (ewww!) and various shades in between. We asked ourselves how we could give our users a "proper" native web application (so not some awful screen scraped UI) but without having to completely bin the old code or make everyone learn a new programming universe. Our solution was the one I have mentioned, by providing a web service to execute stored procedures we could provide a consistent API to and from the IBM i, the backend business logic code could still be developed in the current language of choice (RPG and SQL at the moment) and, even though it can require some significant re-architecting, much of the code can be reused. The front end(s) are single page web apps, written in Angular which simply talk to the stored procedures via the web API, clearly this does require a completely new skill set, but this can start with a small team of developers at first and doesn't require the big bang approach that rewriting does and nor does it put the core business logic at risk.
This also has the advantage of separating the UI from the business logic in a stepped way, such that later, if we decided to rewrite parts of the backend in Typescript or Node, we could present the same API to the UI (or at least be sympathetic to the existing API) thus giving us a migration path, should we wish to take it, from RPG to the more modern languages.
Of course, there's no right or wrong way I guess, but the above is the though process we went thought and why we chose out particular way. :-)
________________________________
From: WEB400 <web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf of Aaron Bartell <aaronbartell@xxxxxxxxx>
Sent: 16 March 2018 18:48
To: Web Enabling the IBM i (AS/400 and iSeries)
Subject: Re: [WEB400] What forum is best for a Tope and Node question?
Right now, Node seems to me to be "The Emperor's New Clothes"
I'll chime in here because it's important to have a right perspective about
Node.js.
Tony Cairns says it best (paraphrasing): You're seeing how the sausage is
made when you watch open source happen in the open.
The Node.js community grew up with GitHub; everything happens in the open
and that makes some people uncomfortable. Node.js is being used in
production on IBM i. A lot of effort is being put towards taking all the
tooling (i.e. database adapters, itoolkit) to the next level.
And maybe more recent versions of node in PASE.
Node.js v8.x is available. Check out this tweet:
https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Flitmisteam%2Fstatus%2F973624716601843713&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cb281ed809de04c75bab908d58b662b72%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636568193284707983&sdata=LX2atPhQD9DHF54noRsxocKoeJiFMbjekRk0K9AupQE%3D&reserved=0 This is a big
game changer.
hoping the open source community or vendors provide a friendlier
developer environment.
Kelly, could you expound on this one? By developer environment are you
talking server-side configuration or are you talking about editors like
VSCode? Or both?
Concerning client-side development with local connection to remote
database, there's potential with db2sock:
https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbitbucket.org%2Flitmis%2Fdb2sock&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cb281ed809de04c75bab908d58b662b72%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636568193284707983&sdata=f%2FZBIjlhgPJ7tvmR9Fut%2B59GZWyD9SUXtHoxWm1Ytww%3D&reserved=0. This would allow you use your local
Node.js.
Lots of shops are seeing the writing on the wall with RPG and are moving
away from it(n1) and selecting their next generation language. They could
go with the solid PHP, but then they'd be picking a language that's not on
the rise. They could go with Ruby (not extensively adopted on IBM i,
though very popular everywhere else). They could go with Python (another
solid general purpose language, and seeing more adoption on IBM i than
Ruby). Or they could go with the newer kid on the block that offers
something none of the others can, a single language for client and server.
Everyone should do their own risk assessment. See how others are adopting
by reading some case studies:
https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffoundation.nodejs.org%2Fresources&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cb281ed809de04c75bab908d58b662b72%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636568193284707983&sdata=OTmOydy5MPWHE%2FAftgjXms1e%2BVK38u6eRqeRplTpDK4%3D&reserved=0
n1 - Not looking to start a war, just conveying what people are hiring me
to do.
Aaron Bartell
IBM i hosting, starting at $157/month. litmis.com/spaces
On Fri, Mar 16, 2018 at 12:20 PM, Kelly Cookson <KCookson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
I wouldn’t go so far as to say node is the emperor’s new clothes. But I do
think IBM could do better by providing the IBM i community with
easier-to-use tools, better modules and better documentation. And maybe
more recent versions of node in PASE.
It seems like IBM is porting node to PASE, offering some basic tools, and
then hoping the open source community or vendors provide a friendlier
developer environment. Maybe not. But that’s the impression I get from my
experiences as a newbie to node.
Thanks,
Kelly Cookson
IT Project Leader
Dot Foods, Inc.
217-773-4486 ext. 12676
https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=www.dotfoods.com&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cb281ed809de04c75bab908d58b662b72%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636568193284707983&sdata=FFvl7uI4EBD0Np3cskvNy3Vpo2aqmlbNtt9w75qeMPI%3D&reserved=0<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dotfoods.com&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cb281ed809de04c75bab908d58b662b72%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636568193284707983&sdata=HfqsZXfNTIq2Kbw41zQql4PZgwsbk%2FQfm1jklqlGWaI%3D&reserved=0>
From: WEB400 [mailto:web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Justin
Taylor
Sent: Friday, March 16, 2018 12:10 PM
To: Web Enabling the IBM i (AS/400 and iSeries) <web400@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: [WEB400] What forum is best for a Tope and Node
question?
Right now, Node seems to me to be "The Emperor's New Clothes", but I'm
watching it because IBM and others are pushing it hard (and that's why I
did a proof-of-concept).
-----Original Message-----
From: Tim Fathers [mailto:X700-IX2J@xxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, March 16, 2018 11:46 AM
To: Web Enabling the IBM i (AS/400 and iSeries) <web400@xxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:web400@xxxxxxxxxxxx>>
Subject: Re: [WEB400] What forum is best for a Tope and Node question?
Oh, I didn't mean to dis node in general at all, I'm a big fan of it 😊
and for developing front end stuff it's great. It's really just the lack of
vendor support for database drivers and the lack of a consistent interface
to them which is frustrating if you come from JavaEE where JDBC drivers are
consistent and well supported, but they've had years to get it right - Node
is still a baby by comparison. As I say, given the chance, I'd migrate my
framework to Node, I much prefer to work in Typescript than Java and I
wouldn't need a Java EE host, but I would be migrating from a very stable
environment with cross platform support and right now I don't feel it's
worth the investment.
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