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The iSeries: The Once and Future King

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  • #46
    The iSeries: The Once and Future King

    Joe asked: "Okay, I'll need more education here. I have 20 people doing order entry simultaneously. They all need persistent connections, since this is an order entry application with lots of temporary data." Our web serving using WebSmart has ZERO persistant connections. We have a Purchase Order system written entirely in WebSmart. Up to 999 lines per purchase order, up to 99 comment lines per PO line. Works flawlessly. No persistance. Joe asked: " How many CGI jobs do I need for this? " We have more than 1,000 users using our websmart programs. There's never more than about 10 jobs running in QHTTPSVR to support these web pages users. Joe, I think some extended homework time is in order. You may be relying on stale knowledge about how CGI works. It may be time for you to bone up a little. Joe claimed: "It depends on what you mean by tool. An IDE such as the JDT in WDSC is fine (and indeed, almost mandatory). " From the time I click on the WSDc icon until I have a usable screen is over a minute. That's fine? (BTW, I've since removed WSDc from my PC as it is slow and a huge hog.) And, WSDc is not intuitive, it requires training. From the time I click on the WebSmart icon until it's in a usable state is 1.5 seconds. It gets better. From the time I select the option to create a new application that works like parent/child order entry application until the time I can excute the running application is approximately 5 minutes. I then have a working program that can be modified as necessary. Never a "blank page" syndrome. Joe asked: "How many CGI jobs do I need for this? If I only need five, where is the persistent session data stored?" In a WebSmart container called a Smurf. It's like a server side cookie which includes expiration. Joe, this is exactly what I've been saying. You condemn other solutions claiming that Java is the holy grail without knowing anything about the other solutions. It just reduces, dramatically, your credibility as a subject expert. And, that's unfortunate. It's also unfortunate that you have a podium from which to preach without fair and balanced knowledge of the subject matter. Joe asked: "How do you keep files open between calls?" They aren't, why would they be? Joe said: "you need to quickly dial down the rhetoric." Now you're being a comedian? chuck Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer.

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    • #47
      The iSeries: The Once and Future King

      Duncan said: "I also doubt that any enterprise would be willing to run their mission-critical businesses on WebSphere Express" It appears from IBM's recent 180 degree turn that WebSphere isn't making a significant dent, express or not, in the real world. I know I don't have the inclination or budget to train operations staff in WebSphere. I also don't want to waste CPWs on something that doesn't enhance my company's processes. I know that when I attend COMMON and attend WebSphere classes (yes I wanted to know what I was missing) it seemed every other attendee I talked to was in my same situation. They knew about WebSphere, were interested, maybe even fired it up because that's all IBM ever talked about, but none of them had anything running on it. The customer names of WebSphere users that IBM always dropped at these meetings were always "big name" companies. Maybe those companies have resources to throw around but I simply don't. I kinda felt like a teenager not doing drugs. Surely all my friends were doing them, maybe I should also. What I didn't know was most, if not all, of my friends didn't do drugs either. chuck Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer.

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      • #48
        The iSeries: The Once and Future King

        Joe said: "why JSP is better than RPG-CGI. It can be moved off the machine," Only a software vendor would care about that. I'm committed to the iSeries and will be for a long time. It's clear why YOU are committed to Java, what's not clear is why we should be. chuck Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer.

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        • #49
          The iSeries: The Once and Future King

          Joe said: "An IDE is different from a code generator, as I hope I've made clear. IDE = GOOD, CODE GENERATOR = BAD. " Good, you've finally come around! Since I'm sure you've done your extensive homework (geez even I got slimed by that heavy sarcasm ) you know that WebSmart IS a full IDE. ALL work is done within the WebSmart IDE on a PC. A developer can do everything never knowing there's an iSeries. In fact, it's designed to allow a developer to develop on a laptop on a plane. Of course they couldn't execute the application without the iSeries but everything else can be done. It is NOT a code generator. It does, however, create RPG as an intermediate step to getting to a compiled module. I never see the RPG generated. chuck Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer.

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          • #50
            The iSeries: The Once and Future King

            Joe said: "Yeah, it's standard stateless technology. However, if you've got an order entry program that accesses 30 files, then you need to open all 30 files for every request (not to mention loading and storing all the temporary data)." Ah, but if you had been listening that seems to scale just fine, blowing a hole in your scaling theory. chuck Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer.

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            • #51
              The iSeries: The Once and Future King

              Joe: "But this sort of statement is clearly beginning to show your stripes. You're here to bash WebSphere, and me, and my product, and my company." Could this be rhetoric?

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              • #52
                The iSeries: The Once and Future King

                > Joe said: "why JSP is better than RPG-CGI. It can be moved off the > machine," Here's an aside. Using "generic" code that can run anywhere reduces your iSeries to the level of PC. Here's the fact behind the myth that one should keep in mind... Most iSeries installations have legacy code. We're doing web based development to ENHANCE what we have. We aren't about to replace all of our legacy code with Java, WebSphere, WebSmart or anything else. This development uses existing files and enhances existing applications, it doesn't replace it. There's never a thought of ever developing applications that can be moved to another platform. That's something vendors do to hedge their bets so they can increase market share and/or dump the iSeries if they feel the market doesn't warrant it. Yes, you'll find iSeries shops run by non-iSeries knowledgeable people and the "move it elsewhere" mantra will strike up a chord with them. When vendors talk about moving code elsewhere to true iSeries users the vendor has just lost their audience. As an iSeries user I want vendors committed to the iSeries. Vendors such as ASNA and other hedge-betters will get less and less business from customers like me. chuck Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer.

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                • #53
                  The iSeries: The Once and Future King

                  Many companies run WebSphere Express. But this sort of statement is clearly beginning to show your stripes. You're here to bash WebSphere, and me, and my product, and my company. Joe, sorry you feel that way. I thought we were engaged in a debate about your assertion that JSP is superior technology to RPG-CGI. I am not here to bash you, you or your company. I just found the discussion interesting, in light of the exchanges between you and Chuck. I suggest you get your facts straight. SQL pooling is not a scalability concern (unless you use JDBC, which I do not recommend), and threading is definitely part of any version of WebSphere. What actually do you know about Java and J2EE? Actually, I didn't state these as 'facts' - I said they were 'my understanding'. I'm sure I do not know as much as you about Java. I do have developers who work for me who do, though, and I rely on their experience and opinions to form my own. Again, it seems you are confusing technologies- 'threading' is an inherent part of Java -WebSphere is simply 'middleware' for deploying Java. Here we go. It's all because you think I'm a competitor. Honestly, dude, we're completely different. PSC/400 web-enables legacy systems with a single command; WebSmart is used primarily to build applications from scratch. Different marketplace entirely. In fact, I'm sure that PSC/400 converted applications could interact with the JSP/servlet version of your tool. You ought to be looking for synergy rather than wasting time trying to bash technology, especially a technology you sell. I've already refuted your first statement. Secondly, I do look for synergy all the time. With regards to us competing, I wrote of 'mindshare' - any time the words 'web' and 'iSeries' are used together, vendors are competing for mindshare. For example, we are always having to educate prospects on the distinctions between screen-scrapers and web development tools. Besides- so what if we compete? I don't bash my competitors- and I'm not bashing your product. You have an approach that is different from ours. It's simply that you asserted that your approach is the best, and I don't agree with that, for the technical reasons I've outlined, and based on personal experience. This is where I get confused. You're here screaming about how CGI is superior to JSP, and yet you sell JSP to your customers. I don't get it. Sorry to confuse you. We provide a solution that DOES provide synergy, and provides options to our clients. Some are concerned about the 'standards' that Java offers, some are concerned more about things they are familiar with. Some want to leverage existing RPG code, some want to produce more portable code. We give them the option. Remember, I've never asserted that CGI is better than JSP - I've simply tried to refute your claim that JSP is 'superior technology' to CGI. Both have their place, depending on the business need. As others have rightly pointed out, and as I'm sure you will agree, we should all be concerned about SOLUTIONS, not TECHNOLOGY for the sake of it. So even though I disagree with your claim, from a business perspective there are many times when JSP is a better business fit for our clients. That's why we've invested significant R&D $'s in the last 8 years in Java ideas. I state clearly that I prefer JSP Model II over RPG-CGI, and then proceed to back up my opinion with facts. You, on the other hand, post allegations about the failings of Java which you cannot back up, and when challenged, you avoid responding. OK- if you 'prefer' it- fine. I remain unconvinced you've backed it up with facts. You have not responded to my explanation about session handling, or explained why some of the biggest e-commerce sites continue to use a CGI or CGI-like model for delivering web content (like Amazon or Yahoo! for example). I stand by my opinions regarding the complexities and costs of running full-blown WebSphere, although I concede you can run WebSphere Express for demo sites like yours, based on what I've seen there. I believe the only thing I avoided responding to was your comment re IBM and Sun's JVM's being the same. But even there, you showed either your obfuscatory skills or your sloppiness by referring to JDK and JVM as if they were synonymous. I'm happy to wait for the opinion of others better informed on the inconsistencies of Java than me, though. Oh. My. Gosh. You're serious!?! Oh man. Please, go ahead and tell Bob Cozzi about his tenuous objectivity and his free advertising (LAUGHING!). Please! Tell me what he says! I'm dying to hear it! Well, it sounds like we probably agree on one opinion :> And, I'm glad I can brighten your day with a laugh! Regards, Duncan

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                  • #54
                    The iSeries: The Once and Future King

                    A real life experience... I have a programmer on my staff who is so good it's a little scarey. He's amazingly bright. This programmer worked full time for a toy company (does Barbie ring a bell?) during the day and part time for me in the evening. At the toy company they did everything in WebSphere and Java. Here he uses WebSmart. He tells me that it literally takes him about 4-5 days to do in Java what he can do in a couple of hours in WebSmart. He hated the Java experience. In fact, he likes the WebSmart environment so much he bet his job on it. He now works full time for me during the day. It's the toy company's loss. chuck Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer.

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                    • #55
                      The iSeries: The Once and Future King

                      Thanks for the explanation of HTTP-CGI as handled by IBM now, Duncan. I thought I had seen where they did something to do a great job handling it, but wasn't sure. But for all, just to be a devil's advocate, or a devil, the third party AS/400 web server I worked with (first as a customer, then a consultant to write the JOBS/400 server which I saw up for a couple of years anyway) didn't use CGI or JSP. A server handled page requests through dataque queing, and we would launch another instance automatically if demand merited. The serving was shared as CGI daemons were described as sharing serving requests. The id was from a validated login or read only for anonymous viewing such as job searches. I called it stateless coding but a product that does that automatically would make a programmer's job easier. As far as that goes, the programming was in anything. Most was in ILE RPG but thre was an RPG/400 server and a Java server program as well. The server API's were called from tagged HTML code. It was proprietary, but pure RPG business programming with all web stuff as pages in IFS. I think that's the best approach, I don't care who the vendor is, but it should be a standard from IBM for the i5. I wrote an entire jobs site server backend from scratch in 12,000 lines of code in three months using it, and had every advanced feature of jobs sites you can think of. On the other hand, someone else did the web pages that didn't know the AS/400 or RPG. But isn't that the way it should be? rd

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                      • #56
                        The iSeries: The Once and Future King

                        Again, it seems you are confusing technologies- 'threading' is an inherent part of Java -WebSphere is simply 'middleware' for deploying Java. Multithreading is an inherent part of the JVM, and also an inherent part of J2EE design. Since WAS (including Express) is a J2EE servlet container, WASX must be multithreaded. It's simply that you asserted that your approach is the best, and I don't agree with that, for the technical reasons I've outlined, and based on personal experience. I've never even talked about my product. I'm talking about technology. It's clear that you are fundamentally incapable of distinguishing between product and technology, and also that you are unable to converse without derogatory nit-picking. But even there, you showed either your obfuscatory skills or your sloppiness by referring to JDK and JVM as if they were synonymous. Oh grow up. It's clear I meant the JVMs from each version. That's pure ankle-biting, Duncan. You stoop lower with each riposte. I've simply tried to refute your claim that JSP is 'superior technology' to CGI. Both have their place, depending on the business need. As others have rightly pointed out, and as I'm sure you will agree, we should all be concerned about SOLUTIONS, not TECHNOLOGY for the sake of it. And ad I've said at least five different times, this is not about business decisions. There are times when business requirements make an abacus the best choice, so basically business decisions have no relevance as to which technology is intrinsically superior. It is my assertion that from a pure technology standpoint, for the many reasons I have given, over and over again, that JSP is superior to RPG-CGI. Anyway, I sense we've reached the point of diminishing returns. You were wrong about WebSphere Express, you were wrong about the JVMs, you bring in Amazon when we're talking about RPG-CGI, you never answered my quetions on session handling such as how you keep files open (and then bizarrely you say that I didn't answer yours). This has become a monumental waste of time, and I doubt it's helping any readers, so I can sign out now. Joe

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                        • #57
                          The iSeries: The Once and Future King

                          With the web server solution I used, the server programs are persistent and keep the files open, and just loop on a dataq. It is stateless, and requires retrieving info on the id each web page request from the open files, but I think it is the best approach for web serving on the AS/400. I don't know what it's called, but it ought to be the way its done. rd

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                          • #58
                            The iSeries: The Once and Future King

                            Joe, Your posts are always confusing since it's impossible to tell when you're talking and you're quoting another one. chuck Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer. "Joe Pluta" wrote in message news:6b229b3b.92@WebX.WawyahGHajS... > Again, it seems you are confusing technologies- 'threading' is an inherent > part of Java -WebSphere is simply 'middleware' for deploying Java. > > Multithreading is an inherent part of the JVM, and also an inherent part > of J2EE design. Since WAS (including Express) is a J2EE servlet container, > WASX must be multithreaded. > > It's simply that you asserted that your approach is the best, and I don't > agree with that, for the technical reasons I've outlined, and based on > personal experience. > > I've never even talked about my product. I'm talking about technology. > It's clear that you are fundamentally incapable of distinguishing between > product and technology, and also that you are unable to converse without > derogatory nit-picking. > > But even there, you showed either your obfuscatory skills or your > sloppiness by referring to JDK and JVM as if they were synonymous. > > Oh grow up. It's clear I meant the JVMs from each version. That's pure > ankle-biting, Duncan. You stoop lower with each riposte. > > I've simply tried to refute your claim that JSP is 'superior technology' > to CGI. Both have their place, depending on the business need. As others > have rightly pointed out, and as I'm sure you will agree, we should all be > concerned about SOLUTIONS, not TECHNOLOGY for the sake of it. > > And ad I've said at least five different times, this is not about business > decisions. There are times when business requirements make an abacus the > best choice, so basically business decisions have no relevance as to which > technology is intrinsically superior. It is my assertion that from a pure > technology standpoint, for the many reasons I have given, over and over > again, that JSP is superior to RPG-CGI. > > Anyway, I sense we've reached the point of diminishing returns. You were > wrong about WebSphere Express, you were wrong about the JVMs, you bring in > Amazon when we're talking about RPG-CGI, you never answered my quetions on > session handling such as how you keep files open (and then bizarrely you > say that I didn't answer yours). This has become a monumental waste of > time, and I doubt it's helping any readers, so I can sign out now. > > Joe

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                            • #59
                              The iSeries: The Once and Future King

                              Joe said: "And ad I've said at least five different times, this is not about business decisions. " Is that beeping sound I hear coming from the bus backing up? chuck Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer.

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                              • #60
                                The iSeries: The Once and Future King

                                Joe said: "This has become a monumental waste of time, and I doubt it's helping any readers, so I can sign out now." Cast your doubts away, it's been an immense help! chuck Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer.

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