V7R1...Will we see RPGui...????

[efnkay]

Object oriented programming? After all in our world, we have been dealing with "objects" long before the term object-oriented-programming became the "schtick" name for GUI based application development.

I've always wondered why the heck eye-bee-em didn't go after that "native" wise a long time ago...Instead of playing the "looks-like-windows" efforts made in SDA, and making character-based displays sort of pretend to behave like windows. And all the graphical-skin tools that were out there to dress up the 5250 data stream are as good as it's going to get.

Unless they decouple (divorce) the language from the data stream. Can that be done? Won't we have to be able to determine the "type" of display and it's capabilities within the program, to send the "right" data stream to the device? Can't wait to see.

[philipr5]

RE: V7R1...Will we see RPGui...????

In my opinion, I think the new RPG open I/O feature that is going to be available with i 7.1 will lead us to the native GUI that the community has been asking for. It doesn't seem to provide that capability by itself, but it hopefully will allow developers and ISVs to create solutions that can effectively move us away from the 5250 data stream.

We actually made a short video about this feature on our video blog if you are interested - http://www.profoundlogic.tv/2009/11/...-with-open-io/.

- Philip

[efnkay]

Interesting to see where ibm has taken this. It's not real obvious in your video what it is that you are coming to market with...Perhaps your piece can be best described as an "enabler" in between or on top of the new RPG Open I/O...???

However it sounds like ibm has taken RPG Open I/O all the way to the "wall" or "fence" if you will...Leaving a gap or a need to be filled. (In other words: The piece you are making available for beta test.) Yes?

[philipr5]

Yes, you are absolutely right – they haven’t put in a native GUI onto the system, but IBM is opening the door for others in the community, including vendors like my company, to build solutions that take advantage of RPG in new ways - natively.

In our case, we are the Open I/O “enabler” for creating rich browser applications. Feel free to get in touch with me if you want to discuss this in more detail. You can get a hold of me at philipr@profoundlogic.com.

[Guest.Visitor]

Object oriented programming? After all in our world, we have been dealing with "objects" long before the term object-oriented-programming became the "schtick" name for GUI based application development.

I've always wondered why the heck eye-bee-em didn't go after that "native" wise a long time ago...Instead of playing the "looks-like-windows" efforts made in SDA, and making character-based displays sort of pretend to behave like windows. And all the graphical-skin tools that were out there to dress up the 5250 data stream are as good as it's going to get.

Unless they decouple (divorce) the language from the data stream. Can that be done? Won't we have to be able to determine the "type" of display and it's capabilities within the program, to send the "right" data stream to the device? Can't wait to see.

The iSeries is an object-based architecture and that's completed unrelated to object-oriented programming, which has nothing to do with GUI. GUI is not language dependent, just like DDS is not language-dependent. In support of the separation of code and UI concerns, remember that we've have never had a screen-and-program integrated design tool (although CoDe and WDSCi have tried). If you want to get into the code+UI model, try developing in ASP.NET using Microsoft's Visual Studio.

A primary benefit of OOP is that it supports code reuse--both your code and the (object) code you've purchased. Proper use of inheritance, abstraction, overloading, and polymorphism in a well-designed system can reduce the developer's workload substantially for both initial and support programming

One shared concept is "encapsulation", where an object's functions are published but the specific implementation is hidden. In OOP, well-designed classes are encapsulated and the actions available to the consuming program are limited (only what the programmer decides to reveal). It's the same thing for i5/OS objects, and I'll offer a practical example. The CISC-to-RISC conversion changed the guts of every program but we, as users, didn't have to change our interface: we still used CALL and passed parameters.

The whole data stream issue has been driven by hardware: when the 3270 family of products came out, it wasn't capable of handling a complex data stream, nor were the IO controllers. The same thing was true on the 5250, where attributes have to be hidden on the screen.

In those days, comm lines were expensive, and data transmission was a high-cost item. Today, we're working with a different set of costs.

Did you know that the EVAL op code is polymorphic and overloaded? See, you're practically coding in C#!

[efnkay]

Completely disagree with you there...We've been dealing with the concept of objects and their "properties" way before you had "visual" anything. Polymorphic, overloading, blah-blah, bling-bling words for what we've been doing for a very long time.

I made no assertions as to whether it would, could, or should be standalone or built-in...Simply that if Eye-Be-em had wanted to, they could have conquered the division between text based programming and graphical user interface a long time ago. But they didn't. Remember...They gave up on the PC too.

[D.Abramowitz]

You might remember that IBM had a graphical 5250 interface years ago (and it's still around (but deeply hidden)) called GDDM.

You needed a special monitor to make it work, and it never translated at all into windows. BUT IT DID ACTUALLY WORK!

Visual Age for RPG has been around for a while. I'm sure people use it, but I'm not aware of any shops where it is used.

[efnkay]

Aw yeah I remember...QGDDM library used to always be in the *libl, and whatever happened to BGU Business Graphics Utility. I used GDDM once to plot some graphs on
green-bar from sales data...I recall it was kinda cumbersome but everything was handled by calls to GDDM externals or subroutines, that I can't remember...

[D.Abramowitz]

BGU was a front end to GDDM. Supposed to make it easier to use. BGU may still be around, I'm not certain.

Dave

[tcsbiz]

No GUI

I don't see the need for a GUI on the i. It could have been helpful at one time but IBM decided against it. There are ways to get to the data from .NET and that's what the customers seem to want. The applications I now write against the i database are Windows applications. I tout the i as a great database but programming it with the RPG language is dying.

I've only written in RPG when I've absolutely had to the last couple of years.

At least that's what I'm seeing personally.

[Anvil]

RPGUI incubator

Check out Aaron Bartell's effort on RPGUI here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/rpgui/