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Weaving WebSphere: Rationalizing the IBM Development Tools

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  • Weaving WebSphere: Rationalizing the IBM Development Tools

    ** This thread discusses the article: Weaving WebSphere: Rationalizing the IBM Development Tools **
    ** This thread discusses the Content article: Weaving WebSphere: Rationalizing the IBM Development Tools **
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  • #2
    Weaving WebSphere: Rationalizing the IBM Development Tools

    ** This thread discusses the article: Weaving WebSphere: Rationalizing the IBM Development Tools **
    Microsoft can create a .Net programmer for about $100, providing the programmer already owns a PC, has downloaded the free MSDE, and is willing to invest a couple of months of free time. This programmer can learn a stable language and an environment and become productive enough to earn a living in a spare room at home. The .Net 2005 verions will provide even more productivity at the low price end. OTOH, IBM is selling a complicated alphabet soup of products that may not even exist in the current form two years from now. I am still missing your point, I think.

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    • #3
      Weaving WebSphere: Rationalizing the IBM Development Tools

      ** This thread discusses the article: Weaving WebSphere: Rationalizing the IBM Development Tools **
      Whoa there. The bulk of the article was on Rational, not .NET, so I'm not sure why you're focusing on .NET. I agree that Microsoft has a lower entry point than the iSeries. But then again, so does Java. I'm not sure what your point is there. At the same time, you've made a couple of statements that bear a ltitle more scrutiny. You're calling .NET a stable language and environment, and there's no reason to believe that's true. VB to VB.NET is a painful transition, much more painful than RPG to RPG-ILE. And we've yet to see exactly how Whidbey and Avalon will affect current programming. As to IBM anda complicated alphabet soup of products, I'm not sure what you mean. For an iSeries developer, the only product is WDSC. I agree it's a little murkier for non-iSeries developers, though. In any case, the primary point of the article was that the Rational branding still needs a little more work from the standpoint of merging the product lines. The secondary point was that IBM has an opportunity to have a great headstart in the modeled programming space since Microsoft focuses on drag-n-drop techniques. Joe

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      • #4
        Weaving WebSphere: Rationalizing the IBM Development Tools

        ** This thread discusses the article: Weaving WebSphere: Rationalizing the IBM Development Tools **
        Joe, Your assessment of IBM's strategy of the Rational implementation on the iSeries is the reason why some of us in the iSeries community is taking a "show me the real strategy" approach to IBM's pep rally at COMMON. I have made a career off of the S/3X - AS/400 - iSeries and soon i5. Our platform has survived for a quarter of a decade and IBM knows we give them a solid rock to fall back on as they plunder into new technologies. Maybe what IBM is really doing with Rational is saying those developing in modern tools like Java need a complete integrated environment and we iSeries developers are mature enough in our experience and tools we use that we do not need an automated tool. Remember the Case-Tool push in the mid 1990's? How many use one today on the iSeries? I believe IBM's strategy for Rational follows the same path as every other one ... let's go to a Gartner Group seminar and have consultants tell us what we need to be doing in the next 5 years. Sound's good until you realize that next year, these same consultants will tell you the next industry movement is ????????. For personal survival, I am being open-minded into non-iSeries solutions but my loyalty will always hold to the system that has given me a living for the past quarter decade. I wonder if IBM feels the same.

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        • #5
          Weaving WebSphere: Rationalizing the IBM Development Tools

          ** This thread discusses the article: Weaving WebSphere: Rationalizing the IBM Development Tools **
          I really think it's more of a pricing issue than anything. I don't think the Rational people can figure out how to include Rational products in the WDSC product line and make money; if they could, they certainly would. And from the iSeries side of things, the money paid for 5722WDS (our beloved compilers and so on, now called the WebSphere Development Studio for iSeries) can only stretch so far; there just isn't that much cash available to give to the Rational folks. So we're at a standstill. Yet, I think everybody's missing the bigger picture. The reality is that single-tier, single-platform, single-language development is long gone. I think the idea at IBM was to push for Java/Linux so that there was only one language, but the real push should have been towards developing a framework that supported multiple languages. Eclipse (and WDSC) have managed to do that quite well from the code writing point of view, but with Rational IBM had an opportunity to include the rest of the spectrum, from design to testing. Picture this. You define a requirements document for service calls. You identify each of the fields, and this becomes a ServiceCall. So far, no language is even identified. Now you can start building from that message. Say you want to enter a ServiceCall; you identify the fields that are enterable, and then you use a WYSIWYG to put them on a panel. You still haven't decided about languages yet. Then you add editing rules. You also use some basic modeling techniques to define some standard editing rules (how deep depends on the tool). Okay, now you can push a button and generate a user interface, as well as a mock back-end that at least does some basic editing for testing. You would specify the UI deployment language and the language for the back-end editing. Neither one is necessarily the final deplotment choice; this is just for review with the user. Once the RAD sessions are done, you then redeploy to the appropriate languages, perhaps after adding some more editing features through the model. The generated code is probably not complete (unless it's VERY simple). Instead, it's just a skeleton with comments added to point out code that still needs to be written. In fact, with WDSC, you could add "To-Dos" for each of the pieces that need attention. And then the tools would seamlessly track objects through the development process. This is the sort of thing I envision. Maybe I'm too naive, but I thought that's what we might have gotten out of the last two years. Joe

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          • #6
            Weaving WebSphere: Rationalizing the IBM Development Tools

            ** This thread discusses the article: Weaving WebSphere: Rationalizing the IBM Development Tools **
            Joe says ... "I really think it's more of a pricing issue than anything. I don't think the Rational people can figure out how to include Rational products in the WDSC product line and make money; if they could, they certainly would." ------------------------------------ To some extent you may be right Joe. However, lets look at the early days of WDSCi. Around 10 years ago IBM brought about CODE/400 and vRPG. Then Websphere Development Studio was the new push for multiplatform IDE. Someone in IBM figured out that they could improve on some pieces of CODE/400 with Eclipse and I am for one has found a new development platform in WDSCi which has more functionality over the green-screen SEU/SDA (though one can challenge whether if one is more effiecient than the other). It is true that WDSCi is an "entitlement" if one has the 5722-WDS product, but how many shops actually know this. Isn't WDSCi the exact same base product the WDSC basic version the Java developers user but with iSeries functionality added? Didn't that take a monetary investment to do that? I cannot help but to think this strategy was a part of the Developer's Roadmap which has stirred strong opinions on its purpose. When I proposed bringing WDSCi into our shop, the Java development staff protested on the basis it would cost us $5,000 per workstation. I had to prove that iSeries developers would not be charged for it. I wonder how many times this same situation has played out in IBM shops and just because IBM didn't market the tool. I believe WDSCi hasn't been widely adopted for many reason of one was IBM's lack of proper marketing strategy linking it to moving toward Java away from RPG. Rational is different though. Developing software is larger than the individual programs we write. Project management and making sure all the functions for successful implementations across a multi-tiered application are completed is what products like Rational do great at. So maybe we the question to pose to IBM is: You say the i5 is a part of your long term strategy, however, there are no plans to have a Rational implementation on the iSeries. Wouldn't it make sense to bring the i5 into the Rational fold? Why is it when I think of the future of the i5 I think back to the movie "The Secret Window"? The main character in the movie self-destructed within his own identity. ("A Rose By Any Other Name")

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            • #7
              Weaving WebSphere: Rationalizing the IBM Development Tools

              ** This thread discusses the article: Weaving WebSphere: Rationalizing the IBM Development Tools **
              Joe said: "And a couple other IDEs might need looking into, notably Sun's Java Studio Enterprise (JSE 7) and Borland's JBuilder 2005. We may actually have to have a head-to-head IDE competition later in the year. What do you think?" An IDE comparison/competition would be excellent, but it's a large subject. And I think you'd have to look at BEA's Weblogic Workshop (which runs on both Windows and Red Hat Linux.) Sam

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              • #8
                Weaving WebSphere: Rationalizing the IBM Development Tools

                ** This thread discusses the article: Weaving WebSphere: Rationalizing the IBM Development Tools **
                jsherwood: Isn't WDSCi the exact same base product the WDSC basic version the Java developers user but with iSeries functionality added? Didn't that take a monetary investment to do that? Good point. Minor correction: WDSC is built on WSSD, WDSC/AE is build on WSAD. And now, WSSD is renamed to RWD and WSAD is renamed to RAD. But the point is still valid: IBM manages to sell the base product and get income that way. But the integration to the iSeries is the part that Rational seems to be wanting no part of, and that's the part that won't generate any revenue. A non-iSeries developer won't make their decision based on whether Rational includes iSeries hooks or not. So IBM is going to have to make a business decision to include Rational support for the iSeries, and then the question is where the money comes from. Joe

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                • #9
                  Weaving WebSphere: Rationalizing the IBM Development Tools

                  ** This thread discusses the article: Weaving WebSphere: Rationalizing the IBM Development Tools **
                  I use WDSc, and I'm confused. I've sat through demos of WBI, and I'm confused. I've read this article, and I'm confused. The only thing I'm not confused about is that the Rational products cost bucks. Big bucks. As interested as I am in "round trip modeling", it will be a while before we take it seriously. As for head to head JDE competition, don't they do that at JavaWorld?

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                  • #10
                    Weaving WebSphere: Rationalizing the IBM Development Tools

                    ** This thread discusses the article: Weaving WebSphere: Rationalizing the IBM Development Tools **
                    Welcome to the jungle.... The basis behind the great IBM debate ... to paraphrase a famous quote ... "To iSeries or not to iSeries?" (*GRIN*)

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                    • #11
                      Weaving WebSphere: Rationalizing the IBM Development Tools

                      ** This thread discusses the article: Weaving WebSphere: Rationalizing the IBM Development Tools **
                      Joe, why did you say "we all know that iSeries change management tools are barely adequate at best at handling non-iSeries components?" I had understood that TurnOver from Softlanding was a more-than-adequate native iSeries change management product. Not that I work for, promote, or otherwise benefit from this product. Indeed, I've never used it. However I had a colleague who switched companies and moved into a position that utilized this product extensively. From what I heard, it was the real deal, with full test environments, team support, code check-in/check-out, promotion to live, audit trails, the works. Also, Softlanding ran extensive promotions for their stuff at one time. Conceptually it would be similar to the Open Source CVS system.

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                      • #12
                        Weaving WebSphere: Rationalizing the IBM Development Tools

                        ** This thread discusses the article: Weaving WebSphere: Rationalizing the IBM Development Tools **
                        Sam, You might find the following review of 4 IDE's, which included IBM RSA, good reading. I believe Sun's Java Studio Enterprise is also included in the review. Here is the link if you're interested: http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/...3TCjava_1.html

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                        • #13
                          Weaving WebSphere: Rationalizing the IBM Development Tools

                          ** This thread discusses the article: Weaving WebSphere: Rationalizing the IBM Development Tools **
                          Brian, I neither confirm nor deny the abilities of SoftLanding (or MKS or any other company) in this regard. It's been my experience that most change management vendors have perhaps been able to integrate some IFS support into their products. Is this sufficient for actual change management of a multi-tiered development project? I don't know. And remember, CVS is most emphatically NOT a change management system, it's just a source versioning system, with no capabilities of promoting object through development, test, QA and production, much less handling multiple releases and distributions. All you can do is check out source and check it back in. A real multi-tiered CMS would allow you (I think!) to group together everything for a program: RPG, display file for green screen, associated JSPs and UI definition for web, and so on. You'd be able to move these objects in lockstep from one environment to another, and also combine them with other modifications to create releases. The releases would eventually be able to be bundled for distribution to remote sites. Do any of the iSeries vendors do this? If so, they should chime in here and let un know! Remember though, that was just one small comment in the whole article. I'm much more interested in a way to do round-trip model-based engineering for a multi-tiered program. That to me would be the sweetest thing: be able to define much of your rules (and certainly the inter-tier interface) at the model level, deploy it to whatever platforms I need, and then walk that set of objects through the various phases of development. That would be a true challenge to the Microsoft drag-n-drop programming philosophy. Joe

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