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IMO, you are taking the best approach already by "debating". There is no universal best approach. The method that is best suited for your shop, is one that will have to be determined by the circumstances. Without knowing much more about your individual situation, I would recommend that you find out as much as possible about as many products and methods as you can. Narrow your choices to five or less, and then make a final selection. Dave
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Subfiles and Web Pages
Do you know of a book that shows any of these methods being used from the AS/400 to generate a subfile that is updated in a browser session. -
Subfiles and Web Pages
Hello, I agree with David, there are many ways to approach this and you have to pick what's best for your shop. We are a huge data queue shop so we employed them to solve a similar challenge. From our web site, a user can request pricing on up to 500 items at a time. The pricing requests are sent to the 400 via a FIFO data queue, the 400 crunches the numbers using RPG logic, and then the prices are sent back to the web via a keyed data queue. Java then reads the data queue and displays the info in html. It's very fast, too. Hope this helps a little, Kevin.Comment
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Subfiles and Web Pages
To me, a key question is does subfile fashion mean page up/downs, or just an inelegant vertical dump as I've seen so often in web pages. When I wrote the server for Jobs400 (which I happened to check on the other day after several months and I no longer see it), the search results came back in subfile fashion, that is, a set number of records per page and forward and backward navigation buttons. Updating and deleting was app controllable. The key to that was sending the beginning and ending keys along with the data and using them if a forward or backward response was returned. The code was interface independent, I didn't know or care whether it was a forward button on a web page or F8 on a green screen that indicated forward, I just setgt on the high key and read on for x records that met the criteria, also in the message. Communications was via a program call that on the AS/400 was a shell around the data queue I/O commands. The RPG business logic server programs called them to read/write to the web server, green screen, or AS/400 batch programs on the other side. Just a more flexible extension of the service program approach, I think is fair to say. I don't have an end to end code example, as it used a third party web server. rdComment
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Subfiles and Web Pages
What I am really looking for, is a recommended book or books that show how to use these various methods as well as possibly some web sites that have working applications to see how the various methods work. For instance, we have the E-RPG book from Midrange computing and that helped with creating things like forms and some database driven programs, but is woefully lacking in any kind of subfile example at least from what I can tell. I really appreciate the responses, especially since it lets me know that what I want to do is possible, but it isn't so much an answer as to "how" to do this I am looking for, but more a nudge in the right direction in order to start the learning process.Comment
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Subfiles and Web Pages
Have a look at some the articles by Don Denoncourt eg Bridge the Gap to Java with JSP Accessing RPG from JavaServer PagesComment
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Subfiles and Web Pages
Will, We went through this struggle about 3 months ago. Here are the avenues that I looked at: Websphere. Wow, this is a very expensive and complicated solution. It takes a lot of learning to get up to speed on WS. Unless you have a third part application that requires it, I'd stay away from this one. CGI development from scratch. I went to a class at COMMON last year and was pretty hyped up about this. Turns out it's a huge investment in labor to do it. To talk to a web page you MUST use APIs and those are awkward and difficult to learn. Debugging is a nightmare. I tried this at first but gave up in exasperation. (I've been programming for 30 years and know 19 languages and would never wish this experience on anyone.) Use the CGIDEV2. This looked like the most promising route. It's a free product from IBM in Italy. It takes all of the headaches out of dealing with APIs by building a comprehensive set of wrappers that you can use in your RPG programs. However, it's still a lot of grunt work to make a program come together. It took me about 3 weeks to get my first program debugged and running. I felt real good when it was completed and running but didn't want to do another one. I then tried BCD's Websmart. It's a development environment that is entirely on the PC. You develop programs from templates in a script language and Websmart turns it into RPG ILE and compiles it for you. I had my first program up (an in production!) in less than 4 hours. It's a great product and priced very reasonably. Moral of the story? Get a tool to help you. I chose Websmart because I've had 10 years experience with BCD and love their company and products. You may choose another product, but don't try to do it naked, get a tool. chuck Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer. "willhud"Comment
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Subfiles and Web Pages
I agree with Chuck's advice that using the CGIDEV2 tools makes the process much easier...if you are limited to using RPG. However, if you have the ability to use C on the AS/400 it is even easier yet. In C you just use STDIN and STDOUT with the printf and fread functions. It wouldn't be difficult to write some quick C functions just to handle the HTML "input" and "output". With those in place you could still use RPG for all the file I/O functions that are better handled there. HTH, JeffComment
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Subfiles and Web Pages
Thanks for all the responses, it is greatly appreciated. Does this CGIDEV2 have a web site? What is the learning curve like with it? We know RPG and some basic HTML, but not C or Java.Comment
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Subfiles and Web Pages
I requested some info from BCD on BCD's Websmart. Are there other application tools like this on the market? Any recommendations?Comment
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Subfiles and Web Pages
You might even try Webfacing, or even the 5250 Gateway! DaveComment
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Subfiles and Web Pages
We are wanting to write a program that reads a file on our AS/400 and dynamically creates a web page that the user can update in subfile fashion. i.e. Product Qty A 2 B 3 C 10 The number of products would be variable, but between 100 and 400 different items. The user would see our suggested quantity and then the AS/400 program would get back their order with their changed quantity. We would want to be able to send error messages back. For instance, say Product C had to be ordered in multiplies of 10. We are debating the best way to approach this. ODBC, 5250 Screen Scraping, Notes, Web Shpere. This is our first exploration into this. Does anyone have any suggestions for a book/books that would show examples of this. We have the E-RPG book, but it doesn't mention sending and receiving subfile type data. Any help in pointing us in the right direction is greatly appreciated.Comment
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