web to 400 communicaiton methods
You conveniently forget that this solution is for a company which has chosen NT as their web server. You come in and tell them that the AS/400 will be the server because you say so, and you're the one out the door, not me. I'm not a consultant, I have a job which has nothing to do with Strategi, and I'm basing my comments on my experience with Strategi over the last three years to address a specific request for a solution with NT. Except you never even addressed the stated problem and how you would solve it. I have no problem with you addressing your one problem, that of tying an entrenched NT system with an AS/400, even though I would still opt for servlets and JSP rather than CGI. There is no viable reason not to use servlets, a competent programmer can learn how to program them in a week. In fact, I give presentations at COMMON that teach the basics in an hour and a half. As for the repeated "you don't sell" comments, you're the only one selling something in here, even though you give base stuff away to create a market. This is where you're way offbase Ralph. The only thing I "sell" is consulting for my revitalization architecture, which has no bearing on this discussion, since it does something your Strategi solution CANNOT do: put EXISTING AS/400 programs on the web quickly and cleanly. The servlet/JSP architecture which I recommend for accessing data as opposed to the Strategi kludge is completely non-proprietary and completely free (unlike Strategi) and has nothing to do with my PBD packages. It's from Sun and IBM, Ralph, not from Pluta Brothers Design. As I said, we implemented it in one day, and they had no problem parsing through the HTML to retrieve data or stuff data. But again, since XML is a holy grail, parsing through XML text is ok, but not through HTML text. The messaging gods have spoken. XML tags can change just as much as HTML tags can change. Parsing through text is parsing through text. If you truly believe that, then you might want to read a primer on XML. HTML has FORMATTING tags, which do nothing to actually identify the data within the stream. XML, on the other hand, has data definition tags which identify each individual field within the data stream. They do NOT change. There are no formatting instructions in XML; that belongs to an XSL (an XML Style Sheet). An XSL can translate the same XML document to HTML, WML, PDF or whatever else may come down the pipe, but you have no fear of losing the original data. There are a number of other benefits to be derived from XML, but if you don't understand the basics, the others are pretty arcane. Perhaps I read wrong about generating HTML from programs, and perhaps every example of a web page I've seen coming from the AS/400 is pathetic for some other reason? The ability to put a quality web page out in conjunction with business data is something that has to be learned over time; few people do it well, as it is a synthesis of two widely divergent skill sets. However, it can be done, but it doesn't need something as convoluted as your approach. Instead, a simple design and the use of CSS or frames and you can have highly professional pages without any hassle. src="//www.zappie.net/java/_derived/index.htm_cmp_zero110_vbtn_p.gif" width="140" height="60" border="0" alt="Java400.net - Java/400 Freeware" align="middle"> Java400.Net - where the AS/400 speaks Java with an RPG accent Home of PBD2.0, the color=red>FREE Java/400 Client/Server color=blue>Revitalization Toolkit
You conveniently forget that this solution is for a company which has chosen NT as their web server. You come in and tell them that the AS/400 will be the server because you say so, and you're the one out the door, not me. I'm not a consultant, I have a job which has nothing to do with Strategi, and I'm basing my comments on my experience with Strategi over the last three years to address a specific request for a solution with NT. Except you never even addressed the stated problem and how you would solve it. I have no problem with you addressing your one problem, that of tying an entrenched NT system with an AS/400, even though I would still opt for servlets and JSP rather than CGI. There is no viable reason not to use servlets, a competent programmer can learn how to program them in a week. In fact, I give presentations at COMMON that teach the basics in an hour and a half. As for the repeated "you don't sell" comments, you're the only one selling something in here, even though you give base stuff away to create a market. This is where you're way offbase Ralph. The only thing I "sell" is consulting for my revitalization architecture, which has no bearing on this discussion, since it does something your Strategi solution CANNOT do: put EXISTING AS/400 programs on the web quickly and cleanly. The servlet/JSP architecture which I recommend for accessing data as opposed to the Strategi kludge is completely non-proprietary and completely free (unlike Strategi) and has nothing to do with my PBD packages. It's from Sun and IBM, Ralph, not from Pluta Brothers Design. As I said, we implemented it in one day, and they had no problem parsing through the HTML to retrieve data or stuff data. But again, since XML is a holy grail, parsing through XML text is ok, but not through HTML text. The messaging gods have spoken. XML tags can change just as much as HTML tags can change. Parsing through text is parsing through text. If you truly believe that, then you might want to read a primer on XML. HTML has FORMATTING tags, which do nothing to actually identify the data within the stream. XML, on the other hand, has data definition tags which identify each individual field within the data stream. They do NOT change. There are no formatting instructions in XML; that belongs to an XSL (an XML Style Sheet). An XSL can translate the same XML document to HTML, WML, PDF or whatever else may come down the pipe, but you have no fear of losing the original data. There are a number of other benefits to be derived from XML, but if you don't understand the basics, the others are pretty arcane. Perhaps I read wrong about generating HTML from programs, and perhaps every example of a web page I've seen coming from the AS/400 is pathetic for some other reason? The ability to put a quality web page out in conjunction with business data is something that has to be learned over time; few people do it well, as it is a synthesis of two widely divergent skill sets. However, it can be done, but it doesn't need something as convoluted as your approach. Instead, a simple design and the use of CSS or frames and you can have highly professional pages without any hassle. src="//www.zappie.net/java/_derived/index.htm_cmp_zero110_vbtn_p.gif" width="140" height="60" border="0" alt="Java400.net - Java/400 Freeware" align="middle"> Java400.Net - where the AS/400 speaks Java with an RPG accent Home of PBD2.0, the color=red>FREE Java/400 Client/Server color=blue>Revitalization Toolkit
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