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Roadmap guides iSeries developers to the Web
By Sarah Kimmel
Monday, November 10, 2003
The push to the Web is nothing
new, especially for iSeries shops that have been hearing IBM tout
WebFacing, WebSphere Development Studio Client (WDSC), and products
like Host Access Transformation Server (HATS) to get their 5250
applications to the Web.
But, rather than throw all of this
technology at customers with the hope that some will bite, IBM is
now offering the iSeries Developer Roadmap, which gives shops a
path to follow in order to give their applications a Web presence,
better architecture, and eventually, greater portability.
“The 5250 environment is
dead. You can move through the iSeries Developer Roadmap at your
own pace, starting and stopping where you want to, but we do encourage
you to move out of the left side (all 5250) and at least into the
middle (where RPG application are on the Web). You can even get
to the right side and be working in Java and still use RPG for your
business logic,” says George Farr, iSeries DevCon keynote
speaker and iSeries eclipse IDE, iSeries education, and RPG compilers
development manager, IBM, Toronto, Canada.
While the 5250 environment in your
shop may be alive and well, the iSeries Developer Roadmap, as well
as the latest enhancements to WDSC, was the highlight of last week’s
iSeries DevCon Conference, a three-day event dedicated to furthering
the knowledge and skills of iSeries programmers and developers.
“This is an iterative way
structure your efforts and get as far down the Roadmap as you need
to be. For most iSeries shops, this will be Step 3, and that’s
a perfect place to be today,” says Phil Coulthard, iSeries
DevCon keynote speaker and iSeries application developer, IBM, Toronto,
Canada.
Step 1: Better tools.
IBM continues to improve the WDSC tooling, including Remote System
Explorer (RSE) and iSeries projects, which provide a more modern
way to do the development work previously accomplished with PDM,
SEU, and SDA. The latest release of WDSC, which shipped on October
17, 2003, offers enhanced RSE and a palette of tools to provide
better quality and performance.
“WDSC may confuse the hell
out of you at first because there are so many components. What is
the right iSeries prescription for you? Well, that depends on who
you are and where you want to go. We are just giving you all the
tools necessary to get there,” says Farr.
Step 2: Better interface.
Using a host integration solution, IBM’s WebFacing Tool, the
rest of the WDSC tooling, HATS, and WebSphere Application Server,
customers can convert their 5250 applications to a Web interface
and move away from the green-screen interface.
Step 3: Better architecture.
“We want you to build a better application and write code
without a workstation aspect. Using the Web tools in WDSC, you can
leverage your existing skills to build a Web application,”
says Coulthard. The iSeries Web tools in WDSC (including Struts
tooling), RSE, Web services, and RPG are the building blocks for
this step.
Step 4: Better portability.
This is the key phase for shops that want to run their applications
on more than just the iSeries. The one catch is that there is a
steeper learning curve; developers will need to know Java and/or
Object Oriented programming. Again, IBM offers Java tooling, such
as the Java editor that comes from Eclipse and is part of WDSC,
to make this road a little smoother.
Step 5: Better scalability.
In this most advanced stage of Web development, shops are using
all of the tooling in Step 4, plus servlets, Java Server Pages,
Enterprise Java Beans, and J2EE to write full-blown Java applications.
“These are awesome technologies,
but you will need more education to use them. Without it, you can
create an application, but you probably won’t be happy with
it,” says Coulthard.
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