ibmi-brunch-learn

Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Has your shop moved away from RPG and Display Files?

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Has your shop moved away from RPG and Display Files?

    I work for a company that has some RPG/CGI for a small internet suite and some Java based GUI applications. The bulk of our system is interactive RPG 5250 based screens that are presented to the users via a screen scraper. Application development hasn't changed much here, modifications to existing programs and development of new programs are still done using RPG and display files, often without separation of business logic and the view.

    I'm curious to know if you work for a company that still uses RPG, but doesn't use the traditional display file to present the bulk of your application.

  • #2
    The shop I worked for from 2008 to 2016 was all green screen using the emulator in IBM iAccess for Windows, with no separation of interface and business logic - though that was mostly about the desire for consistency within the application - which was huge and in part dated back to the 80's.

    The shop I work at now has a number of applications - the older ones are green screen, the newer ones are web based mostly using RPGsp (which is a tool for building RPGLE programs that can build and return web pages).
    For the Web based RPGsp screens, the older ones also have minimal separation of interface and logic, as the same program that builds the screen also handles data posted from that screen.
    Newer ones use separate RPGsp programs to perform updates based on JSON submitted asynchronously from the screen, so there is a bit more separation.

    Comment


    • #3
      We still do some RPGLE and even CL programs with DSPFs, to print labels and do custom things that interact with our Varsity Logistics software, things that don't require a License seat from our ERP System ($$$$)

      Comment


      • #4
        Interesting question... We are currently in a similar situation. Our entire system is still 5250 Green screen (including Varsity Logistics). I am at the beginning stages of modernizing the UI. We did a little of that over the last few years with new "apps" using a CNX Valence. No more 5250 with those. But what about our core applications?

        Why do you ask?

        Comment


        • #5
          Similar to gwilburn, we also have mostly green screen (JDE World 9.3 and also Varsity) but are also using CNX Valence for browser-based apps that use RPG on the backend and HTML/Javascript on the front-end.

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by gwilburn View Post
            Why do you ask?
            I've been working at this shop for many years, and from my first day they wanted to "modernize". They went went down the screen scraper route and haven't changed the way the core applications/screens are written. Now we're back to people wanting to modernize again, although the people above me are having a hard time defining exactly what they mean by that. I know that there are solutions from vendors that can give you web access to your 5250 screens. Perhaps that's all they want, and if so I don't see the way we code things around here changing much.

            Given all the talk over the years about separating business logic from display logic and other technologies (Node.js, PHP...) I was wondering how many shops have the bulk of their UI that isn't 5250 based.

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by Java_RPG_Guy View Post

              I've been working at this shop for many years, and from my first day they wanted to "modernize". They went went down the screen scraper route and haven't changed the way the core applications/screens are written. Now we're back to people wanting to modernize again, although the people above me are having a hard time defining exactly what they mean by that. I know that there are solutions from vendors that can give you web access to your 5250 screens. Perhaps that's all they want, and if so I don't see the way we code things around here changing much.

              Given all the talk over the years about separating business logic from display logic and other technologies (Node.js, PHP...) I was wondering how many shops have the bulk of their UI that isn't 5250 based.
              You should take a look at CNX Valence. Very nice tools for developing new applications... Separates the screen logic from the database/business logic. That doesn't address the database and/or database modernization.

              I guess my problem is that if you have a legacy ERP system (like we do), you're basically rewriting it with the CNX (MVC) approach.

              Comment

              Working...
              X