Php chart (clickable) using BCD's smartchart, php, html and JQuery

[jamief]

Did I mention it downloads a multiple tabbed xml file that loads up with excel?
Jquery date pickers-- bars are clickable to load detailed scrollable subfile.

I so should have done this sooner! If you have some free time take a peek at http://www.mybcdsoftware.com/ or any of the
other like products on the market. The time savings in creating reports, excel & PDF downloads alone is worth the price of the software.

[Scott Klement]

Re: Php chart (clickable) using BCD's smartchart, php, html and JQuery

FWIW, our product, http://www.profoundui.com also has date pickers, charts/graphs, and can download data to Excel.

And it works with both RPG and PHP. Though, I personally think RPG is a much better language for business applications. (I like PHP for traditional web pages, though... not as a GUI front-end to business apps like accounting, healthcare, inventory control, payroll, etc.)

[jamief]

Re: Php chart (clickable) using BCD's smartchart, php, html and JQuery

Thanks for the input Scott....
Yes do your homework, pick the right product for your company and move forward.

I can now forget all about RLU and maybe even subfiles!
All further request for display of data to reports, excel, emails and even PDF's on the fly will go thru PHP.

jamie

[Scott Klement]

Re: Php chart (clickable) using BCD's smartchart, php, html and JQuery

LOL... Forgetting about RLU was easy for me.. I never learned it. In fact, it's pretty unusual that I run across a developer who uses/used RLU.

Subfiles on the other hand... Well, granted, only IBM uses the term "subfile", but some sort of a grid or table widget is available in every UI environment, so although you might call it by different names, you'll never truly escape subfiles.

I gather that you're using WebSmart from BCD. With this tool, is it easy to modernize your existing RPG applications? Or do you have to rewrite everything in PHP? I haven't tried their tool, so I'm not sure how it works, but it seems like it'd be hard to move forward with a solution that doesn't have some way of mass-converting existing applications, or at least preserving them during the transition process.

I know at my prior job, we had something like 5000 programs and more than 30 years of time invested in developing them. I started to rewrite them in a web-centric manner (removing the 5250 code, refactoring the business logic, et al) and I was proud of the results, but it was clear that it was going to be a very long time before everything got modernized. It was getting to be a big problem.

Anyway, just curious how WebSmart PHP addresses this, or if it's stricly for developing new apps?

[gio.cot]

Re: Php chart (clickable) using BCD's smartchart, php, html and JQuery

Hi Scott

which suggestion(after your experience), could you give to some one like me that have old apps 5250 and would modernize it ? i whish i could have a web interface (that could be used also in tablet and smarphone) and have business logic separed that run on iSeries.
Thanks in advance

[Scott Klement]

Re: Php chart (clickable) using BCD's smartchart, php, html and JQuery

gio.cot,

I work for a vendor that sells software that does exactly what you are asking for. I chose this vendor to work for because I think they have the best tools for modernization. Our product lets you keep your existing RPG code, and just access rich GUI apps as F-specs, with very little changes. I don't want to fill up these forums with "advertisements" or positioning statements for our products, though, so may I simply suggest that you download our product and try it? We'll give you a 30 day trial in which to see if you like it.

Sign up here. The product is called "ProfoundUI":

http://www.profoundui.com

[jamief]

Re: Php chart (clickable) using BCD's smartchart, php, html and JQuery

Sorry - Scott traveling this week.

BCD has an add-on tool (at a co$t) http://www.bcdsoftware.com/iseries400solutions/presto/that does convert existing rpg programs.
I am using BCD mostly to recreate the intranet and allow for an easy external order entry for customers.
because of this I am writing everything from semi scratch. BCD has a handful of templates to chose
from and this allows me to quickly create and modify them.

For example I can create a page at a time subfile over 1 to ??? files with select omit criteria,
position to/limit (with add, delete, update pages) with a choice of 4 or 5 pre-created CSS layouts in about 2 1/2 minutes.


Baby steps...

[Scott Klement]

Re: Php chart (clickable) using BCD's smartchart, php, html and JQuery

Last I looked at Presto, what it did was act like a 5250 emulator. Then, it could apply transformations to the 5250 data stream to make it look nicer in a browser window. My company has a similar product called Genie, does the same thing,.

IMHO, this sort of tool is a nice stop-gap, but it's very limited. Basically, it's very hard to take something that's just a grid of 132x27 text and try to figure out what it means and how it should look. And no matter what you figure out, you're still limited to only being able to do what's on the screen at one time. For example, if you wanted a grid ("subfile") with a true scrollbar, like PC/Web apps have, you can't do that with a screen that begins life as 5250.

So, although we have a product like this, and I think it's a great way to begin to transition from 5250 to web (since you can't do all that at once.. it's going to take a long time to convert things) and I think it's a lot better than using "green screen" 5250 emualtor like Client Access -- it's not really a "modern GUI interface". It's just a temporary fix until you can put a modern GUI on things.

Your WebSmart is an example of a modern GUI -- but, of course, it's PHP. And I don't think PHP is a good language for business apps. It's great for web pages, but not so much web apps, just my opinion.

Our ProfoundUI product is an actual native GUI for RPG programs.... very easy to use. And it can convert your existing programs to modern GUI (in a web browser) screens to get started -- and thereafter, you can maintain and enhance them as modern displays. (Or start new displays from scratch, without converting anything.) Works great, and has a very small learning curve.

I guess I was asking if BCD had something like that, too... but I'm thinking they probably don't? They probably want you to use Presto, and gradually rewrite everything in PHP from the ground up? That'll be awesome when it's done, but the transition time is probably very long if you have a large application. Not trying to say anything bad about BCD, I've worked with them in the past, and they're a good company.. but if people are interested, I wanted to let them know that Profound Logic's solution can do modern GUIs in RPG, and convert existing programs very simply, and requires no knowledge of HTML, JavaScript, etc.

And it doesn't sound like BCD has somethig like that.

[Marcel Sarrasin]

Re: Php chart (clickable) using BCD's smartchart, php, html and JQuery

I work for BCD. Our Presto and WebSmart products have been mentioned in this post and I felt it was necessary to clarify some points made about them.

WebSmart PHP isn?t intended to be used for mass-converting existing RPG applications, as Jamie pointed out our Presto product does that. WebSmart PHP is a great option for creating new web applications or for creating a web front end for modular RPG code. Not every web development tool has to handle mass-converting existing RPG programs, that?s not everyone?s goal. I discussed our approach for refacing green screens in a webinar I recently did that you can find here http://www.bcdsoftware.com/ibmiwebinars/industry/

We think PHP is a very good language for business web applications. We think RPG is as well. It depends on the customer's needs, infrastructure and skillset. We work with many companies that produce great business web applications with PHP, and I?m sure Zend knows of many as well. One of the great things about PHP is you can integrate existing RPG logic with it. So even if you use PHP on the front end it?s up to you whether you want to handle your main business logic in PHP or RPG.

Our Presto product is a web GUI for 5250 green screen applications. You are not limited to the 5250 datastream as it is possible to access DB2 and other data that is not part of the underlying program. The datastream is just the starting point and the possibilities to further enhance the look and functionality of your screens are almost endless (using our visual editor or optionally directly accessing the HTML/CSS/JS). Our customers create grids with Presto that have true scrollbars. I?ll give it to Scott that with their approach it is somewhat easier. Having said that, we don?t find them to be that important to our customers. Different companies have different needs.

While some companies use Presto as a stop-gap solution on their road to developing stateless web applications with tools like WebSmart, most are implementing it as a long term approach. Our customers like Presto?s approach because it requires no changes to the 5250 program or source. This makes it easy to modernize hundreds or thousands of screens, even ones you don?t have the source code for, while giving you almost unlimited flexibility to further enhance them.

We offer a few different approaches to modernization and we?re not locked-in to any one approach.

@Gio.cot - I highly recommend you try our Presto product since you want a web interface to 5250 apps. That?s exactly what Presto does and it also has support for tablets and smartphones. You can see a short video and download it from here http://www.bcdsoftware.com/richgui

@jamief - Thank you for using WebSmart and for sharing the great examples of work you?ve done with them.

@Scott - Thank you for mentioning BCD?s a good company.

[Viking]

Re: Php chart (clickable) using BCD's smartchart, php, html and JQuery

I have some experience with CNX's Valence product (http://www.cnxcorp.com/valence/) from my last company and am very impressed with what it can do. There was some learning curve and we only used it for new applications, not for converting existing 5250 applications. I've also worked with BCD for many years with their Progen product which is great for creating 5250 programs and their support is the best I've worked with.

@Scott, do you consider CNX Valence to be a competitor to ProfoundUI, and if so would you mind comparing and contrasting the two for us? At my new place I will be interested in choosing a product for modernization at some point.
@Marcel, same question if you don't mind as it relates to Presto, Websmart and Websmart PHP.

Thanks.

[Scott Klement]

Re: Php chart (clickable) using BCD's smartchart, php, html and JQuery

Viking, I'm not familiar with CNX's product, so I'm not going to try to compare/contrast it with Profound's.

I can tell you that Profound's tools are really aimed at RPG programmers (though, we also support PHP...), and we try to make the learning curve as small as possible without sacrificing functionality. But, I think the best way for you to understand it is to download it and give it a try... You can get a free 30 day evaluation by registering on our site:

http://www.profoundui.com

Also, if you want us to give you a quick tour/demo over a GotoMeeting session, we're happy to do that. Contact our sales department, and they'll set you up with a meeting: sales@profoundlogic.com

[Marcel Sarrasin]

Re: Php chart (clickable) using BCD's smartchart, php, html and JQuery

@Viking, we do consider Valence a competitor. It's unfair to Valence for us to compare and contrast to it. We always encourage people to try products so they can reach their own conclusions and prove for themselves if the tools can do what they need and what each vendor says. I can tell you what our products do and if you've used Valence you can probably see where the differences are:
- Presto gives all green screens a web GUI without having to make any RPG, COBOL or DDS source changes. It does this by intercepting the datastream and rendering it on the fly as an HTML/CSS/JS page. You can then further enhance it in the Presto Designer with the visual editor or by accessing the HTML directly. You can see a video at http://www.bcdsoftware.com/richgui
- WebSmart ILE has the same application template approach as ProGen but it's for creating new RPG CGI web applications. Those new web applications can reuse existing RPG business logic. You can develop any type of web application with it. We use jQuery as our JS library but you can also use ExtJS or others.
- WebSmart PHP is the same as WebSmart ILE, including being able to call existing RPG logic, but the templates generate PHP applications and all the logic changes you make in it are done in PHP. There is no proprietary code and PHP is open source and multi-platform. You can see a video of WebSmart ILE and PHP here http://www.bcdsoftware.com/choices.

You can also contact us here and ask for me directly or speak to one of our account reps and we'll be more than happy to discuss Presto and WebSmart with you further http://www.bcdsoftware.com/bcd/contact.htm