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javawebspheresoaibm-midrangerpg

What are Tips and tricks for an integration with RPG on AS/400?

I want to ask some information to tamtamy community to address an architectural choice. I work on a telecommunication suite, this is based on a proprietary development platform JEE7 oriented (now named, DP). In the requirements analisys phase, a Customer required a strong integration of his AS-IS services in the new products based on our DP. This integration is not a problem.. This topic is our match!

The customer AS-IS services are implemented in IBM RPG program language and they are deployed on a IBM System I (AS/400). Actually they aren't services but a plethora of programms interfaced with an instance of IBM DB2 database. The CRUD operations on database aren't a problem we can use an ORM artifact. Now, we're studing a way to interact with RPG programs. After a preliminary analysis we found different approaches, two are very intersting:

  1. JTOpen, it "is a library of Java classes supporting the client/server and internet programming models to a system running IBM i (or i5/OS or OS/400). The classes can be used by Java applets, servlets, and applications to easily access IBM i data and resources" (by http://jt400.sourceforge.net/). The idea is to develop a module to invoke RPG commands via REST (API).
  2. Use WebSphere on AS/400 to wrap RPG commands via Web Service (directly distributed by IBM) here a tutorial: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27009770&aid=1

We need to understand what solution is better. For example, it's not easy to understand the performance degradation level for both the solution. Can you give us some advices?

Thank you,

Bye

Solution

  • As is usually the case in IT, it depends.

    Option 2 will be quicker and easier, but there are some limitations in what it can support. Though IBM has been steadily removing those limits.

    Note that the document you linked to is considerably out of date. A better reference is the "Moderizing IBM i Applications.." Redbook. Also the Integrated Web Service for IBM i web page.

    The Redbook linked to earlier actually covers both options you mention in Chapter 5 - Interfacing.