Over a year after IBM’s new Enterprise Generation Language (EGL) was launched, and following IBM’s own iSeries EGL tutorial publication, the EGL Cafe has opened. The site launch occurred after IBM’s Rational Software Developer Conference (RSDC) last week in Orlando, Fla.

New to the blogosphere (but not to i), Joe Pluta has launched his own EGL and i blog on the site. Pluta’s June 11, 2008, entry expounds the potential of EGL to help i developers everywhere:

By combining a procedural syntax with the concept of hiding complexity, EGL does what i developers have been asking for: it gives them a clean, consistent way to write web applications where they can concentrate on the business logic rather than the plumbing. In many ways, EGL is the spiritual successor to the 5250. While it far surpasses the 5250 in rich user experience, in many ways it’s as easy, if not easier, to use than the old green screen SDA. Combine that with a carefully crafted and deceptively simple CALL Interface, and EGL does for the web what display files did for the green screen.

And it’s clear that Pluta has been on board the EGL bandwagon for some time. In April 2008 he published a lengthy article explaining the niche the new programming language fills: Developing EGL Applications for the System i. In his EGL and i blog, Pluta explained that he intends to help i users learn how to work with this new language while taking advantage of their years of business logic experience.

… i shops already have business logic — logic that they’ve spent years (even decades!) developing — and the best initial use of EGL in those shops is exposing that logic, either directly as browser-based web applications or — moving to the true SOA approach — as web services that can be consumed by other internal and external clients. Then, they can combine that newly enabled business logic with all the rich application features of EGL to create new integrated applications they never dreamed of.

And my goal will be to explain how to do that quickly and productively.

If you’re saying, “Hold on a second? What’s EGL again?” You might find the video interview with EGL language architect Tim Wilson helpful.

But, if you’ve been paying attention to this new language, let us know. Leave your comments about your feelings, insights, or opinions about EGL. If you have experience using EGL on i, consider submittng a Tip!

The iSeries COBOL programmer explains how to use the INITIALIZE statement for the System i. This is an add-on to an earlier post that had some errors in it, but the new post has corrected them to explain the importance of the function on the platform.

As an example, the post looks at fields within working storage, describing how the INITIALIZE field is meant to reset all of them to either zero if they’re numerical fields, or a space if they’re character fields.

The way that RPG handles files on the System i requires intricate knowledge of how RPG works in order to make sure that references to a certain record field point where they should.

iDevelop has a good post outlining how pointing to the first of a sequence of fields in a record might be a risky venture. It explains that the data should be defined within a data structure in RPG to ensure “contiguous storage.” Check it out.

Check out the “Odds and Ends” column on IT Jungle looking at different issues in dealing with the Integrated File System (IFS).

RPG expert Paul Tuohy says the longtime programming language — whose history dates back to the days of punchcards — is anything but ancient and insists that IBM won’t let it die off.

But there are problems, he said. One of them is backward compatibility. What? Being able to run an RPG program from 30 years ago on today’s System i machine without having to recompile is a problem? Well, yes. Because it works, people are slow to adopt change, and are therefore not taking advantage of the new developments IBM has done with RPG.

Tuohy added that newer technologies like Java should be working in concert with RPG on the System i, not as a replacement. Tuohy suggests using Java to tweak the interface but keeping RPG to handle all the business logic, which he said it’s so good at.

Jon Paris over at iDevelop, a blog of the IBM Systems Magazine Web site, gives a little history lesson regarding RPG and punch cards.

The impetus was a little back-and-forth at a recent Common user group event that had Paris thinking that a lot of people in IT don’t know the background and history of the technology that they’re using. Paris goes into some detail about how RPG today reflects the use of punch cards in the past (for example, in the use of the word “zone” in RPG). He also makes an interesting calculation regarding punch cards and digital music files. Check it out.

Programmers will have new model-based development options when Websydian Web Developer+, the web client for CA Plex, becomes available in December, says co-developer ADC Austin.

According to ADC Austin, this “new development tool enables CA Plex development shops to make direct HTML deployment of existing applications without development, as well as deployment of new applications in a standard J2EE Web server environment.”

Websydian Web Developer+ is currently in a limited beta phase, but will become generally available in December through Websydian, ADC Austin and a network of Websydian and CA partners.

The System i Network has a good column about how there are other languages that the System i can support. It doesn’t have to be all about RPG.

Why is that important? Not a lot of colleges out there are teaching RPG, that’s why. If you want to lure younger people to the benefits of the System i, the notion that you have to know RPG to run it isn’t helping.

I remember very distinctly, the day I was told about a new technology that would someday be commonplace. It was a perfect weather day in northern Alabama, 70 degrees and not a cloud in the sky.