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!

A few years ago, Salesforce.com came out with a product called AppExchange that allowed independent software vendors to host their applications on Salesforce.com for customers to use. It’s the software as a service (SaaS) approach that there is a lot of talk — and some think a lot of hype — around.

I mention this because Magic Software, a System i vendor that develops products around helping IT run in sync with business goals. Last week, the company announced that one of its signature products, iBOLT, would be offered on Salesforce.com.

Of course this leads me to wonder about whether there are a lot of System i companies out there that are Salesforce.com customers, and in particular if they use Salesforce.com for SaaS purposes.

I looked around and noticed that J.D. Edwards, one of the biggest System i ISVs, is also part of the site, and that Salesforce.com is definitely pitching the idea of being able to do SaaS of any kind of so-called “legacy” systems through them.

We asked a few of our experts what experience they may have had running SaaS products on i, and a few responded that they didn’t have experience. So generally speaking, we can safely assume that this is still pretty new. However, Jim Mason of ebt-now shared that he has worked with customers on Salesforce.com using standard ETL tools Informatica and Data Stage which essentially do the same thing that iBolt does.

When asked about any concerns about user friendliness and security when using a product like iBolt, Mason responded,

“If you are trying to do the replication real-time, experience has shown high variances in actual performance often over the Web and proprietary networks. Properly done, security shouldn’t be an issue. Like many good ETL tools, iBolt appears to minimize programming by using visual editors to create the data maps between the data source and the data target.”

He also elaborated that the advantage and attractiveness of a product such as iBolt includes the decreased technical skill requirements to operate the program compared to locally-installed programs. However, he also noted that “debugging connection or performance problems to an SaaS application can be challenging, even for the vendors.”

With the growth in popularity of cloud computing, Mason thinks that SaaS products have a growing role to play. In fact, he’s banking on it. His company is rolling out SaaS web solutions for small businesses in the coming year that will focus on online Web collaboration without programming, simple Web stores with simple data transfers for item catalog and sales data, online web meetings and collaboration tools, and online Web databases and applications that can be synchronized with local databases using export/import in batch mode.

Magic has some customer testimonials, but I’m curious if there’s anyone else out there who is using Salesforce.com, and in what capacity. And if not, why not.

Associate Editor Leah Rosin contributed much of this report.

IBM has published a Redbook paper on its Express Runtime Web Environments for i5/OS, a nifty and free way to help System i users to install and configure a Web environment for their System i applications.

The product is an embedded part of i5/OS and has been since V5R4. In addition, users can also download it from IBM’s site. The 20-page paper gives an overview of the product in addition to detailing line-by-line commands on how to get it up and running.

What the product does is install a bunch of programs — such as V5R4 iSeries Access for Web and WebSphere Application Server Express — and configures them to get users started. It also includes a few sample Web applications to play around with, all of which modernize flght400, a common sample RPG application that does flight reservations.

Zend now has software in beta called the Platform 5250 Bridge that basically allows you to use this interface:

to access data from these 5250 data screens:

In other words, Zend wants you to be able to use PHP to access those green screens. How it works: The Platform 5250 Bridge sets up contact between a PHP script and a green screen application. The bridge then converts green screen data into an XML format that can be entered into the PHP program or put into an HTML format that users can work with.

The beta program is available now. When it goes general availability later this year, it won’t be free, but users will be able to try out a one-user license for free. From iDevelop:

We’re really looking forward to having the chance to play with this capability, but the demonstrations we’ve seen so far have been impressive. While refacing green-screen applications is not necessarily a good long-term solution, it’s certainly a step along the road, and sometimes may be all you need. With the many additional capabilities that the PHP environment offers, this tool can do much for very little in the way of cash outlay.

Chris Hird has a post detailing how he upgraded his WebSphere Development Studio Client, and it’s interesting to see all the steps and downloads he had to endure in order to get there.

Hird said he’d been working with Remote Systems Explorer (RSE), a System i plug-in to WebSphere, for a couple months. The plug-in allows System i users to do such things as view and respond to System i messages from within WebSphere and compare and merge editors for System i source code.

Looking to upgrade was an issue, however, as Hird was having trouble using the upgrade function within RSE’s integrated development environment (IDE). But eventually he figured out a way to do it, although it took some serious time. Check out the post.

A piece of System i web development software now has the ability to create programs that connect to Microsoft SQL Server databases and to MySQL databases on Windows, Linux and Unix platforms.

Business Computer Design International, Inc.’s WebSmart ILE v6.6 also has a new HTML editor to help programmers create applications and templates to create HTML, JavaScript and CSS files.

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.

John Ghrist over at the System i Network says that for Web applications to really take off on the platform, there needs to be a solid Web analytics tool on i5/OS.

Ghrist talks about how having Web applications is nifty and all, but if you can’t measure its success, then its success is essentially zero. He argues that although there are plenty of third-party Web analytic software tools out there, it would be great if that was already included in the hardware and software when you buy your System i.

A System i software company has added Web-based reporting and dashboards to its existing Web development application.

PlanetJ Corp., based in San Diego, announced that its WOWFusion Charts would integrate with the WOW (Web Object Wizard) software to add Flash-based Web reporting and a graphical dashboard tool.

The software can run on top of WebSphere Application Server and Apache Tomcat. WOWFusion Charts has been in beta testing with customers and is now available for a 30-day trial.

Business Computer Design International Inc. announced today that it is putting the newest version of its WebSmart ILE System i Web application development software into beta.

BCD says WebSmart ILE is part of more than 1,700 System i organizations. Version 6.5 includes a new HTML editor, an FTP client to manage Web development files, and the ability to open multiple files in one window using tabs. Other new features include increased support for editing JavaScript files, as well as templates and support to run in more languages.

The software ranges from $5,800 to $11,500. The WebSmart ILE 6.5 beta is available for download now.