General Guidelines

[WalterPScott]

I manage a group of 23 developers for a large insurance company,
responsible for in house applications to support business needs. We
are looking at transitioning from RPG and DB2. We want to keep the
data in DB2 for at least a while, but we want to start developing the
front ends for a windows environment. VB.Net seems a logical fit for
us and most of our developers seem anxious to head in this direction.
We haven't decided on a development platform yet, so intelligent
feedback from anyone who has made this transition would be appreciated.

Walt

 

[BK]

Welcome the group...

While I've not made as significant a transition as you are facing, I do
have some experience with both DB2 and RPG. We have a lot of our data
in DB2 still and we have a fair amount of RPG code as well. I manage a
small group of .Net developers, most of them came from Microsoft
backgrounds, but one used to be an RPG programmer. While Vb.Net can be
complex, it is relatively easy to become productive in it. The bigger
challenge you will face is the difference between object oriented
versus procedural programming and the visual nature of Windows
interfaces.

As for DB2, that is a rock solid database, no need to get rid of it.
We jokingly say that only 2 things will survive a 3rd World War:
Cockroaches and iSeries DB2 databases. We have developed a lot of web
services to interact with DB2 with web pages as the front end. Vb.Net
can easily work with DB2 (make sure you use V5R3 of Client Access) In
my mind, Vb.Net and DB2 form an incredibly robust solution. Hope this
helps.

BK

BTW, what other platforms are you considering? I have some background
in WebSphere and since you are an IBM shop, that would seem a possibly
fit as well.

 

[Cor Ligthert [MVP]]

Walter,

Don't forget to ask your question as well in the newsgroup.

Microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.adonet because I thought that there are
some guys with current experience with DB2.

My experience is to far back in time to give you a real good advice. Be
aware that you have to retrain your developers mentaly. Some advices.

Check if they don't use to much modules and shared classes. They will gladly
do because of the environment they come from.
Start direct to use Crystal Reports for printing and showing.
Start direct to use Source Save.

As last Visual Studio .Net is the development environment that covers
everything in a way a developer should think, so that decission is in my
idea not difficult.

Cor

 

[Guest]

(e-mail address removed) wrote in @j72g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

I manage a group of 23 developers for a large insurance company,
responsible for in house applications to support business needs. We
are looking at transitioning from RPG and DB2. We want to keep the
data in DB2 for at least a while, but we want to start developing the
front ends for a windows environment. VB.Net seems a logical fit for
us and most of our developers seem anxious to head in this direction.
We haven't decided on a development platform yet, so intelligent
feedback from anyone who has made this transition would be appreciated.

If your team is familiar with RPG - perhaps you can use RPG for .NET?
Microsoft .NET's CLR is language independent and as such there are several
3rd party languages available that are fully compatible with .NET.

Here is a RPG language for .NET:

http://www.asna.com/pages/products_NET_AVR.aspx

Regardless of what language you use the compiled assemblies will work in
any .NET project.

Otherwise VB.NET is a great language to use.

 

[Guest]

(e-mail address removed) wrote in @j72g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

I manage a group of 23 developers for a large insurance company,
responsible for in house applications to support business needs. We
are looking at transitioning from RPG and DB2. We want to keep the
data in DB2 for at least a while, but we want to start developing the
front ends for a windows environment. VB.Net seems a logical fit for
us and most of our developers seem anxious to head in this direction.
We haven't decided on a development platform yet, so intelligent
feedback from anyone who has made this transition would be appreciated.

I forgot to mention - take a look at LLBLGen Pro - it's a OR/M mapper. It's
great for building a solid data layer.. better than writing all your own
classes (plus the code it generates is great quality ... very bug free).

 

[Guest]

Ack,
LLBLGEN is superb!

guy

(e-mail address removed) wrote in @j72g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:



I forgot to mention - take a look at LLBLGen Pro - it's a OR/M mapper. It's
great for building a solid data layer.. better than writing all your own
classes (plus the code it generates is great quality ... very bug free).