Customer Reviews

e-RPG: Building AS/400 Web Applications with RPG

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book is perfect for any AS/400 programmer who would like to extend his knowledge to include writing CGI programs for the world wide web. Bradley starts by explaining what is really happening when you click a URL, and what happens when you answer web page prompts and press submit. Then it goes on to demonstrate how to program these events in RPG using modern techniques, including ILE concepts.

The book includes a perfect amount of instruction, but for those of use who like to get our hands dirty by "trying now and reading later", the examples are excellent. A CD is included with all of the source needed to use the examples.

One of the examples is a complete "Shopping Cart" application!

Thanks for an excellent job, Bradley!

Bradley Stone's book, "e-RPG", is a must read for any AS/400 (iSeries) RPG developer wanting to make the leap to web development.

Having a background in RPG III green screen programming, I was able to use this excellent resource to configure my AS/400's HTTP server for CGI programming, gain an understanding of RPG IV ILE concepts, use system APIs in my RPG programs, and begin coding RPG CGI web enabled applications.

Brad provides numerous examples, with source code, of procedures that are needed for web development. Following his examples has led me to a basic understanding of HTML and JavaScript that I've been able to build on considerably.

I was immediately able to code a simple "Hello World" web application with RPG, and 3 weeks later I had a more complex functional application that blew my bosses' socks off.

I had great hope for what what I could learn from this book. But it's mostly on and on about little useful how to stuff. At COMMON recently I strolled past the (new publisher cause they said the original went Bankrupt) publisher's booth and they were joking about writing online reviews and testimonials! They must not have known I was there. I looked over his new book hoping it would address the important stuff but it's wasn't much better and it's too expensive to make this mistake again.
If it's the boss's money what the heck. If it's your money then keep looking!

I bought the book at COMMON in San Diego, and read it from cover to cover on the plane back to Nashville.
This is a great book, not only for those of us who are interested in conducting e-business with RPG, but also for those new to API programming. Brad gives some great examples of how to use API's. Brad also includes excellent code examples showing how to write sub-procedures, a boon to the novice RPG programmer.
So if you are an old hand at RPG and need an e-commerce solution, or an RPG newbie looking for those hard to come by concept examples, look no further than e-RPG.

You have to give the author credit for being the first person to publish an accessible book on bringing the iSeries RPG to the web. It succeeds in bringing together the diverse threads required (HTTP Servers, RPG, CL, SQL, HTML, Javascript, iSeries Security etc) to build RPG-based web pages. However this book is not without its faults.

The overview of HTML, and Javascript is good, but there are dozens of better sources on the web. The entire discussion of the HTTP server is out of date and dangerously misleading if you are unclear on the recent developments of iSeries HTTP servers. This is not the author's fault, but the chapter should be re-written or removed. In the accompanying code, the author uses his own wrappers over IBM API's which are similar to industry standard CGIDEV2, but not compatible. His method also encourages the deprecated practice of embedding static HTML into RPG code. Also the author's shameless self-promotion is an embarrassment to the industry (you don't have to look far for examples)

Before buying the book again, I would do a better web search because most of the material covered in this book is available elsewhere and often in better depth, unfortunately scattered on different web sites. However if you feel you must own a glossy covered book on iSeries RPG web development there are not many other choices.


g the iSeries RPG to the web.

I have mixed reviews about this book. I had alot of good information, but still left me with many unanswered questions. The main problem with this book is that he only shows you one way to do things. There's more than one way to display a web page, but he only shows you the dynamic approach. Which is fine, if you have small web pages to load. What if you want to store your pages externally and you want to use Front Page to create your pages. There is no mention or consideration for this. He never mentions the fact that you can redirect the browser to an external page and not have to build it in the RPG pgm. Also he only shows you the Javascript approach for a shopping cart and cookies. Well, what if you want to use RPG for this instead. He doesn't even mention the fact of using the "HTTP_COOKIE" environment variable for cookies. Also, There was not enough elaboration regarding server configuration. It's a good starter book, but you will quickly outgrow it as I did.

An excellent book that covers everything you need to start using your AS/400 and RPG to serve content to the web. I especially appreciated the sections on configuring the AS/400 to be a web server and how the HTTP api's work.

Like many RPG programmers I'm faced with having to update my skill set to learn new technologies such as Java, html, etc. This book is helping to make that transition easier by showing me how to use the strong data-handling features of the AS/400 and RPG with the web interface of CGI.

I highly recommend this book to any RPG programmer wanting to become more familiar with web-enabled programming. You not only get a great book and companinon cd with usable examples, but a great web site with an eRPG forum where you can go for help.

Many thanks to Mr. Stone!

The book is easy to understand, and very useful in terms of RPG and CGI concepts. Using this book, I was able to create my web site using RPG & CGI in short time. The example used in the book also give me clear idea of POST and GET Methods. If you want to know CGI programming in simple and efficient way, this book is it.

Brad has written a great book here and it nails the topics that I think it was intended for. I know enough HTML to be dangerous and love RPGIV and ILE. My recent Java course has pushed me to open up the eRPG book more and more. Now that I'm not intimidated by CGI, I realize how easy this is to learn and produce. If I, a third year programmer, can get this stuff running just from reading this book then anyone can.

In addition to the book though, Brad has been great about answering email questions and I hit two of his AS/400 sites constantly for shareware and open source code.

Thanks Brad. I'm a big hit at the office showing people what I've learned from you and your book. It's a shame we didn't get into this early, we are currently dumping a ton of money (that's 7 figures) into an outsourced Java eCommerce site!

Our boss was ready to outsource our web applications until the DP staff talked him out of it. We'd read Bradley's book and he broke it down into understandable parts and pieces and it made us really want to do it ourselves. Without his book, I know we wouldn't have had the confidence to go forward with the project. Many thanks!