IBM Power Ideas Portal
This portal is to open public enhancement requests against IBM Power Systems products, including IBM i. To view all of your ideas submitted to IBM, create and manage groups of Ideas, or create an idea explicitly set to be either visible by all (public) or visible only to you and IBM (private), use the IBM Unified Ideas Portal (https://ideas.ibm.com).
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We invite you to shape the future of IBM, including product roadmaps, by submitting ideas that matter to you the most. Here's how it works:
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Specific links you will want to bookmark for future use
Welcome to the IBM Ideas Portal (https://www.ibm.com/ideas) - Use this site to find out additional information and details about the IBM Ideas process and statuses.
IBM Unified Ideas Portal (https://ideas.ibm.com) - Use this site to view all of your ideas, create new ideas for any IBM product, or search for ideas across all of IBM.
ideasibm@us.ibm.com - Use this email to suggest enhancements to the Ideas process or request help from IBM for submitting your Ideas.
In a "insert generic gui/web interface here of the day" you lose many capabilities, like session visibility in the OS (many systems just runs all in the webserver process losing this aspect), and easy debug capabilities.
IMHO, having a way to describe an abstract rich user interface components should be beneficial to the overall "intergrated" spirit of the IBMi system.
Such "abstract rich user interface" can be used to render pixels remotely (ie PCoIP) or web components (a little like GWT does).
RPG will be coupled to this "abstract rich user interface", like it is coupled to a normal Display File.
Having in implemented in the system is I think right in the spirit of ibmi.
You can then assume that an rpg programmer knows the "abstract rich user interface" language, like it knows 5250 display files.
There are many graphical interface available on IBM i. PHP, Python, Node.JS, Java, and more. We continue to focus on ensuring that the IBM i data and business logic is easily and securely accessible from these many graphical options. This allows our users to choose the options the make the most sense for their environment as well as being able to leverage the technical community as a whole as the world of Graphical interfaces continues to change and evolve rapidly over time.
There are already enough ways to create an IBM i interface. IBM should focus their efforts on items that would bring more value.
Jason
I hope IBM immediately drops this request. 30 years ago this could have been the next big thing but now everybody wants a web and mobile interface. And definitely not a fat client. Wake up!
And we need to integrate into the rest of the computer universe anyway. No data silos. So we need a way to communicate and this is mostly done with web services this day (perhaps sometimes via message queuing systems).
So we DON'T need another UI library. We need ways to communicate ... NATIVELY. We need software libraries which can be used by ILE programs. There are (or will be) some very good alternatives like the ILEastic project or the STOMP (RPG Next Gen) project (just implementing Spec 1.2).
There are already enough ways for creating a UI.
A solution (from the development philosophy) in a way similar to Pr*fo*nd UI would be a start, but must be provided by IBM with a stable specification and seamlessly integrated in ACS client.
A good grid component and a way to display a simple image would be sufficient to start.
For real success and backward compatibility, the user terminal (ACS) should integrate both 5250 and seamless and instant switch to graphics if the program flow switch to a graphic display file (no web stuff, to many hacks to bring the session illusion and the user must round trip between browser and terminal for many applications...... just integrate in ACS a graphical protocol optimized for WANs like PCoIP for rendering...).