LANSA Shows Off Responsive Design Capabilities

November 18, 2015 Dan Burger

Designing Web pages that display on a desktop, a laptop, a tablet, or a mobile phone are no longer considered in terms of individual development efforts. That eats up too much time and often becomes an application maintenance nightmare. One development effort that results in user interfaces that correctly display regardless of the device is the new normal. Making the build process quick and the performance fast is the goal everyone is aiming for. LANSA is the latest option for making this happen.

The process of building applications with interfaces that change depending on where they’re presented–desktop, laptop, tablet, or cell phone–is widely referred to as responsive design. LANSA’s development environment, known as Visual LANSA, has made responsive design the calling card of its latest release, which is version 14.

There are two factors that make LANSA’s development efforts notable. The first is the use of a single programming language. The second is the capability for creating single-page applications (SPAs) used by both the both client and server sides. This builds on the cross-browser compatibility that matches IBM i with Microsoft Windows, a common pairing in most IBM midrange shops.

The single programming language is LANSA’s proprietary 4GL called RDML. It’s used to create the UI design and the server code, as well as to access database information and the library of pre-built interface components. Although RDML has its own learning curve, it shields developers from learning other technologies such as JavaScript, CSS, and HTML5.

The typical shops LANSA deals with are in the SMB category. “Some have state of the art developers using all the latest greatest open source frameworks,” says LANSA CEO Steve Gapp. “Whether that’s a good long term strategy on the basis that it takes more to maintain those apps than it does to build them, is a question they should be asking themselves.

“More often, our SMB customers are struggling with Web development and the number of programming skills they have to learn. The average developer struggles to embrace the knowledge and all the trends on top of creating meaningful and well-presented webpages. And that doesn’t take into consideration creation of responsive applications.”

An example of Visual LANSA’s responsive design.

LANSA describes Visual LANSA as a tool to make custom applications without other languages and other frameworks and by remaining inside the LANSA environment, which keeps JavaScript, HTML, and CSS under the covers. But you can only go so far with other responsive design options and then you’ll need to get into HTML or JavaScript or CSS to change the way the app looks, says David Brault, LANSA’s product manager.

“We will elevate the skills of developers who do not know HTML or JavaScript to the same level as someone who is an expert in those technologies,” he says.

Producing Web applications that look and perform like desktop applications was one of the goals in the development of Visual LANSA, according to Gapp. “A desktop app requires multiple windows and the capability to deal with a higher volume of data,” Gapp says. “They’re built for office workers doing business transactions rather than a lightweight Web app used salesforces.”

Brault suggested that Visual LANSA will be used to create single page applications (SPAs), technology “almost the equivalent of a client server app, but instead of a rich client interface talking to a server, it is running in the browser. Everything runs inside the client. It only goes to the server to grab data. This greatly reduces the traffic back and forth between the server and the client, increasing the performance of these new version 14 Web applications. There’s no waiting for the page to refresh. This is a super-fast desktop style application running in the browser.”

Visual LANSA 14 becomes generally available December 1. The Visual LANSA Framework becomes available in early January. The framework will be a key element when working on back office business applications, but in the meantime Visual LANSA users can build B2B and B2C websites and order entry sites. LANSA customers on current maintenance contracts will receive the new release without charge.

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Do the Math When Looking at IBM i Hosting for Cost Savings

COVID-19 has accelerated certain business trends that were already gaining strength prior to the start of the pandemic. E-commerce, telehealth, and video conferencing are some of the most obvious examples. One example that may not be as obvious to the general public but has a profound impact on business is the shift in strategy of IBM i infrastructure from traditional, on-premises environments to some form of remote configuration. These remote configurations and all of their variations are broadly referred to in the community as IBM i hosting.

“Hosting” in this context can mean different things to different people, and in general, hosting refers to one of two scenarios. In the first scenario, hosting can refer to a client owned machine that is housed in a co-location facility (commonly called a co-lo for short) where the data center provides traditional system administrator services, relieving the client of administrative and operational responsibilities. In the second scenario, hosting can refer to an MSP owned machine in which partition resources are provided to the client in an on-demand capacity. This scenario allows the client to completely outsource all aspects of Power Systems hardware and the IBM i operating system and database.

The scenario that is best for each business depends on a number of factors and is largely up for debate. In most cases, pursuing hosting purely as a cost saving strategy is a dead end. Furthermore, when you consider all of the costs associated with maintaining and IBM i environment, it is typically not a cost-effective option for the small to midsize market. The most cost-effective approach for these organizations is often a combination of a client owned and maintained system (either on-prem or in a co-lo) with cloud backup and disaster-recovery-as-a-service. Only in some cases of larger enterprise companies can a hosting strategy start to become a potentially cost-effective option.

However, cost savings is just one part of the story. As IBM i expertise becomes scarce and IT resources run tight, the only option for some firms may be to pursue hosting in some capacity. Whatever the driving force for pursing hosting may be, the key point is that it is not just simply an option for running your workload in a different location. There are many details to consider and it is to the best interest of the client to work with an experienced MSP in weighing the benefits and drawbacks of each option. As COVID-19 rolls on, time will tell if IBM i hosting strategies will follow the other strong business trends of the pandemic.

When we say do the math in the title above, it literally means that you need to do the math for your particular scenario. It is not about us doing the math for you, making a case for either staying on premises or for moving to the cloud. There is not one answer, but just different levels of cost to be reckoned which yield different answers. Most IBM i shops have fairly static workloads, at least measured against the larger mix of stuff on the public clouds of the world. How do you measure the value of controlling your own IT fate? That will only be fully recognized at the moment when it is sorely missed the most.

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