EGL4 SOA

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions

EGL as a simple alternative for building your SOA

Everybody dreams about having a nice SOA in order to be flexible and agile and have e good architecture.
It's a bit like the sultants who wanted to have the nicest palaces. But how much does such a palace cost ? Can't you have a nice architecture for a lower cost ?
I recentlty attended an IBM Rational EGL presentation at a Common (http://www.common.be/) event in Belgium given by Linda Cole and I realized that there might be a cheaper and simpler way to build an SOA, by using EGL.
Traditionnally, when you look at the SOA lasagne, you tend to assemble your SOA stack with many products : BPM, ESB, UDDI Registries, Portal...
This SOA stack is big. For SMB companies (currently my focus as IBM SWITA), this stack migh be too big. EGL could, I believe provide an alternative.
If you accept to code your Business Processes in a 4GL language like EGL, and as EGL has a focus on generating SOA services automatically, you can develop your SOA that way. This EGL stack is much simpler and as EGL generates COBOL or simpler Java, you can still deploy it on your midrange servers (iSeries or pSeries for instance) but of course also on your blades or your mainframe.

IBM Rational Enterprise Generation Language (EGL) - Copied from http://www.common.be/

A core component of the comprehensive Application Life Cycle and Management solution from IBM Rational. EGL is a highly productive, flexible language that offers a development model familiar to business oriented developers allowing them to quickly build modern business solutions without having to learn and master Java, Web technologies or Service Oriented Architecture, thus eliminating the need to re-staff in order to create the next generation of IT systems. Knowing how crucial your investment in existing legacy systems is, Enterprise Application Transformation tools help migrate your business-critical applications to EGL to fully leverage their business value. Specifically, through code migrations of VAGen, I4GL, Natural, RPG, COBOL, CA Cool:Gen, CA Cool Enterprise, CA Ideal, CA Synon, Maestro and other 3GL and 4GL applications, IT can leverage their existing investment in proven, reliable, production-ready code, preserving this logic while moving rapidly onto a modern software development platform. This is made possible through highly automated conversion utilities designed to migrate the specific legacy environment to EGL in a cost-effective, efficient manner, greatly reducing risk while shortening the migration process.
Accelerating Modernization of System i Applications with EGL Studies have shown that converting legacy developers into Java/.NET developers is both expensive and time consuming and has a remarkably high probability of failure. EGL, available through the Rational Business Developer Extension (RBDe) greatly accelerates modernization by providing an environment and language that is familiar for these same developers to quickly learn and begin building enterprise caliber, modern, web and SOA applications.

IT Work SOA