Capabilities in Rational EGL Community Edition

The next table compares the capabilities of Rational® EGL Community Edition and the following three products: Rational Business Developer , Rational Business Developer for i for SOA Construction, and Rational Business Developer for System z®.
Area of Concern Capabilities in Rational EGL Community Edition Additional Capabilities in the Rational Business Developer products
General overview You can develop services for Apache Tomcat. You can also develop Rich UI applications, primarily for Apache Tomcat. You can also use the Rational Business Developer products to develop various kinds of programs and server-side Web applications, as well as reports and Java wrappers. The programs, applications, and reports can access data from a wide range of sources.
Migration Not supported You can use the Rational Business Developer products to migrate VisualAge Generator code and Informix 4GL code to EGL. Two other IBM offerings have alternative migration support:
  • Rational Migration Extension for Natural migrates Natural code to EGL, with additional support for migrating database code; specifically, ADABAS to DB2
  • Rational Migration Extension for IBM i migrates RPG code to EGL
Application development for Java™ Platform, Standard Edition (JSE) You can develop Rich UI applications that are deployed to a simple JSE Web server. In the Rational Business Developer products, you can also develop the following logic that runs under JSE:
  • Programs that have either or neither of the following user interface capabilities: :Text UI and Console UI
  • Reports of various kinds
Application development for Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (JEE) You can develop the following kinds of logic that is deployed to a JEE-compliant application server:
  • Rich UI applications. They can access SOAP services; EGL REST services; third-party REST services; and local, server-based EGL services.
  • SOAP services, EGL REST services, and local EGL services. Any of the developed services can access these resources:
    • EGL services, SOAP services, EGL REST services, third-party REST services, and native IBM i service programs.
    • Relational databases, files, Websphere MQ message queues, and VSAM files. Those data-storage systems can be local to or remote from the platform where the service runs, except that the VSAM files must be on a remote z/OS platform.
    • Programs. They also can be local to or remote from the platform where the service runs.

Support is primarily for partially JEE-compliant servers such as Apache Tomcat. When logic is being prepared for deployment to fully JEE-compliant application servers such as WebSphere® Application Server, no changes are made to the EAR file; you need to manually add content to application.xml.

In the Rational Business Developer products, you can develop the following logic, which is then deployed to a JEE-compliant application server:
  • Application clients, which can have either or neither of the following user interface capabilities: Text UI or Console UI
  • Server-side JSF Web applications, Web transactions migrated from VisualAge® Generator, and Enterprise JavaBean stateful session beans
  • Reports of various kinds

When logic is being prepared for deployment to fully JEE-compliant application servers, database-access details are written to the EAR file, to application.xml.

Additional application development for IBM® i Not supported In the Rational Business Developer products, you can do as follows:
  • Develop EGL-generated COBOL programs for IBM i, including programs that use Text UI for user interface
  • Write code that accesses native IBM i service programs
  • Expose native IBM i program logic as an EGL-generated SOAP or REST service

EGL Runtime code for IBM i is also provided in each of the Rational Business Developer products.

You can use Rational Business Developer for i for SOA Construction for the following purposes:
  • To save time during development, especially when exposing native program logic as a Web service
  • To work efficiently on non-EGL code such as native COBOL and RPG programs
Application development for z/OS® Not supported In Rational Business Developer and Rational Business Developer for System z, you can do as follows:
  • Develop EGL-generated COBOL programs for z/OS batch, CICS®, and IMS™. Programs on CICS and IMS can include a user interface based on Text UI.
  • Develop z/OS CICS Web (SOAP) services

Those programs and services can access relational databases, files, MQSeries message queues, and DL/I databases. Runtime support is available with IBM Rational COBOL Runtime for zSeries®.

Rational Business Developer for System z also lets you work efficiently on non-EGL code such as native COBOL and PL/I programs.

Application development for z/VSE™ Not supported In Rational Business Developer and Rational Business Developer for System z, you can develop EGL-generated COBOL programs for z/VSE batch and z/VSE CICS. Those programs can access relational databases, files, and MQSeries message queues; and the programs on z/VSE CICS can use Text UI for user interface.

Runtime support is available with IBM Rational COBOL Runtime for z/VSE.


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