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There is a lot of discussion around the new IBM/Zend toolkit which is meant to replace the EasyCom toolkit currently shipped with the Zend product so I thought I would give it a quick spin to see what all the fuss is about.
First thing I had to do was remove the existing Zend PHP install and clean everything up, no point in testing the new toolkit with a down level server. As usual the un-install takes a very long time to accomplish and does not clean up after itself so a few additional minutes are required to remove the remaining links and objects.
Next we looked for a copy of the ZendServer for IBMi, not the easiest item to find on the Zend site but we did find it and download the zip file. We also noticed a Cumulative PTF package which seems to be needed as well but to be honest we are not sure? The Cum package is actually larger than the base package? Anyhow we decided to download both items and start the install.
Installing the base product took 40 minutes with an additional 13 minutes to install the MySQL server. Because we had downloaded the Cum package we then installed it using the supplied instructions which failed! The install process automatically starts all of the processes but the PTF install fell over because they were started. Once we had stopped all of the running processes the PTF install process took a further 36 minutes to complete. Your times may vary depending on the server and the number of active jobs etc.
Next step was to find the XMLSERVICE package, we have only ever found it using a link provided on the forum boards so not even sure it is the right one to use? (If you know the correct link let us know). We downloaded the stable release and as per the instructions uploaded the save file to the IBMi and restored the XMLSERVICE library. The library has a number of source files and objects which require compiling before you can use the services. We did not have Option 31 for WDS (the RPG compiler) installed so we had to install that first. However we are now at a standstill because the compiler could not compile the PLUGXML module due to some parameters being passed incorrectly in the source code. We have posted to the forums asking for help as we are not RPG programmers and have no idea why the compiler is complaining about the code?
That’s as far as we have got today, its taken 5.5 hours so far and while we do have the Zend Server installed and running we do not have the XMLSERVICE up and running yet to give it a try.
Once we have the problems figured out and the programs created we will create a couple of simple tests to try the new XML routines out against the old i5_toolkit routines. Keep watching for the results..
Chris…