Where should Gen go ?

Looking at the users of Gen worldwide, most of them seem to be going the SOA route.
Whilst this is not inherently a problem, and whilst Gen can participate fully in the SOA world, just as easily as it could in the batch world, the mainframe world and the client/server world, what part SHOULD Gen be playing in this world?

Should Gen be a service consumer as well as a service provider ?

I believe that Gen should be marketed primarily as a back-end development tool – a service provider - with front ends done by other tools.

Gen’s strengths are in high-volume, reliable, sturdy and stable service provision – let’s push that ! 

Let’s face it, the DreamWeavers of this world have got the user interface on the web sewn up. What we don’t need is YAWIT – Yet Another Web Interface Tool.

What we need is a tool that can provide the services at the back end. In these days of corporate databases and large,complex datasets, we need a tool that “just works”. Gen IS that tool. Yes – it can “do Web” but do we want it to “do the whole shebang ??”

I firmly believe that the place that Gen should be is at the back end – providing the services for the fluffy tools to hook into to provide the user experiences. In fact, if Gen were a pure service-creation tool, then those services could be used by a 3270 interface, a Web interface and a client/service interface – now there’s an idea !