System iNetwork

What do you think? Post your opinions here.

I being a programmer, have worked on V5R2. It is news for me that V5R4 has hit the market and companies are using it.
I am enamoured by the vast scope the machine offers, though not all areas I am specialised. Happy if I get to work in all spheres of software the server offers to the programmers. Great.
It was tough earlier to know. But now midrange system has become part of my aspirations.
At present, I am not workng. I am eager to see the green screen and progaram the applications.

I got the latest edition of iSeries News last night. I read a little bit, but not all of it.

Roger Pence is back. Yea! I like his style - Somewhat of a curmudgeon and an IBM slammer when it comes to what IBM is doing and what he believes IBM should be doing. It strikes a chord with me somehow.

What caught my eye was the interview of the new marketing head. It was a little sickening to read as I came away not believing she "gets it". We all know the kind of advertising IBM does and it seems they will be doing more of it. I will never warm up to the idea that an ex employee of a series of now defunct companies earns the right to market a product for IBM such as the System i5. To me, this defies common sense.

A sidebar article was about IBM's recent name change of the iSeries to System i5. They defend their stand on the issue of its rename citing the fact that the iSeries is more than just a server box; it's a whole system.

It would seem to me that if you wanted to confuse the market place a good way to do it would entail renaming your product line every few years. It's the same machine, always has been, just a different name.

For IBM to cite their reasons this late in the naming game (which I interpret as intellectual catch up about what the machine has always been), it should be a warning flag that their marketing arm fell on the floor several years ago. On the other hand, Microsoft could sell a bag of hot, steamy dog hooey to a kennel and make the purchaser believe they got something worthy of using. Oh boy!

Keeping all of these name changes in mind, it would stand to reason the iSeries News magazine will soon be renamed to something like "System i5 News". Or maybe even "IBM's Machine name du jour News". The last option would be less expensive and would indicate their full understanding of the market dynamics which seems to continue to escape IBM.

And the beat goes on.

In the late 1980's and 1990's, IBM reorganized itself every couple of years. All it amounted to was moving boxes around on an org chart and creating a few new titles. The final result was massive layoffs and office closings at IBM. The reorgs were some kind of office cultish behavior that did nothing to assist with customer service or product improvement. High internal expenses and an improving Intel oriented technology provided alternatives to IBM's static product line and odd internal behavior.

They're at it again with cultish, inward looking, self-absorbed 'rebranding'. Nobody realy knows what they are selling anymore unless they have been paying attention to the continual name changes. Most people haven't unless they were current AS/400 customers and, thus, had no choice.

Most new potential customers would be puzzled and apprehensive about doing business with a company that keep changing the name of one of it's flagship products. A question might be "Why do you keep changing the name? What are you trying to hide? Why are you trying to confuse me? Nobody else does this and their products are more popular."

The frequent name changes probably have more to do with the need to look busy when you really have little new to offer. The AS/400 now has nothing so distinctive that it can capture anyone's imagination just be reading a headline in an advertisement. Maybe the frequent name changes will make someone curious enough to buy what they rejected for more substantial reasons earlier?

Who on earth would say to themselves "Oh boy! The AS/400 has another new name. Those IBMers are so smart. I need to buy one now. The name has mysteriously captivated me. It's soooo much better than the old name. Why don't Linux or Pepsi change their names, too? They must not be clever."

From ibm's point of vue, the name change probably can be explained like this: they intend on unifying all their hardware production lines and the hardware box itself. For example, the former rs/6000, as/400 and z/390 mainframe now all use the same no powerpc processor and as far as the exterior of the system, they all use the same interchangeable black file cabinet. What's basically different between those systems is the name tag on it and some chip inside that tells the hardware what kind of system it should mimic and what kind of o/s it may load.
So the distinction between the former lines becomes blurry, let's hope not to the extend that the "i" malaise catches on with the others.

BTW,
INTEL and AMD stepped up the cpu rat race at an incredible pace last couple of years. Double core 64bits cpu's (Pentium 4 and AMD x64 versions) are getting common place, even for PC workstations. A Siemens PC server carrying 8 double-core processors (so 16 cpu's) running Windows 2003 64bit enterprise or LINUX is a very serious competitor to the former as/400, both in price and performance. For example, one of the biggest problems with pre 2004 PC and Unix single cpu servers is that their reponse times are very dependend on the number of active tasks, meaning when a second user or task becomes active, reponse times basically double. Not so anymore with these modern multi cpu, doublecore cpu boards. They show the same resilience to response time degradation as the 400. In fact, the progress is so big I think ibm is at this very moment losing the rat race. Btw, Apple ditched last month ibm's high priced, elitarian, no powerpc cpu for Intel's mass manufactured, cheap doublecore 64bit, a sign maybe?

I would consider the latest rebranding a positive step in correcting the idiocy that started with the "e(logo)Server" debacle. The old names were too long -- you could call it "iSeries", but the ThinkPad had an iSeries too. The new name is appropriate, although the point about not being search engine-friendly is quite true.

The naysayers may hate it or use it as another opportunity to troll on the impending death of the platform, but that doesn't change the fact that it is a smarter name for the system.

Wouldn't i5, i6, etc. of System i properly be called the iseries?

rd

Well, it's just a name; no big deal. If it means coherency across the brand, ok. However, it's not going to improve sales or performance. It's not going to improve awareness or knowledge. And it's especially not going to improve broad IT opinions about the box whether from a technical viewpoint or from a user/buyer viewpoint. So, go ahead, IBM spend your hardearned bucks on nomenclature and forgo any real sales improvements. I love the box but really I can't see the point of actually bothering to change the name. It's not like a lot of people REALLY care; most everyone who's had a AS400 experience tends to "accidentally" refer to their iSeries/i5/System i/"XXXXX" as a AS400 sooner or later. What really counts is what's under the cover and how to get to it; fortunately, it's an awesome system with great applications and tools. Unfortunately, it's got '80s-'90s pricing and sales mentality. Like Ugeerts said, the opposition PC guys are really catching on and IBM System i Division will have a hard time justifying the way they are doing things if their sales continue like the recent past. I think from a new sales point of view, it's almost impossible to justify a small System i box vs. a "generic" 64 bit PC system that seemingly costs far less up front. I happen to love the machine but have to deal with real world small business people who really don't necessarily care that paying more up front can save more later on. They view PCs are 2-3 year throwaway items anyways; if their budgets are virtually annual, whats the big deal? And it's very difficult to get System i applications that can be cheaply/easily built because there's few people out there doing that kind of work. Those that do have nice contracts with big corporations; a really small biz guy just can't compete. If System i can't be attractive to a small business and medium businesses have decent alternatives that work also for small businesses, what is the attraction? The "obvious" rationale for System i familiar people is clearcut simple reliability and recovery options. However, most of the System i ignorant users I talk to don't find that particularily a big deal. It's nice but what about the price and the applications and who's going to fix it? Ouch, that much? Forget it, just buy 2 pc servers and make sure the backup is good. That's what I get. Sorry, System i guys, but somebody just doesn't "get it".

Personally, I think all these name changes to the AS/400 are just plain goofy. People who try to rationalize the purpose of all the new names don't think like customers. IBM must have zero respect or awareness for all of the tag-along companiers who provide support, software, and peripherials. All of these companies must again spend hard earned cash to rebrand their offerings. Customers now must learn about a new computer and wonder if it had anything to do with the old computer. IBM must have some of the dumbest marketing managers in the business.

Without a doubt. What's wrong with Advanced System 400?

rd

I've always maintained that without constant infusion of iAS400seriesSystem awareness and usage into the general IT public, the "system" will become monolithic much like the virtually mythic "mainframe". It may exist and people may snap their fingers and say, "oh yeah, I've heard of those before, what's that all about"? But, in the end, it will be a "hmmm" footnote to most conversations. Is there a true desperate note at all to IBMs need to sell the iAS400seriesSystem? I never feel it; and IBM upper management doesn't seem very proud of this particular product as they let it wither away. It's sort of GM like, the whole IBM sales process. People know they need to sell machines but are content to live off of expensive services. They are willing to bet that the senior citizens will come back to well and buy the ever more expensive and gadgety Cadillac, Buick, etc. and aren't willing to respect their competition. I know managers who are open-minded about virtually everything IT but can't recite anything about an "iAS400seriesSystem" except that "it's old, isn't it?" So the rebranding can't be particularly effective since it's been going on for what, 6-8+ years?
Technically, it's not a big deal. It is a great system with an outstanding OS and an excellent DB. But in the age where you can get "free" opensource DBs and inexpensive development tools, you need to do way more work to sell the iAS400seriesSystem environment. And it has to be palatable to breakout (read: virgin, new, inexperienced) developers as well as established ones. And that's where I see the biggest problem, the actual IT and non-IT guys who will fiddle with the box and sell it in the executive bath room away from IBM retailers or VARs. Those guys just don't exist at this point; there are very few people who are virgins to the IT workplace who know anything about the iAS400seriesSystem, much less willing to invest their fiddle time on it. They're just too distracted learning all the cool stuff that's available on the web. Why diddle with WebSphere when you have to give up so much time? Just jump on to the web flavor of the month! RPG? Who teachs it in 2 or 4 yr institutions? Who makes it available to be taught? Why diddle with it when people are still arguing about freestyle mode vs. columnar? Oy, the local city college has .Net, just do that and you can get a job anywhere, even though it may be for pennies. The current iAS400seriesSystem marketing is just fine if you're working at a big shop that really needs the iAS400seriesSystem. Chances are that kind of shop will never go away; the system is just too good for those environments and those big shops can afford all the billing invoices. But the same marketing does not exist to attract new fresh blood that can't afford BigShop invoices. 25 years ago, my mother worked for a medical company that used a System 36 (up from a 32) with a cardpunch reader. They abused that reader for something like 12 years before they decided to move to 5250. At that time, it was relatively affordable and also virtually the only real game in town. I can't say that it is the case today. There's too much competition for IBM in the lowend and they have zero gumption to compete at that lowlevel. There's little incentive for them to do it and protecting their pride and heritage is irrelevant to beancounters. It's definitely GM all over again.

As a software company that specializes in As400 it's quite disturbing that IBM is more concerned about system names than moving the box into the world of modern day computing....without any SEU improvements to a GUI interface and keeping horrible products like WEBSPHERE on the forefront of it's internet direction it's clear to me in spite of how great the box is it's time to take the applications off the "AS400" and put in on a .NET platform....RPG is a dead language in spite of how easy it is to use...IBM has done nothing to improve it in years...and what about REAL unicode support.....what a shame....great machine great performance but customers will no longer buy this box no matter what you call it nor do they want applications that are not integrated into PC platform like Outlook......

Some of these comments just kill me! Are you guys trying to convince yourselves, or what? The iSeries just recorded its greatest revenue year in a decade. WebSphere is arguably the most popular web application server in the world, and Eclipse is the dominant IDE. IBM continues to open the platform, with Java and Linux and now PHP. There's hardly a language you CAN'T run on the box except for perhaps the ever-more-proprietary Microsoft stuff (and by the way, the Grasshopper tool suite allows you to actually run VS.NET developed code on an iSeries).

RPG hasn't been updated? Give me a break! RPG has had more functional enhancements than any other language in the last ten years, not to mention the pure syntactical enhancements of free-form.

As for GUI, WDSC completely replaces SEU and PDM, WebFacing and HATS provide a GUI interface to any application, and iSeries Access for the Web provides a browser interface to all your iSeries operations needs.

Excellent SQL support, not one but TWO fantastic JVMs, and at least four different operating environments (OS/400, Linux, AIX and PASE). Not to mention an integrated Windows card as well as a dedicated connection to xSeries boxes. And now an integrated VoIP system!

And to top it all off, you can still write business applications in COBOL and RPG, which I like to call "assembly language for the database". If you can't put together an incredibly fast, powerful, fleixble and scalable system... well, let's just say it's not the platform's fault.

Add to this the low admin overhead of a single box, integrated backups that can be run by the kid from McDonalds, and hardware extensibility that simply can't be outgrown, and the people who continue to bash the platform sound more and more like they're just whistling past the graveyard.

Yeah, there will be a need for thick client applications, and .NET is great for enabling non-programmers to knock out good looking data access panels. But when it comes to meat-and-potatoes programming that pays the bills like OLTP and B2C and ERP, I think I'll stick with what's been proven, and just keeps getting better with age.

Joe

Ok, Joe, I have to say I absolutely agree with you. But you are part of the cognoscenti; you have knowledge and experience. My point was that many of those who don't have your breadth don't feel the same way. And it's IBM who must do a better job of convincing those that things are different. How it does that cannot be a "rebranding/renaming" effort solely.

Yes it all sounds good and wonderful. But the plain fact remains when you try to sell and application and mention the AS400 the deal is finished. No new client or new business is gonna buy an AS400 anynmore no matter how great the app is...That's a SAD fact. Yes everything you mention does work fine on an AS400 but the costs are ridiculous and fact that outside vendors are creating all this software makes things even worse...yes I agree the AS400 is a wonderful machine. But as a businessman there is no way I am going to develop screen scraper apps and try to sell it to new clients. THere is no software company in America that is going to develop a new large scale app on the AS400. Besides the fact you can't find AS400 people the reality is that everyone wants WINDOWS in spite of how we feel about it. Perception rather than reality is what matters in software development. And right now it is NEAR impossible to sell a new AS400 system.

Well, up until now IBM has had a pretty consistent track record on midrange marketing: miserable, but consistent. And yet the S/3x line all the way down to the System i has done quite well. So marketing isn't killing the machine.

Now, you may be having problems either in your specific market or more particularly even in your own company. I know people locked into death struggles to keep the iSeries box afloat; we just saw an article in this magazine about a school district htat wants to tank it's 10-year-old AS/400... for a $360,000 PC system! Hell, you can get a LOT of iSeries for $360K! And IBM really needs to get involved in these situations. I could just imagine a bunch of blue suits walking into the administration offices of this school district with price points and TCO charts. It wouldn't cost IBM much and it would be a fantastic sales story.

And that's what we really need IBM to do. Go out and win a few high-profile deals. Some new business, some saving business, some getting back lost business. And then create ads out of those sales. Show WHY people need the "i". These days it's almost a reversal of the 80s, when nobody got fired for buying IBM. Now nobody gets fired for buying Microsoft (or to a lesser degree Linux). IBM needs to put some fear into the idea of buying Microsoft.

But a lot of the problem is the people on this list and on other lists -- people who SHOULD be staunch supporters of the box and who instead continue to nitpick on things like name changes and the lack of a native GUI. I don't say you necessarily have to be a rah-rah (although in this day of Dennis Miller and David Letterman, I guess anybody who doesn't bash something is a rah-rah -- people call ME a rah-rah, and I've taken some serious stands against IBM decisions over the years). But whenever someone brings up something like the name change, counter with "that's just branding; it's still the same machine, getting better -- by the way, did you hear we have...". Because it is just branding. Heck, Java still has a hard time figuring out what to call its next release.

In the end, it may be up to us (meaning the rank and file) to come up with a good name for the box. Remember, WE popularized the term Wintel, not Microsoft.

How about:

The Integrator (spoken with a heavy Schwarzenegger accent)
UDS - Universal Data System (what can Blue do for you?)

Put your suggestion here, and become part of the solution!

Joe

Does anyone out there really think anyone or any software company would invest it's resources in deploying a new AS/400 app? No way is it gonna happen. Listen I sell to a specific audience and they all love the software. Until I mention the AS400. Then it's like a plague hit. No matter what I say there is nothing I can do to convince the user to buy a propietary machine. I can imbed th cost of the machine in my price but I am not willing to absorb that cost and to tell you the truth even then there are objections. And as the old time managers start exiting it's gonna get even harder to sell the box. I have to make a choice and I have. I love the AS400, love the database love the reliability but if you don't LISTEN to your customers you will out of business fast....and if you afe trying to sell in a foreign market noone is gonna pay for a box even if in the long run it will be cheaper for them...It's either I convert my customers to a new operating system or wait until someone else comes in and does that for me. Sales are what matter and most time new sells. Does anyone want a good old reliable cell phone when they can get a Blackberry or Trio? Got to change with the times. It's clear IBM is doing nothing to help the software vendors. And even clearer they are relying on the fact that there is nothing that can easily convert the AS400 apps over to something else. ANd if IBM does com out with somthing don't you think THEY are gonna want to move all the AS400 users over to a NEW BOX....NEW SELLS....and IBM underestimated the loyality of it's customers....but they also have to realize that other oprions are starting to exist.

Instead of selling AS/400's perhaps you should try selling iSeries, i5's or System i hardware. They haven’t made an AS/400 in 6 years or so.

I do understand what you are saying though. So what are your customers buying (hardware and software)? Obviously not a proprietary UNIX box.

THis is the sort of thing I mean. How is the iSeries proprietary? It's the most open platform available. If you want proprietary, try Microsoft. Not only is it proprietary, but it requires complete rewrites every generation! It's this sort of misinformation that really needs to be countered.

You say you can "embed the cost of the machine", but what cost is that? iSeries hardware is down to the point where it's nearly competitive with similarly configured enterprise Wintel boxes, and that's including a top flight database and the best integrated backup environment available.

Sure, you can get a big, beefy Dell box for a few grand, but that's with relatively slow drives and a consumer grade operating system. Try building a decent box with 15K RAID drives and something stable (even Windows Server and something like SQL Server or Oracle) and you're looking at perhaps $10K. If you get a second box for redundancy, you can get a nicely sized iSeries for a comparable price.

The Price and Proprietary arguments just don't hold water, and if you can't counter them succesfully you're doing your clients a disservice.

Ah well, enough on that. This horse is pretty well beaten.

Joe

When I said AS400 I meant I series....it does not matter. When they ask you why a BIG DELL server costs 4K or less and then you spring the charges on them...yes I know in the long run it can be cheaper but these are not technical people...they speak to their friends and brothers and anyone that can listen.....when they find out it' s a non Windows product it's like a plague hit them. Most are buying cheap PC server mickey mouse systems....If I converted my software over not only would I have a ton of new customers my company would be bought out in a second...but the fact that the software is written in RPG on an AS400/Iseries is the end of it all....One Indian company after another has offered to convert my system over but I have resisted....but I am leaning towards a C#.Net implementation....Closest competitors have converted over to a non objected oriented Java system and have tripled their revenues in 4 years while I have remained stagnant.... I might add I have a fully integrated accounting bar coded inventory, EDI...the whole works.....my customers are not complaining at all but new ones wont touch what ever you want to call the AS400....and if I did convert all would follow me to the new platform.

Steven...this is the last I will post on the topic. As I mentioned it's perception that matters...and most of the AS400/Iseries people feel as if IBM has deserted them.... has left them in the dark about the future..so it's not only misinformation about the box it's no information. Even John Conte has gotten disgusted with way IBM is handling things with regard to the box and COMMON...So even if you knew the Iseries is a great choice but the customers want something else....what do you do...still guard the fort 30 years after the war ended...does it not worry you that IBM has not set a roadmap for the box not seems interested in pushing for new business...Look at Microsoft....they are pushing to convert over Iseries customers...offering hard cash....It's a bad situation.....somethings got to give and anyone that is putting all their chips in the AS400 basket is making a very RISKY bet...IMHO.....I wish the AS400 was the place to be but I can't wait until IBM decides which direction it will take.

"If I converted my software over not only would I have a ton of new customers my company would be bought out in a second"

"and if I did convert all would follow me to the new platform."

Then you don't need the iSeries! The only possible answer I can have to your statements is to wish you good luck on your new platform. Look at something like RIO or Monarch to convert to Windows, and enjoy your success!

Joe

Thanks Joe...BTW I would not take it personally...You seem very knowledgeable and maybe IBM should hire you...But I have invested my whole life in the ISeries....I have been studying hours upon hours to understand .NET, C# and object orientation. But as an ex IBM' one said to me "It does not have to work"..It just has to sell.....yes it's very perplexing to hear that but if we only sold the same quality products we would never have any need for advancement.....do you really think I want to spend the next 2 years deploying an application that I spent the last 10 years naturing....No not really but as a businessman I have to ask myself what will keep me in business and what will make me more money....it just seems that the perception in TODAY's world is that Microsoft is "IT"...I don't agree..I can only tell you how complicated the simplest application has become in C#. But at least learning a new tehnology opens up my venues so that when the NEXT GREAT thing comes along I will be ready willing and able to capitalize on it....Good luck to you too....

The one thing I don't blame IBM for is selling whatever the customer wants. If they want Windows, IBM will gladly sell them X servers and not blink an eye at a lost AS/400 opportunity.

We should have had a Jacada like standard Eclipse based Java GUI interface for the AS/400 by now. IBM hitched their wagon to Websphere and web pages, and the will live or die by it. Unfortunately the AS/400 is collateral damage to Armonk marketing muckups.

If you are dead set on Windows .NET, and it appears talk is driving it rather than any solid vision, then I suggest converting your commercial app to ASNA .NET where it will be a Windows app with RPG IO that runs against their database on Windows, SQL Server, or ahem even the AS/400.

Probably the way of the future given IBM betting all their chips on Websphere. ASNA, Jacada, Joe Pluta, and just about everybody else is just smarter than IBM, like you point out. IBM had a treasure trove in OS/400, and they squandered it.

rd

Hmm, Mr. Klement sure started something here ;>. A few (6-7?) years ago, I proposed a possible solution but one that would stick in IBMs craw because it would be a capital loss upfront and is outside their business model. The solution never went anywhere because it was on the old forum and got wiped off pretty quickly. Of course, it was somewhat tongue-in-cheek too but not too far from what maybe could have happened. The proposal was to produce an extremely inexpensive iSeries using consumer grade equipment and interfaces. No SCSI, etc. It had to have USB and some level of multiprocessor capability; it had to have GUI of some sort (something like the old Network Station but on a card). No CPU degradation was allowed; the user could run the box at max speed. Application dev was included at very minimal if no charge and included a consumer brand graphics engine. Maintenance and service was NOT part of the package. It had to be called something else entirely; maybe something like WOS64 or whatever. Sell it with PASE and LINUX jacked up so the performance of PASE/Linux was excellent. The target audience was to be college students who were interested in developing high performance network applications. Included would've been several modified ports of the most popular network gaming apps on campuses. It probably would never have worked because IBM has no connection to that demographic and no interest in them. On the other hand, that is the demographic that is making decisions on buying data gear for shops nowadays. So, we'll probably just have to go with the status quo.

Rd,

Good points...but it's more than talk. Again I ask the question...If you were a businessman/developer and you have the best software in the field(hands down) for a niche business....and your CUSTOMERS do not wish to go the AS400/Iseries Platorm what do you do....Question 2....if you are a businessman software developer....do you start application development on an AS400/Iseries platform and invest the time and money necessary or do you go to a platform GUI interface software package? Please take a gut check and see if any one of you can answer YES to any of the above questions....I have written IBM 3 times asking them for help with regard to a solution to an IN THE FIELD PROBLEM...Never did I get one single response...I sent Microsft the same questions....they did a complete audit questioned me and offered me at least technical assistance and a business partnership that I did not take...Investors won't put a dime in my company knowing the AS400/Iseries is ...at least the perception is...directionless....and is anyone going to invest large sums of capital when yu have to tell them BTW there is no real GUI interface....and that's a BIG NO......Ever look at the C# Express developer FREE IDE....See the types of internet, WEB applications you can develop with no effort...at least the GUI part....it's a damn shame....and when Microsoft finally gets their LINQ project database frameworks together the .NET platform becomes a very viable option....so there is little choice for me...STANDSTILL and use WEBSPHERE which I think is horrid, create screen scrapers, go to ANSA and have an even bigger mess on my hands....there is very little choice....and if you are able to develop a 1st class application then the sky IS THE limit....But status quo is not an option....If you don't listen to your CUSTOMERS then it's just a matter of time you become irrelevant....

Does anyone have any thoughts about the name change? We seem to have strayed a bit from that discussion.

Taken from bottom of this page:

iSeries is a trademark of International Business Machines Corporation and is used by Penton Media, Inc., under license. iSeriesnetwork.com is published independently of International Business Machines Corporation, which is not responsible in any way for the content. Penton Media, Inc., is solely responsible for the editorial content and control of the iSeries Network.

Reminder:

Don't forget to update this prose with references to the new IBM naming conventions. Unless you are covered by a grace period, you may not be authorized to commonly refer to the System i.

Taken from bottom of this page:

iSeries is a trademark of International Business Machines Corporation and is used by Penton Media, Inc., under license. iSeriesnetwork.com is published independently of International Business Machines Corporation, which is not responsible in any way for the content. Penton Media, Inc., is solely responsible for the editorial content and control of the iSeries Network.

Reminder:

Don't forget to update this prose with references to the new IBM naming conventions. Unless you are covered by a grace period, you may not be authorized to commonly refer to the System i.

To be consistent with the name change, Penton media should rename this website to "www.system i network.com".
Cool name, don't forget to type only 1 space before and after the "i" (lol)

To be consistent with the name change, Penton media should rename this website
to "www.system i network.com".
Cool name, don't forget to type only 1 space before and after the "i" (lol)

Using the name change as a basis for decrying the platform's fortunes seems silly. IBM's intention is to do what so many people have suggested on the various forums before: change the name of the system and hope that keeps the customer from cutting off the conversation.

Customers don't want to have to buy a whole new platform to run something...and the instant they realize you're trying to sell a different platform requiring different platform skillsets, you've lost them. The "i" can only get the foot in the door by being able to run existing Linux, UNIX, and Windows workloads, as well as i5/OS workloads.

IBM's theory is sound, even if they miss on the implementation. The trouble is that theory doesn't keep the platform alive.

The Name Change is meaningless. It's almost like let's hope the customer is stupid enough to not know that this box is really not an AS400. If I told the customer that they had to get and ISeries the next question is "Oh can I can run your app on any PC Server I have"...or if they don't ask that the next question is "Why does this box cost so much compared to a Dell server?
And then the next question is "Can I run Outlook and use EXCEL?...The name change is just a means of concealing the fact that the underling architecture is the "OLD AS400"...and as long as people feel they are not buying NEW TECHNOLOGY they will no buy or develop new APPs even if the price or name was right!!!!

I'm going to attack some assumptions just posted. I agree with rdean and most of the other posters, but the common views some express should be questioned.

A large part of .NET programming is Visual Basic. No one says .NET is not new technology even though it is the umpteenth generation of Microsoft Basic, my first language that I wrote Double Deck Pinochle in on the TRS-80 and then later wrote several telecomunications notifications systems for a startup called Melita Electronics, stuff for nuclear plants, cable companies, and school systems, in Compiled Basic under DOS. Similar leading edge software was being written in RPG in the 80's on the predecessors of our latest technology.

Basic has come a long way since then. So has RPG. ILE including Java as an ILE language has everything .NET does, and was out there long before .NET. C++ is an ILE language. Speaking of name changes, we should be saying ILE like MS says .NET.

Sure they both have proud traditions. And yes, they are both new technologies. I think the RPG is old thing is strictly in RPG veterans heads. There's not that many others who even know what it is to exhibit the behavior that has been posted.

With the new release of i I would expect that no one would see a green screen unless they forced a session to a terminal emulator. Going back to the first part of my post, the business world ran on WordPerfect, 1-2-3, and Harvard under DOS, and if we could do that with DOS we can certainly do anything we want with a freakin web page.

No one ever talks about the whole failure of client server to start with and how every Windows program to be used has to be installed and configured into place for every person that uses it. Does any of these .NET talkers know what ERP is? Has anyone seen the latest drop back and punt projections from Microsoft for their ERP hopes that Project Green is based on?

People just yip and yap about .NET like they never heard of the rise and fall of client server or act like Microsoft has released thousands of Windows programs to run an ERP suite with. They haven't. And what would you do with it when they do?

ILE on the i is the latest. It's not Windows, but Windows on the desktop is not Windows running a business. Windows replaced WordPerfect and 1-2-3, much to the disgruntlement of millions of happy users, but it never replaced ERP. The pendulum swung back toward centralization, and the i is system central for running a business.

A name is to indicate architecture. The architecture of i is integration, integration of operating systems, communications, languages, and apps, everything to run a business.

Everyone else says you can run your business as long as you do it my way. We say you can run your business any way you want and change whenever you want. Run it your way on i.

rd

That's not really the customer IBM is after. If someone wants to run on their existing server(s), that's not a hardware sale.

If the next question is "Can I run Outlook and use Excel?" then the obvious answer is "Yes, right on your desktop, like you always have."

The point about "OLD AS400" versus "NEW TECHNOLOGY" is moot. It wouldn't matter if the technology were new or old. It's the fact that it's another operating system to support that stops most people. IBM's market is people who don't think like that.

As far as development of new apps is concerned, any vendor looking to develop a new app should be looking towards open technologies. There is no reason to build platform-specific applications anymore. I can build an app for WebSphere on i5/OS and run it unmodified on WebSphere for SuSE, Red Hat, HP-UX, Solaris, AIX, and z/OS. Soon, many PHP scripts -- particularly the ones coded to a db abstraction layer rather than to MySQL directly -- will be in the same boat. Why should a vendor artificially limit their market penetration?

The bottom line is that OS/400-i5/OS is not going to win customers because it can run apps no other system can run. Closed systems equate to vendor lock-in and that's not a desirable feature. The platform will only win customers by running open architecture apps better and more cost effectively than other platforms.

rdean: "Closed systems equate to vendor lock-in and that's not a desirable feature. The platform will only win customers by running open architecture apps better and more cost effectively than other platforms."

While I agree that being an effective platform for open applications is a good thing, I will also point out that open architectures (e.g., LAMP) don't easily handle the really large workloads we take for granted on the IBM midrange.

Instead, when people point to large-scale systems such as Yahoo or Google, they're almost always talking about proprietary in-house systems. And if you want pure bare metal speed these days, nothing beats RPG. So by having BOTH worlds -- a really great platform for open architecture software AND a really hot native architecture for when performance is at a premium -- the iSeries by ANY name is the premiere platform of this decade.

Joe

"Open architectures (e.g., LAMP) don't easily handle really large workloads we take for granted on the IBM midrange.

Instead, when people point to large-scale systems such as Yahoo or Google, ..."

Yahoo is built on BSD. It was originally built on a custom-developed scripting language (I think they called it y-script or some such). They built some things in LISP (!!) and Python before settling on PHP as a statement of direction. So, it's built primarily on open architecture---but I would say that's an exception to what you said, not the rule. Sites like eBay and Amazon are built to WebLogic and WebSphere on the back-end with Microsoft IIS front-ends.

For vendors, it doesn't make sense to put all eggs in a single basket. For customers, which Yahoo or Google would be in this case, it makes perfect sense to take full advantage of the runtime environment if vendor lock-in isn't a concern.

OK guys...that's it for me. Enough posting and trying to convince a few people that the PERCEPTION of the AS400/ISeries is not very good and the fact that the box is lacking an inherent GUI interface is a detriment to selling it. Adding to the fact IBM has no clear direction with regards to anything other than WEBSPHERE as it's internet solution...It's certainly no wonder to me that the busines application programming population has thinned out considerably and that boiler rooms in India are without hesitation embracing newer technologies and companies like IBM and Microsoft are making bigger profits by reducing programming costs. No one is questioning the merits of the AS400 as an extremely dependable and powerful industrial strenght box. But what people are questioning is IBM's plan for the box. And with that no large application vendor or even a small software consulting company is going to start developing NEW AS400 code. And when loyalists such as myself start feeling this way(18 years S/36/S38/AS400) it's time for IBM to take notice. I fought the VAX challenge in the early 90's, fought the report writer fanatics of the mid 90's fought the client/server challenge of the late 90's, fought the business intelligence groups in early 2000.....While others modified their systems I chose to be loyal to the AS400 and IBM. I won't fight anymore. IT's not worth it...IBM has abandoned us. NAME CHANGE or NOT!!!!

It's not going to make a difference.

Funny I was just scrolling the site looking for product announcements and this caught my eye so this would be my last comment....

"Since PHP is built to be a simple Web-scripting language, programmers will find it easier to develop applications without the need for all the overhead of WebSphere and the complexities of CGI," says Mike Pavlak, director of IS for Trippe Manufacturing Company. "PHP represents an alternative to Java that does not require a degree in Object-Oriented Development, but still supports it. It is the biggest language to hit the iSeries since Java!"

What's funny is that while noone is arguing the merits of the ISeries box none of the technical promoters of the box will even admit to the fact that WEBSPHERE and CGI are cumbersome internet technologies....A positive step for the I series is PHP...maybe RUBY on RAILS will be next but just look how a vendor refers to the WEBSPHERE and CGI environments...and there is not a PERCEPTION problem. Deny it all you want...

Me I can work with a green screen and RPG...IT's all I need...I have written 3 large industrial strength applications....but noone at IBM nor anyone on this thread cares to listen to the merits of someone that is a developer and someone that speaks to customers all day long and someone that is an RPG purist and a C# wannabe...Perception is what matters!!!!! and as long as IBM continues to not give the DEVELOPER ommunity what it needs to develop 1st Class easy to deploy apps things will not get better....

We're all developers, in RPG and Java and various Windows development, Delphi for me, VB for some, .NET for others. The difference is we're not wannabes.

I suggested ASNA .NET if you wanted to go that route of a .NET Windows interface that runs against databases on Windows or the i.

Just as customers don't care what mix of languages is used for a .NET system, they won't care what mix of ILE languages a strong business system is written in for i5/OS. Write in any mix of RPG, Java, C++, and others in ILE on the i using interface independent code for web pages or the automatic rendering of green screens to web pages in the new i release.

rd

"Enough posting and trying to convince a few people that the PERCEPTION of the AS400/ISeries is not very good and the fact that the box is lacking an inherent GUI interface is a detriment to selling it."

And how would you propose to display this proposed GUI? You're not going to replace Windows desktop PCs. The fact of the matter is that the system is a *server*. A good architecture will use client technology that is not tied to the server. You want a GUI? Use any one of the myriad open frameworks out there: Flex (Flash rich clients), DHTML (ala GMail, Google Maps, etc), Eclipse RCP, Lazlo, Mozilla XUL, Microsoft XAML, or wait for "Sparkle" (Microsoft's wannabe Flash killer). Regardless, your proposed GUI isn't going to gain traction unless it runs on the majority of computers out there, and that means Windows and perhaps Linux and OS X.

As far as perception goes, perception is reality when it comes to marketing. As far as the platform goes, IBM's trying to alter market perception. It won't work as well as we'd like it to, but at least they're trying. It's much better than what HP did to the HP3000.

Name change is not going to matter one bit. What would matter is if IBM got back to creating a complete suite of integrated tools to work off the ISERIES.the real value of the AS400 was the "integrated" environment. One person could do it all...There was SEU for Screen Work. CL for command language...RPG for business application logic DB2 for GREAT simplistic database logic and access.It was all there in front of you. So good that deployment was a snap. Yes many of you technical people have given alternatives. Use Hat's, Ansa, WEBSPHERE(too bloated and expensive) but you have all missed the point about what made the AS400 so great. If it has becomes ANOTHER alternative to a .NET or other environment then why develop on it? IBM could have updated and properly informed it's audience what was happening with a plan and done things like updating it's SEU to include a bit more with regards to a GUI. But they chose not to. While Microsoft has developed a nice IDE with 2005 .NET express IBM has chose not to do a thing but let outside vendors create the environment. As a result there are too many choices and too many ways of doing things, confusing the users. Not everyone working on an AS400 is a technical guru. That is what made is so popular. The standardization that IBM forced on the AS400 was what made it the box IT WAS.

ps, you've hit a key point.
Ibm had (had) a vision with the as/400, that vision was rapid application development with seu-rpg-integrated db, much more rapid than mainframe development.
SAP has a vision; rapid development of GUI based applications withs abap4-sap kernel-external(oracle, sql, adabas)db. They have a secure, strict and safe test bed layed out for developers who can build gui's that have a standard SAP look and feel, are scaleable and stable (in contrast to .net, .web or .java based apps under complex and heavy workloads). The higher stability is due to SAP's rigid standards and test procedures, in fact, much the same environment like under IBM of the 80's-90's.

Ibm could have had a vision in 1998 as they had in the early s/38 or as400 days, but they hadn't. Now they pay for the consequences.

What is it about Penton Media that attracts so many off the wall posters, disgruntled to the point of blathering about the iSeries being a has-been platform? Trolls of ANSA and California Software?

If you're recommending abandoning the iSeries for a Wintel server, don't forget to say you're recommending a rack-load of them (one for hosting HTTP, one to many for hosting your application servers and application suite, one to many for hosting your database, and one or many for redundancy). And what about doubling your support costs, and quadrupling your down time? And what about listening to users complain about Sally running customer statements or invoices or other batch procedures during interactive workloads?

Google is said to host over 100,000 servers. What happens when the electric grid in California fails? Consider the cost of just air conditioning in their data centers.

Who will buy an iSeries? Modernize your iSeries applications and see!

Nathan,

It's fools like you that must be marketing the ISERIES or working for IBM. I am just a customer telling things like it is. Maybe I don't know a lot but I get no direction or help from my vendor, IBM..and what I am speaking about is being spoken throught the community. I guess that if you consider a Wall Street Consultant and small business owner with 14 years AS400 experience as an off the wall poster than maybe I can understand why people are moving off the platform. Listen to the customers and offer constructive criticsm instead of blasting people for offering their HONEST opinion. Your problem is the same problem IBM is suffering from. Geez you must work for IBM!!!!!!!

I see the same customer resistence towards as/400 in Europe. Whereby it was feasable to sell a small system including green screen accounting to a SMB business (less 500 employees) in 1998, by 2001 such a sale became completely impossible. You'd had better chance selling deepfreezers to the Eskimo people on the Northpole. THE SYSTEM AT THE LOW END DOESN'T SELL ANYMORE, read my lips. Are Ibm or ISV's to blame, I don't care, I just state the facts. As for the high end, in a country like the Netherlands (12 mio people), about 100 systems were sold to large companies in 2005. These are done with their intake of the i5 and now sales are falling of a cliff. Let's see what ibm has to report for 2006/Q1, another 20% drop like in 2005/Q4 maybe? The upcoming figure will be crucial, since 2005 sales were flat after a steady decline from 1998 to 2004. We'll soon know wether we have a turnaround, it's now or never.

Ugerts,

Did you see the revolt at the current COMMON town hall meeting about the name change?. ISERIES users went bonkers and the name shall remain ISERIES. But that level of frustration was really not due to the name change issue but to the fact that what made the AS400 great(the integrated features that I mentioned in my earlier post) were no longer being developed or driven by IBM. That ISeries people had no easy mechanism to develop WEB apps.Websphere was not an option to most. And the other alternatives were far too complicated for the common Joe that used the AS400 to develop industrial strength apps...
It's like if we change the name we can put the As400 in a witness protection program and everything will be fine.
Very sad how the machine has been abandoned by IBM. The box in the late 90's had everything the serious developer needed. And the reliability was second to none. All the .Net features that I am reading about now have been in the AS400 for the past 15 years. Adding to that the new self proclaimed ISERIES experts on this site denegrate and mock people questioning the direction of the ISERIES....when it's clear that most if not all of the AS400 community feel this way is MINDBOGGLING!!!!!

No, I'm not employeed by IBM, or even by a company that sells the iSeries (or any other kind of hardware), though I guess my post could have left that impression. I'm employeed by a small company that develops software for the K-12 education market.

Last week, a fairly large school district in Virginia invited me to teach a fast paced course on HTML, Style Sheets, JavaScript, ILE RPG, and other tools that we use internally for development.

I found myself standing at a podium in a modern training facility lecturing and working through related exercises with their entire staff of developers for about seven (7) hours a day, for an entire week.

It struck me that the students could spend that much time with me when their normal offices and day jobs were just across the hall.

Actually, one student was pulled away and missed the training on Friday afternoon. After hours I went back to their computer room where he was working late on a problem with a Windows based application that went down that afternoon.

He showed me a 6 foot rack of Wintel servers that hosted just the one application and explained that he just got off the phone with the vendor who confirmed a "known problem", but wasn't very well prepared to deal with it quickly.

A small iSeries model 520 hosted the majority of their Student, HR, Financial, other business applications, and hundreds of users with outstanding reliably. Well, that explains why all their developers could break away from their day jobs to spend a week with me.

Some of the complaints about IBM homogenizing all of their platforms are valid, but switching to Wintel is not the answer.

Nathan,

Thanks for the civil answer. As most old AS400 people agree the machine is a great machine. But that brings me to the point that others have posted about here. Knowing that the strengths and audience and majority of market share of the old As/400's that were sold in the late 90's were sold to folks that really had no idea about object orientation and add that to the fact that relearning all the technologies that the techies have mentioned would takes years of study-learning 10 different vendors solutions to the GUI problem, object orientation-What should a company do? Sit around and do nothing and wait until the Iseries goes to the wayside.That is a remore possiblity OR look to other relevant alternatives. It's difficult for me to imagine that developing a .NET app in C# could be as bad or unresponsive as the folks on this website are making it. Maybe it's for a lack of quality implementations or non object oriented design. After all Microsoft is investing millions and even Apple today announced that XP would run on an Apple. The ISERIES used to be the total package, an all emcompassing environment. That is what drew the people to the machine. The performance and the fully integrated work environment. Everything you needed to develop a first class app and do it quickly. Therein lies the problem. The users LOVE the machine but can't sit still waiting for IBM to make decisions regarding their companies future. I mean IBM has said nothing with regard to it's long term commitment to the ISERIES....and to what it might do to improve the situation other than talking about a name change. What are business's to do?

AS/400 development is still integrated, works just the way it always has from PDM, and more advanced capabilities are available through integrated development in the Eclipse WDSc development environment. I switch back and forth based on the project and which environment I prefer to deal with it in. I get the feeling you don't know much about any of the new capabilities of the i, ps.

I've spent a number of years trashing IBM for their obsession with Websphere and lowest common denominator software, along with pushing web pages and not providing a GUI interface for the AS/400 because Websphere is a web server, but they do have that and with the new OS release green screens will be converted to web pages automatically, so it seems to me you don't quite understand some new capabilities are offered but the old remain.

Your OO and related comments are all over the map, I have no idea what your point is, but you can write as much or as little in Java or C++ in ILE as you want, or RPG with Java JSP to render web pages, but as far as I know you can do any of those things with IBM offerings for i5/OS, so the points about third parties are a little off as well.

It would probably help if you read a little more and complained less. As much as Nathan Andelin posts, it's a little surprising that people come here and complain and have no clue what others have been writing here for years.

rd

> What are business's to do?

People and organizations sometimes get stuck in a rut, and it may take some stretching to get out of one. Don't become overly dependent on IBM or any other single source. Replace old applications with new ones. Move beyond interim solutions like screen scrapers and Webfacing technologies. Use HTML, Style Sheets, and JavaScript for user interfaces. Learn about AJAX and apply it. Use SQL for set relate queries. Use ILE RPG and record level I/O for transactions and update operations. Use the iSeries Apache based HTTP server. Use CGI. Add new functionality to your interactive screens such as clicking on column headings to reorder result sets, options to export SQL cursors to PC file formats (CSV, XLS, XML, ASCII Text, PDF), and offering a broader range of criteria to filter result sets. Follow a model/view/controller design pattern to make new applications easier to maintain. Add tabs to your screens. Build software from components (write your own if necessary). Modularize. Buy or build models that can be applied multiple subjects. Build new iSeries applications for new users such as customers, vendors, investors, the general public, and people you collaborate with. Integrate applications with a portal. Modernize!

The company I work for has experienced triple digit growth for the past three years by building new iSeries applications and incrementally replacing old ones with new ones. Long-time user's are pleasantly surprised to see new user interfaces and uses for a legacy platform.

That's correct I don't have a great understanding of the ISeries. Everything used to be centralized. Finding out about things used to be easy. Now there are 20 different solutions offered by 20 different vendors. And everyone is selling everything. It used to be easy to go in a direction. No it's not and add to the fact most of us have production legacy systems to maintain time becomes even more valuable. My users are very happy with their application. The business application logic is second to none. The performance is incredible. I am just trying to be proactive. I know what the users need even if they are not pushing for it. My friend developed a CGI/HTML/RPG interface for Web content but it just seems so complicated. Does anyone have any suggestions on where to start to find out about the ISeries capabilities? When I go to the bookstore I see zippo on the topic and I was there yesterday. And therein lies the problem. I am somewhat educated. And I try to keep myself uptodate at least at a very high level. None of the users that I deal with and I have 15 clients have a clue of the Iseries capabilities and most are talking about the long range goal of getting off the machine and putting in a Wintel environment. So maybe IBM should concentate less on things like changing then name and more on educating it's existing client base on the capabilities of the Iseries.

We should gradually steer this back on topic, that being the name change, which quite frankly doesn't do anything for me, but then neither did any of the others since AS/400.

I could go with AS/400i.

rd

The entire rebranding is a bit silly. But I guess if you’re in marketing you have to justify your existence somehow.

A name more search friendly would have been nice. System i is a pretty obscure term to return practical results of any kind.

SteveK, I am totally with you on marketers justifying their existence. And if we really need to change the name, how about just switching it back to the original "AS/400"? In our shop, we never stopped calling it that in the first place.

Not a bad idea.
Who says we must use names choosen by marketeers?
Everybody wants "open source" products?
And we adopt "open source" names.

LONG LIFE TO AS/400!!!!

Perry: Hopefully you will see this..

You said:
==And when loyalists such as myself start feeling this way(18 years S/36/S38/AS400) it's time for IBM to take notice. I fought the VAX challenge in the early 90's, fought the report writer fanatics of the mid 90's fought the client/server challenge of the late 90's, fought the business intelligence groups in early 2000.....While others modified their systems I chose to be loyal to the AS400 and IBM. I won't fight anymore. IT's not worth it...IBM has abandoned us. NAME CHANGE or NOT!!!!==

I agree with you 100% as I came from the 38 as well, but I must say based on some recent meetings I've been involved with. IBM has taken notice and there are changes being made both in new customer deployment, marketing, and getting the machine noticed by the next generation of computing wizards. We may not see changes overnight, but I believe we will see some positive changes in market perception.

No, I don't think so. Too little too late. The "system i" a.k.a. the former as/400 is a write-off. Period.

Too much emphasis being given there on small to medium sized business not choosing to run their business on the "formerly known as the AS/400".

Of course we all know that is happening, and I think we agree it was because it was the only major computer system without a GUI interface. The Websphere obsessed executives in IBM made sure of that.

But the AS/400 runs very large businesses. Not as many as before SSA pulled an IBM wth BPCS and drove thousands of large companies off of OS/400 to SAP on various OS'es, but still many. Very large companies. I've worked for a few of them.

So it's not going away, and it's not a write-off. IBM just doesn't care what OS hopefully runs their Websphere, but everyone else does.

rd

Ralph,

Ibm should be concerned about their hardware. They've concentrated to much on services lately as a means to generate cashflow to the benefit of shareholders and wall street.
On the hardware front, especially for midrange, we see a year over year retrenchement from the small (less 50 employees) to medium (less 500 emp) business. That retrenchment continues as everyone agrees. For example, we all know the PC business is sold to chinese mfg Lenovo. Where will it end? Until the retrenchement reaches the size of mainframe customers, the banks, insurances, gov.? Ibm either goes into a state of denial (which they're appearently doing right now) with the consequences they won't manufacture NO, NADA hardware anymore in the next decade, or they start to fight the fight of their life.
From my perspective, in todays ICT landscape, ibm is the big looser.

PS. breaking news, breaking news:
"IBM" is not more, they've changed their name to lower case "ibm".

or just Company i. Let their marketing mucks chew on that for awhile and see what it feels like.

rd

ugeerts,

Ralph is correct, Alot of very larges businesses still use and will continue to use the as/400 (i5). I don't know how much your in the biz, but you would be surprised if you knew who used them. Alot of businesses and government agencies, city governments, county governments all over the US still use it because it works! no re-booting all the time to "fix" things.

you said:

"No, I don't think so. Too little too late. The "system i" a.k.a. the former as/400 is a write-off. Period."

I couldn't disagree more.
The only thing that will inhibit the growth of the platform will be attitudes like yours. And as people with these attitudes rise up in the corporate ranks and become purchasing deciders.

Yes, IBM needs to get their heads out of their ass and stop changing the name every 2 years.

The platform is still producing alot of cash for IBM even with the poor marketing. And IBM is still inovating the platform like CRAZY!

I've worked with a few Java programmers over the ears who never had used an AS/400 before. After a few weeks of programming using the DB2 database, ALL of them told me, they never wanted to use any other Database again.

Edge,

Believe me. I don't want to get off the plaform. AS400 is what I shall refer to it again. But why is IBM not the ones telling me that? Why not put one AS400 directional message. A 5 year plan. What are business's supposed to do? Yes there are many business still runnng the AS400. Go into a bank, a casino....But IBM is a huge company. The AS400 is one little piece of their pie. Add to the fact IBM is racking up consulting dollars profits big time by outsourcing to India. Their fees have not come down...Still charging 250 per hour and paying the outsourcers 15-30 dollars an hour. But small companies like myself can't sit around and wait until IBM announces their direction. Right now there is very little choice for these companies that are in LIMBO and if we add the fact that most of the IT departments of these corporations are run by 400 Loyalists....As the regimes start to change and newer YOUNGER people start coming in things might start going the other way to newer things.....and AS as I study these new application environments I do believe we are getting much CLOSER to other things that could challenge these IN LIMBO companies to make a change......and when someone does offer a SOLUTION it might be too late for IBM to counter....I don't believe the C# .NET environment is too far away!!!!!

I wonder if you know anything more about C# .NET than how to spell it?

And yes, I'm going to continue to call it the AS/400. I'll call it the System i when they rename themselves Company i.

rd

RD,

One thing I know for sure. You have a lot to learn about dealing with people and the business world!!!! You are one arrogant FOOL!!!!!

RD,

I may not know much about C# but type this in and let me know what you think?
Take care little man!!!!

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;

namespace RD
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
Idiot rd = new Idiot("rd");
rd.displayTheIdiot(rd.IdiotsName);
}
}

public class Idiot
{
private string idiotsName;
public string IdiotsName
{
get
{
return idiotsName;
}
set
{
idiotsName = value;
}
}

public Idiot(string idiotsName)
{
this.idiotsName = idiotsName;
}

public void displayTheIdiot(string idiotsName)
{
Console.WriteLine("{0} is a fool and an idiot", idiotsName);
Console.ReadLine();
}

}
}

I se no database access there, no business logic, no server logic, nothing of any substance. If you think this is the future of business apps, then why don't you go rewrite your product in it? What's your endless suffering all about?

rd

btw, a command line interface as well. A little bit of a step back if you ask me. You might want to compare to Java and ask yourself what it is that you are fixated upon about C# .NET that you can't do better with Java and ILE RPG.

rd

My endless suffering is over on this site. I thought I could come here to get answers to my questions as well as my customers questions. Guess I was wrong. As far as a rewrite. I plan on creating an RPG to C# converter ONCE I see that .NET is ready for my needs. Funny I took a C# course in November. All 10 students were AS400 people either out of work or their companies were looking to convert over their AS400 to a .Net platform. Guess everyone including Microsoft is wrong. At least they have a plan and respond to questions, issues and they have even created a bonus for those converting over from the AS400. All I wanted was answers to my questions about the future of the AS400 name change withstanding. Noone has a clue to that end. And it's amazing to me.

Good luck to you RD...at least you don't have too many years till retirement. And with the AS400 world represented by folks like you WHO in their right mind would want to be in it.

You might want to check on the delays in Microsoft's plan, Project Green. Nothing magical about .NET, nothing that is making Microsoft's ERP a reality, for example.

As far as work goes, most of substance is being done in Java J2EE which runs on the AS/400. .NET is just more of the VB client server Windows programming that's been around and is ok, but nothing to run a business on.

But there is work in it, and there wasn't much in RPG. Picking up a little with the rest of IS across the board. But if you can program in C#, you can program in Java, and Java JSP or J2EE on the AS/400 calling RPG business logic with native IO makes a lot more sense than Windows programs.

I've got long enough to go before I retire that unless Company i gets serious about a native desktop GUI interface for the AS/400 and DDS oriented communications with it, I'll be on one of the last AS/400's running.

rd

rd,

you remind me of the Japanese soldier they found guarding a cave somewhere in the Pacific in 1955!!!!

Maybe they should change the name to S34S36S38AS400. As long as this box does not have a native or transparent SEU GUI/WEB interface it's over for the BOX. Yes the legacy applications will continue to run for many companies until they either go out of business or get new management and hence new IT managers that believe in other technologies. You are suffering from the baby duck syndrome. Just as a baby is imprinted at birth to the first object it sees and thinks it's the mother...the AS400 series was your first and you are imprinted. As I have stated I think the AS400 is a wonderful machine. But when there is no statement of direction or even the slightest bit of acknowledgement about the future of the box I think it's time for you to start looking at other things too....so that when something that might catch your fancy comes out you will be more familiar with the technolgies that are relevant in todays ever changing business world. Consider yourself lucky that IBM is behind the 8 ball. You still have time to start picking up these new technologies. Now granted it's an entirely different world. Much more to learn. Not only to you have to learn a new language, you have to learn a whole new development process(object orientation), new Database access, a new CL like language and some HTML and DHTML and PHP and Ruby. So just consider yourself lucky and understand you have a few more years to learn these things before the application world will greet the next "IN THING"....at least you will be closer to whats relevant..I am not going to sit around and wait for IBM....If I did I might be working in India or Pakistan right now...Take care!!!!!

> I plan on creating an RPG to C#
> converter ONCE I see that .NET is
> ready for my needs.

If history is any indicator, by the time you were half way done with your converter, Microsoft would have completely changed it's development paradigm, and .Net as we know it today would be a thing of the past.

You'd be better off getting ILE RPG and CGI under your belt before taking such a drastic step.

Guess there is another guy in the cave with you RD? Both you and Nathan might be working on the last AS400 together some day down the road!!!!

.NET is for real. I can't sit still with what IBM is offering today. My customers demand MORE....

Go to the bookstore. There are rows and rows of C#, Visual Basic .NET. books. Look for a single CGI/RPG/AS400 book. Not one user would complain with a Windows interface while all would complain with a GREEN screen or Screen Scraper interface. Every student in the class that I took was either an out of work AS400 programmer or their shop sent them there to learn .NET. Getting the message?. What has IBM done for you? OUTSOURCED all our jobs to INDIA!!!!! Left you in the dark? Left you as a SITTING DUCK? Don't underestimate the .NET platform. With the maturing of Release 2 and 3 coming out soon arriving with LINQ(built in DATABASE SUPPORT) I think they have a BIG winner!!!!

Perry: C# isn’t the only game in town. Java will be around for some time to come. C# isn’t going to be your silver bullet. It won’t magically change Ferrari's from Red to Black. You have to write programs.

With Websphere IBM went firmly down the browser based application path vs. client server applications. It doesn’t matter what web application server you pick. Don’t like Webshpere, use Tomcat or another Java WAS.

The as/400 (by any other name) is a server and will continue serving up applications and/or data (using software probably not written in RPG) for a long time to come.

I believe SAP runs on the platform today. Just not on an i5/OS partition.

Regardless the path you take (Hardware?, C/S or Browser based?, C#, Java, pick your languages?), it will be more complex then the current green screen software.

C# and Java may be more complex than RPG to some but, after spending $5M on an AS400 project to expand the size of one field by two digits, my company is switching to Oracle and Java. ILE is ten years old but, for some reason, the RPG programmers I know won't write reusable RPG-ILE procedures; they duplicate everything and say inline code is faster. It may be but where I work, we've got so much code duplication and so many programs that it is cost prohibitive make to changes. RPG is a good language and the AS400 is a good machine. Why are there no reusable frameworks like Tomcat, Spring, or Rails in RPG?

Steve,

I totally agree that C# or Java is no magic bullet for an old time RPG/400 guy like me. It's very very slow learning but I am determined to pick it up and I am. It's no walk in the park. It's a long slow process. But it's something that I must do. I swore I would never be the oldtime "DP" manager that gets phased out...I saw so many down the road going out kicking and screaming about how "this new system" will never work. As professionals we must refresh and reinvent ourselves every 5 years or so. Whatever I learn can be applied to whatever new silver bullet comes out.. I think most AS400 people are in a real rut....they depended on IBM to set a roadmap and they never did...I waited 5 years for an IBM solution that never came...Those are the folks I feel sorry for. AS400, ISERIES any name...THAT won't make a difference to these people. Their last indignity might be training their Indian replacements thanks once again to IBM...I study hours each and every day. I could develop and implement a green screen application in no time....but the market is wide open and NOW calling for these C# or Java apps...for all the hard work at least there might be a payoff. And the golden ring will go to the folks that can offer an easy alternative to the inLIMBO AS400 world...that's the GOLD RING!!!!

The roadmap from IBM was Java. Can't go to C# or Java and say IBM didn't say that was the future.

I unfortunately had plenty of time to write my Double Deck Pinochle game in Java to get my feet wet in it. Design is everything, in any language. It's wonderful to change interfaces behind the interface, which is what I wrote to between major layers. But guess what? We've been doing that all along with parm lists to RPG programs or the more granular parm lists of multiple subprocedures.

Nothing magical in any of it, just degrees of separation.

For Greg above, a framework called JD Edwards World provides an infrastructure that allows the change of the definition of any field, no cost.

Well, maybe a little upfront. :)

rd

Methinks this topic has exhausted itself! Perhaps a simple Yes/No poll might have been more effective.

Change the name of IBM to the CIA.
Everything is a big secret. Case in point. A buddy is trying to learn about CGIDEV2. Poor guy...Imagine he has to use these API's with no documentation. Anyone know of a book or place to get more info on how to make this CGIDEV2 work? Specifically the pointer definitions?

I believe there is at least one book on the topic by Brad Stone. Go to Amazon and do a title search. Or search and ask questions here http://www.iseriesnetwork.com/isnetforums/forums.php

Thanks Steve.
It looks very good.

[[after spending $5M on an AS400 project to expand the size of one field by two digits]]

How does Java/Oracle help this siutation? Bad design is bad design in any language or platform. This is a non-RPG or

platform issue.

For some reason these 400/RPG discussions always have a huge whine factor where everything's the fault of RPG or the

platform. Just when are the programmers responsible? Does that go away because you think the grass is greener and there's a

magic bullet in .NET? This is un-mitigated nonsense.

What technology that you are using today can credit it's base invention within the last 30 years(since 1976), heck 40 years?.

The rest is just add ons on top of PRE-existing technologies, Java, .NET, IM, cell phones, whatever.

The more you understand that the more things change the more they remain the same also means that YOU are responsible not the

latest marketing gimmick.

Go ahead and discover .NET in all it's glory, I can tell you first hand that both J2EE and .NET are completely over-cooked

frameworks that do not give the results for efforts. Only very skilled architects will design a lasting object oriented

framework. It seems every one throws around the OO buzz like jelly beans but just what OO architecture have all these great

programmers designed, built, put into production and that still runs today?

There is simply far more talk and exaggerations by writers, pseudo-experts and vendors than meets reality. You would think

the sun(the real one) sets on AJAX or something, rather than some marketing gimmick using javascript no less. Sure it works

to some degree but what's the real cost in developing in "AJAX" for a windows desktop look and feel? Way to much tom-foolery

going on in the IT industry these days. PHP now is the latest darling of open source UNIX weenies and now we have Zend -

whoopie. Okay maybe it will help RPG'ers get a easy to develop web presence, juries out on that one.

Unfortunately I left more "solid" compilers for Java in the 90's and now am switching back to bare metal programming.

Although I never really left bare metal programming, Java was the "answer" to everyone's problems, unfortunately it created

many others like terrible performance and slow web applications, and spawned endless "frameworks". I suspect .NET will

follow the same path and those who jumped will regret it sooner or later.

Fact is most vendor products do not use .NET, they might produce a product for the .NET community for sale but try and tear

real compiled languages away from them. No .NET will sooner or later suffer the same problems that all frameworks do. This

is not to say that Java and .NET are "bad" but generally low level of skill required to use them, the imposed abstraction

layer(where the programmer knows next to nothing of the underlying machine) results in poor-performing products. Again bad

design in any language or framework is bad design. You will not become a better programmer by switching to .NET or Java,

that I can guarantee you.

Note to the person who stated that inline code is some sort of RPG bane might be pleased to know that Java programmers do it

all the time, why? Same reason, over budget, schedule deadline, spaghetti code, whatever. The wizard who designed the OO

framework or the pseudo-OO framework forgot a few things and there's no time to go back and de-couple and re-couple

everything, hence screw it, I'll just copy the same object, and create a new one with new signatures. Whoever thinks that OO

solves these problems is mistaken. You'd also be pleased to know that the SQL skill level of a Java programmer is no better

than that of a RPG programmer. I in fact am very SQL/DB skilled and always did the advanced DB coding required. I would say

that the average RPG programmer and Java programmer are basically on par in understanding and implementing their respective

tools. Neither is really that close to the machine and understands little outside of their own environment.

Over a year ago, I was on a 2 year project where the "architect" designed a Swing application that took 2 years to develop.

He wasted both our time implementing basically a 75 table schema in Oracle and Java using JBuilder. It was supposed to be a

publishers clearinghouse system with many modules. Unfortunately, the architect never realized he was no Java God and spent

2 years replicating buckets to store information. Never really implemented the business model. The contractor didn't win

the re-compete and the project was scraped for a purchased system. He did not listen, thought he was Java God. Now I've

realized that this same fool can be replicated in almost any IT department, can you say .NET god. I've decided to slowly

migrate back to low-level machine coding in whatever makes the most sense. But no way am I waiting around for the Java and

.NET gods to "get it". And by machine level I mean assembler, C, C++, networks, etc not necc. RPG but I don't eschew it

either, but it definitely means no .NET and Java. Why do you think MS still produces a C++ compiler, MASM, etc.? Ain't no

C# gonna do it for real programmers.

By the way I never ever saw a more tightly coupled product than JBuilder which completely threw out the notion of OO the

second a "querydataset" was attached to another supporting object, that is the abstraction layer disappeared and now each

object had a reference to the other, each was now tightly coupled to the other. And all JBuilder Java programmers simply

reference the JBuilder data layer directly without any true DAO class enforcing that separation layer. Bad design but

JBuilder basically allowed it. Anyway, the more things change the more they remain the same. The Struts framework is no

different, nor will Shale or JSF or any of the others that follow, more cooks, more burnt offerings.

Good Luck on your .NET quest!

Angel,

Nice post and I agree with most if not all of what you said.....

I am a REAL systems person a business application developer. I have developed 3 fully integrated RPG/400 applications that are still in production total systems. All developed with less than 4 coders....In fact I developed a Distribution System with one other person using my original code as a starter and we were installed in less than a year to a client that does over 50 million in sales. I have met maybe 3 programmers that I though could design and program in all my years of programming...I can imagine what it's like working on a C# project with the majoity of coders...It must be a joke.

I do agree with you that Java and .Net adds and object orientation adds tremendous complexities to programming. Yes there is SOME flexibility to be gained. But th only reason I am converting and I think the reason you see so many people blaming IBM for this and that is that there has been no direction from IBM with regard to the AS400...Tremendous frustrations on the part of people involved with the machine. I have personally come across account after account that refuses to buy an AS400... I print out all the doumentation all the benefits but the world wants WINDOWS and WINDOWS like apps. SO what's left for me is developing at least something I can SELL...I am so tired of walking into an account and discussing the AS400 and nothing else. You won't even be able to demo your product if you fill out a RFP and the as400 Hardware/Software.

So sometimes we must do not's what best but what will SELL....It's sad to say that but I must say the it's either convert over and develop a SEXY application or go out of business. I mean we have developed a forum of discussion and the best we could do is talk about a NAME change.

So what's a company to do? Have a great product that is BUG free and runs like a CHARM and starts to lose market share becuase of the underlying hardware or develop the latest gizmo that will sell off the hook because that's what people want!!!!!!

Perry,

There are 2 discussions. The standard RPG/400 sucks discussion and your trying to get traction on a very real perception. Completely understood.

However, IBM sells basically a fool-proof machine, plan worked well for many decades. Today, as you say "sexy" sells. IBM is a bit slow to get it, no argument, however, there are other machines that sell well and are basically batch machines that have a self-imposed sexy UI running on Windows. Those communities either created their own on top of the batch machine or use a browser, etc for the sexy GUI.

There's no real equivalent on the /400 partially because of the community and paritally because of IBM. The community expected everything of IBM and looked warily at 3rd party offerings. IBM took that to heart and kept vendors at arms length. All of this has changed and will take time to wash out.

BG knew he could never compete on the same turf as IBM and still cannot but he did the next best thing and created a market for his products. As well as took the prime share for himself. That's another story but the point is there is a HUGE 3rd party market for the PC. There are a billion and a half products for the PC and a paltry amount for the /400 by comparison. Again this is changing but takes time.

If you're a business that runs /400 do you surf the net looking for 3rd party products, no but about every single PC owner has done this -- that's the reason why one looks to be better. But facts is you have to look at the total eco-system.

Unix, Linux, mainframe all of these systems are doing well but of course they all look bad compared to PC's because a large machine is sold to a company that has a PC for every employee, so it's very difficult to determine true numbers.

Bottom line, if you put a GUI on top of your product, noone knows the difference and it will sell better. Plus you can market the reliability of the system, etc. IMHO, I really think you should spend some time looking at other platforms that have ERP systems and sell well. Also, don't be in such a hurry to scrap, you could do both -- have the PC and /400 products share the same code. It can be done, roll our own, don't get tied to a vendor migration product and costly licenses.

Angel,

Thanks for your posting. Very knowledgeable ...

First I tried expanding my business out of a niche market to a larger playing field...investors would not put a dime in because of perception of AS400....propietary and limited was their thoughts...no convincing would work with THE MONEY MEN...they said if I were on a "relevant" platform they would reconsider...hence the C#..what's more relevant to the outside world?

The RPG sucks debate goes nowhere with me. That's all I need. I like the fixed format and there never was anything I could not do with the OLD RPG. In fact one of my plans is to create a RPG/C# fixed format editor(for me to work in)...Believe I am not crazy about C# or .NET but I feel like it's possible to cash out with it.....I saw many of my competitors cash out when switching to a JAVA platform 4 years ago even thought the application sucked. So I figured for once I would try and be relevant.
And I thought learning object orientation and C# even if I were not to use it would still be a great experience.
As far as third party products...I am not crazy about stuff like ASNA and California software. I need to be in control of the application the way I like it...And their products are just too expensive to integrate. My company does not outsource and the cost of the software has come down over the years as it has matured. The million dollar_ projects are almost impossible to get nowadays...especially when you mention AS400...Yes..It's crazy but REALITY. And as far as making the machine transparent-who is going to absorb the 75K charge(for a small machine and licenses)? I tried creating a portal but people wanted to own their own servers so that ended that.

So I am left with the proverbial cat chasing it's tale. I love the AS400...been faithful to it but the lack of committment by IBM worries me and my business has to reinvent itself in a hurry. I had opportunities overseas in China but noone could tell me how to incorporate UNICODE easily and there went that market. It's the lack of information that is killing me. Steven gave me the name of a great CGI book earlier today. I gave it out to all the AS400 people I knew. Most did not even have a clue of the AS400 capabilities...Who is to BLAME..If it was just my ignorance then I could accept it. But I feel IBM is to blame that all the AS400 community hasn't a clue about direction, about the real future of the AS400 and about the real future of their OWN jobs..not to mention how they treated theor business partners