System iNetwork

General

March 30, 2006

I Like System i Like Crazy

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other word would smell as sweet." -- Shakespeare, from Romeo and Juliet.

Yes, a few weeks ago, IBM announced that they were changing the name of our beloved system from iSeries to System i. Actually, if you want to be technical about it, the previous name was IBM eServer iSeries, and the current generation was called IBM eServer iSeries i5. Now, the current generation is IBM System i5, and the server line is called IBM System i.

Our system is a great system, no matter what the name. That's why I put the Shakespeare quote at the beginning of this article. However, System i is a particularly bad choice.

No, it's not just because I've finally become used to iSeries instead of AS/400.

To someone who writes about this system as much as I do, the name is difficult to work with. Why? Because "system" is a word. And "i" is a word. Look at the title of this blog entry, and think about it.

It's hard to write sentences and have them be clear, because someone can easily misinterpret the "i" as the word "I". Or the roman numeral. I may not be a perfect wordsmith, but I do strive to make my sentences easily understood. Sentences like "System i is the best" are just difficult to read, and until you've taken the time to think them through, it sounds like incorrect grammar!

But that's not all. Try surfing over to Google and searching for "System i". It's just about impossible to get meaningful results. Anywhere that the word "system" happens to be followed by the word "I", you get a hit. Isn't the Internet supposed to be an important tool for marketing your product?

Then there's the inconsistency of the whole thing. Although IBM rebranded the whole family of servers as System i, and only the current generation is System i5, they call the operating system i5/OS! It runs on the whole family, doesn't it?

Right about the time that V5R4 was announced, and the new name was announced, IBM also moved the Information Center. The link I liked to start at used to be http://www.iseries.ibm.com/infocenter. It was easy to remember, so no matter where I happened to be, I could type that link. It was great. When they changed it, I thought to myself "they must want to remove the iSeries from the name, and make it System i or System i5. Right?"

Wrong. The new link is http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/iseries/. Indeed, about the only part of the URL they kept was the word iSeries.

When you go to that link, the title says "IBM eServer iSeries Information Center". It tells you that it's for the i5/OS and iSeries platform. Okay, maybe they didn't update that part of the page. The V5R4 Information Center is new, so it'll say System i, right? Nope.

The V5R4 Information Center, IBM's primary source of information for our platform refers to itself as the iSeries Information Center. It further clarifies the situation by stating the following:

Note: IBM(R) System i5(TM) is the latest member of the family of eServer iSeries(TM). The documentation in the iSeries Information Center might refer to System i5 as iSeries.

Wait a second... I was just at COMMON and saw several senior IBM senior officials just told everyone that the new family name is System i, and not eServer iSeries. How can IBM System i5 be "part of the eServer iSeries family"?

Indeed, those same officials claimed that the name change was absolutely necessary so that the name would be consistent within IBM. Yes, that's right, consistent within IBM.

Yes, we have a great system no matter what it's called. It's true. But when you're trying to market something, you need to consider how people will react to it. That's really what marketing is all about, isn't it? How will people react to your product. What sort of feeling will it evoke in them? How will they perceive your product?

IBM's message in calling it "System i" is far from clear. They don't even seem to know what their goal is. Unless, of course, the goal was confusion?

IBM has really outdone itself this time.

Posted by on March 30, 2006 at 9:36 PM | Comments (98)

April 28, 2005

It's Time to Improve Our Image

There's been a lot of talk lately about IBM's new marketing strategy, and how IBM says that they'll finally market the iSeries. However, there's a major issue associated with marketing this system that we all need to work on.

We must do a better job with the way our software presents itself to the end user if we want this system to survive. And, to do that, we must give our programs a GUI interface of some sort.

For example, When you walk down the aisle of a grocery store, studies have shown that the packages that are most pleasing to the eye are the ones that sell. Not necessarily the food that tastes the best, or has the lowest price (Though those factors do help!) but the most important thing for attracting customers is how the package looks.

The same is true for your computer programs. How the screens look is absolutely vital. You should be putting as much effort into how they look as you do into how they work -- both are important!

Let me use another analogy: clothing. What's needed for clothes to be practical? They don't have to match. They don't have to look good at all, in fact. They just have to protect you from the weather, that's all. Yet, it's very important to all of us to look good. We want nice looking new clothes. We want to coordinate them so the colors look good together, they fit us well (though, some of us better than others!) and that they're appropriate for different events. How they look to others is paramount.

And that's a huge reason why green screen fails. In fact, the green screen paradigm is a big part of the decline of the iSeries. Nobody wants to invest in a system where most of the programs are green screen. It's absolutely killing our platform.

IBM has given us not one, but several ways to make them GUI. There's CGI, or much better the CGIDEV2 tools for RPG programmers. There's WebSphere and Tomcat and all that goes with them. There's HATS and Webfacing. There are many third party tools. There's ODBC, DRDA and VARPG if you want to write software that runs on the PC and communicates with the iSeries. If all else fails, you can write GUI applications that communicate with iSeries applications through sockets.

For some reason we're not doing it! When you go shopping for iSeries software, you still predominantly see green screen. That may not matter much to us as iSeries professionals, but it has an enormous impact on our users, our management, and virtually everyone else.

There's more to marketing than paying for advertisements. In order to the iSeries to remain a force in the market, the way our programs present themselves must change. Until then, it'll be a "legacy machine."

Posted by on April 28, 2005 at 11:55 AM | Comments (42)

April 15, 2005

iSeries Loyalty.

My current job is away from the iSeries – I advise small businesses on eCommerce. This month I visited a small accountancy business and was talking to the client when he mentioned that he recently worked for a larger enterprise which he named. This company I had heard of – it is, or was, a large AS/400 user with an international presence. Although I had never worked for this enterprise, I had worked with people who did.

So we got chatting about this company and the AS/400 (it is nice to find someone who knows what an AS/400 is.) Some of the things he said made me think. Paraphrasing slightly, he made comments such as:

'They were getting rid of the AS/400 or i-something as it is now called – it is old technology.'

'All the systems were old text-based screens and no-one wants to work with them any more.'

'There were a number of AS/400 loyalists – if you were to cut them in half they would have AS/400 written inside them.'

For the first comment, it seems to me that IBM have an issue in the way the AS/400, sorry iSeries, sorry i5 is marketed – this is not the first time I have heard such comments. We, who work with this box, know of its class leading technology but the message does not appear to be getting through to the decision makers. No wonder sales are stagnating.

For the second comment, I wonder who is at fault. Is it IBM or the management of the company? Although I am an advocate of the efficiency of text based business systems in some circumstances, this is not what the world currently wants. So is the iSeries at fault or the IT management of the company for not updating the user interface?

For the third comment I have mixed feelings. It is good that there is a core of iSeries loyalists who can champion this amazing machine (why isn't IBM using them to spread the word?), but I wonder if they themselves are still stuck in the past, developing green-screen applications that people are now uncomfortable working with. Did they champion class leading, modern applications or deliver just another 5250 application.

Until quite recently, I still came across those refusing to move to RPGIV, preferring to stay with RPG3/400. So I suspect that a graphical interface is beyond their expectations. The management then see attractive Windows systems and ask why this cannot be done on their expensive iSeries.

The rest is history…

Posted by on April 15, 2005 at 11:56 PM | Comments (10)

April 5, 2005

The Global Economy - SOX

We certainly live in a global economy. This was driven home to me here in the UK by the amount of coverage in this weeks computer press given to the Sarbanes-Oxley bill. For example, one paper had a double page spread on the impact of SOX on UK companies.

The reason for this is the impact the bill has, not only on British or European companies that have a listing in the US, but US companies operating on this side of the Atlantic. It appears that these regulatory controls affect the operations of the companies outside the US.

I then go on to read that other companies, without any operations in the US but trading with US companies, may have similar requirements imposed upon them by their trading partners (the sentiment appearing to be: if we have to comply, so should you).

Then, there are the UK and European software houses that produce packages that sell in the US. Not only do they have to contend with the practical business differences between Europe and the US (such as the differences between US sales tax and VAT), but also the new US regulatory requirements will have to be accommodated.

In addition, there are also new regulatory hurdles in this country to be crossed, with legislation coming from both the UK government and the European Union.

So, it looks like that over the coming few years, IT departments in this country are going to have the same fun/pain that our US counterparts have been having.

Posted by on April 5, 2005 at 1:51 PM | Comments (3)

March 20, 2005

R.S. Tipton Article – March iSeries News

I found this article titled 'What's an iSeries Professional To Do' not only an interesting read, but one that struck a chord with me. Why? I have been doing some hard thinking about my career.

I have been in IT for a long time – more than 25 years with over 20 years since I first got my hands on a System/38. I have learnt a lot on the way, done some hard work, at times earned some good money, and – I hope – shared some of my knowledge both with people I have worked with and through the pages of the magazine.

But in the past couple of years finding freelance work got very difficult. So difficult that after over a year of unemployment I took another job – still IT related but miles away from the iSeries. Now I feel that it will be a big hurdle to jump to get back into iSeries. But the question for me is: would it be worth it?

Bob expresses the arguments better than I can reproduce here but, with IBM appearing to homogenize all their server brands, the iSeries appears to be losing its distinctive, and attractive, niche. That means the demand for the type of work that I could do, exploiting the skills I have, will decline.

My current job has been somewhat of an eye opener. The organisation I work for had a seminar which included presentations from Microsoft. From this we learnt, and have subsequently purchased for our office, that we could buy a Microsoft 'Action Pack' for £199 (say $300). When this arrived, it was a box with folders containing a large number of CDs for many (most?) Microsoft products – worth thousands at retail prices. Amazing value. It is no wonder there are so many with the Microsoft skills pushing Microsoft solutions. And it all runs on cheap PC hardware.

How much do I need to spend to get the equivalent iSeries solution? Thousands? Ten Thousand? Twenty Thousand? Totally unaffordable for an independent developer. Therefore there are few independent developers pushing the iSeries.

Alas poor iSeries, I knew him well…

Posted by on March 20, 2005 at 12:30 PM | Comments (3)

March 7, 2005

Notes from a far country - SEO.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a topic that interests me as it is one of the factors on which I advise my clients (who are small and micro businesses).

So I was interested to read in the UK weekly computer press a report about this regarding some of the top UK listed companies. The report stated that more than ¾ of the FTSE 100 companies fail to appear in the top 10 search listings.

The companies that fail to appear in the first 3 pages of Google searches include Telecoms and Mobile phone companies, banks and financial firms. Interestingly tobacco companies (tobacco advertising is banned in the UK) fare better than average.

For my clients, I emphasise that it is hard, and ongoing, work getting to the top three pages and staying there. Just creating the website is no guarantee of success (it would probably be a guarantee of failure!). There are whole websites dedicated to analysing search engines. With many of these you have to pay to get the detailed analysis.

The classic case I relate to my clients is that of a client of a colleague of mine.

My colleague reports that her client, who runs a holiday cottage in Mid Wales, spends hours every week researching the latest information on SEO on the web, then optimising her web site in the light of this research. The result is that her cottage is often on the first, or first 3 pages of a Google search. The end result is that her cottage is fully booked – which is the objective of her website.

So it is interesting to see that non-IT specialists can compete with the bigger players and specialists when it comes to the Internet.

A case of everyone is equal on the web?

Posted by on March 7, 2005 at 1:11 PM | Comments (3)

February 16, 2005

5250 is dead!

Or is it?

I had a short discussion by email with our editor, Dale Agger, about some potential articles for the future. Because of my circumstances, I have neither experience of, nor access to, modern systems. Therefore I do not have skills with iSeries Navigator, nor WDSc.

However I do have lots of skill with the older technologies and 5250 type interfaces are still useful. SQL is SQL is SQL, whether you are using the more modern interfaces or Interactive SQL and QM Query. Additionally, with these tools, you get to see the SQL code as you develop it and key it in yourself.

My concern with some of the more visual tools is that you do not see, and hence fail to appreciate, what is happening behind the scenes.

I could be an old fossil not seeing the benefits of hiding the detail away but if I take MS Access as an example: I can create databases and forms that do the basics and some of the intermediate stuff. But when I was having some problems, it was only when I went and viewed some of the SQL that I got to see what was going on.

To take a second example, where I work we use a PC server based contact management system. I was having problems getting the system to write a report that I wanted. With this I was able to direct translate my AS/400 SQL skills (i.e. key in appropriate 'select' statements) on the underlying database and see what the problem was – in this case it was an appalling database design that I would give a 'fail' to in any course on database design.

So, am I an old fossil or is there still room for approaching the iSeries using the 5250 interfaces? I would be interested to hear your views.

Posted by on February 16, 2005 at 1:55 PM | Comments (4)

January 16, 2005

Text based systems?

I agree with what Jeff Sutherland was saying regarding systems being text based. I do not know if it is the same in the US as in the UK, but I have come across a story (I wish I made a not of the reference) of one large company replacing the old legacy system with a smart browser based system. On implementation it was found that it slowed data input down to about 50% of the previous speed as the users had to move from keyboard to mouse and back again.

What I would have liked is a hybrid between the 5250 screen and the flexibility of a browser screen, so that colors, fonts, and layouts can be used to the best advantage. However, there are two other aspects of browser based solutions that I do not like:

The first is that all input fields are implicitly character and that you have to resort to other techniques such as Javascipt to force numeric data, decimal places, dates, etc.

The second is that browsers are stateless, meaning you have to resort to other methods, such as cookies or hidden data etc. to keep state data. I much prefer the 'traditional' RPG route where the data is held implicitly between user interactions.

And then there are various types of messages, subfiles, submitted jobs, and so on.

I do often feel that many aspects of IT systems are just bandwagons that many people jump on.

Ah well we can dream….

Posted by on January 16, 2005 at 1:47 PM

December 18, 2004

What makes a good Programmer?

I was talking with a colleague when this topic came into the conversation. I recalled to him some advice I was given very early on in my career, which was:

"All programmers should be Analyst/Programmers; they might have a 'big A' and a 'little p' – the emphasis being more on the analysis side – or a 'small a' and a 'big P' with the emphasis on the programming side."

Over the years I came to see the wisdom of this, I have worked with programmers who could cut code as good as anyone, but the systems they designed were woeful.

For example, one programmer I met rewrote an order processing system for a company. One of the features he built in (which everyone raved about) was a free format text entry facility on the order entry screen. This displayed one line at a time for the text input and when the end of the line was reached, a new line would be displayed with the current word being wrapped automatically to the new line – quite clever on a 5250 screen. Later when I questioned him on how the system handled back orders for when items were out of stock I got a puzzled look and he did not know what I was talking about.

I visited the users and found that they had to keep a manual list of any orders with out of stock lines. Then, when stock came into the warehouse, they had to manually check this off against the lists and allocate it.

He was an excellent programmer but lacked that special something that makes a programmer useful in a business environment – an understanding of business processes.

When I was running my own department, I would try to recruit a programmer that understood how a business runs rather than an exceptional programmer that did not have a clue about these processes.

I would say that the programming aspects of a programmer's job can be less than 50% programming, the rest of the job requiring analysis and people skills.

I would argue that for most, if not all, jobs in an IT department, being able to deal with people, to understand their concerns, to be able to relate systems concepts to them in an understandable way, and so on, is a key requirement. Programming a computer is the easy bit.

So what are you, a Programmer, an analyst/Programmer, an Analyst/programmer or that rare beast, an Analyst/Programmer (strong on both counts!)?

Posted by on December 18, 2004 at 1:17 PM | Comments (8)

November 21, 2004

Training

Training is an ongoing issue and one that I have always been interested in. I am largely self-taught on the iSeries and have used different products and techniques over the years, although one of the main methods used has been the hard one of working it out for myself from the manuals – although I should say that iSeries News often provides a good insight into particular topics.

With the rapid advances in technology we are now faced with, there appears to be more to learn at an ever increasing rate and I find it is getting increasingly difficult to keep up – although some of my colleagues may say this is just my age showing!

In my early days when the System/38 was some hot new technology, it was possible for a single person to get to know a lot about the machine. If you could program in RPG3 and CL, knew how to create display files, could use SEU, SDA and Query, plus a little knowledge of work management issues, you had a good grasp of the machine and its capabilities.

Now, many may still use these technologies (all those legacy systems that have yet to be converted/rewritten/replaced) and we have in addition:
RPGIV - which has far more to it than RPG3 ever did, and is still growing
CLLE – some new functions have at last been added
The ILE environment – service programs, activation groups and so on
SQL - both interactive and imbedded in the code
3rd part query and reporting tools
The Eclipse development environment
Writing Web applications – both the coding techniques and HTML, CSS, Javascript.
Java
Configuring web servers
TCP/IP and connectivity

and so on. But we are also expected to be competent in using software that hardly existed in S/38 days, such as word processors, spreadsheets, presentation graphics (my first presentation was a S/38 text file printed by a line printer on plain paper then photocopied to transparency foils!) - these being just incidental, but necessary, to the job we have to do.

Then there are very few roles as just a programmer or coder. Most jobs require a knowledge of business processes, on top of which there are new, important regulatory issues to contend with.

I have mostly worked for smaller companies where budgets are an issue. In the early days, a course lasting a week could be had for less than the cost of a VDU screen so it looked reasonable in price. Now a single day's course can cost more than a low-end PC and so looks more significant.

So I am interested in your experiences. How do you keep up? Do you get time/money courses from your employer? Or is the view 'It is my career, it is up to me to train for it' the one that you see. How do you train and what budget do you have? Do you make use of free resources such as those on the Internet, buy books, subscribe to magazines?

I would be interested to hear.

Posted by on November 21, 2004 at 11:37 AM