RE: Switching to Java on OS/400 - got a few questions.

 >the AS400 still couldn't touch an 5k (euro) dual xeon running Tomcat / WS.
Eventual recommendation was

Taking a look at the full picture. . .The benefit you get with an AS400 is
the second to none stability, reliability, and configurability. One can't
say the AS400 isn't a good Java machine just because it runs slow(er) than
an intel machine (of course you could purchase more horsepower). OS/400 is
built for business and most Wintel OSes just plain aren't. Just take a look
at the authority model on OS/400 vs Wintel.  Sure Microsoft is getting into
the enterprise server market, but IBM has a lot of years on them still.  The
good thing for Microsoft as they go enterprise server is that they can learn
from IBM's mistakes and get us to speed much faster.

On a performance note, make sure you have somebody that understands how to
dedicate resources to the specific Websphere or Tomcat processes. I worked
in a shop that had one box setup to allow Websphere to have a certain amount
of guaranteed resources (prod box) and the other machine (dev box) was not
setup with guaranteed Websphere resources.  The difference in performance
was absolutely incredible.

On a choice of App Server note, I have yet to find myself of the opinion
that Websphere is not better than Tomcat (5.5) unless you need the
additional features that Websphere has (i.e. EJB's)

With all that said, IBM is usually slow to market with getting to the latest
JDK version (i.e. how long after JDK 1.5 came out did IBM have it
implemented on OS/400?). But with the slow to market factor you *usually*
gain stability and reliability.

This is just what I have seen in past experiences. Others have had better
and worse experiences I am sure.

Final note, use Tomcat 5.5 on your AS/400 vs. Websphere unless you have
specific reasons to not use it. There is a lot more community support for
Tomcat 5.5 vs Websphere (at least from what I have seen).

HTH,
Aaron Bartell

-----Original Message-----
From: java400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:java400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of StokesP@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2005 3:15 AM
To: Java Programming on and around the iSeries / AS400
Subject: Re: Switching to Java on OS/400 - got a few questions.

>* What is the resource usage of Java programs under OS/400?  How can I 
>tell for myself?  It is very important that we can determine accurately 
>if this is a feasible
path.
>

I'd be careful on that one. Give it a go and do a profile / load test to see
if AS400's a suitable path - if it meets your requirements fine, else
compare the same tests to other platforms to see if there's something
specific to AS400 implementations that's causing an issue. If you can't test
because you havn't written it yet, do you really want to lock yourself down
1 route ?

> I've never found Java applications to be resource-intensive on OS/400.
> Of course a badly written application could cause problems.

Generally I'd agree. I've only seen 1 instance where there was a big
difference - even with recommended upgrades (v. expensive ones!! to an
already top of the range AS400), the AS400 still couldn't touch an 5k
(euro) dual xeon running Tomcat / WS. Eventual recommendation was we stay
with Xeon for app server level software because IBM couldn't fully fix an
AS400 / Java specific implementation issue.

Pete.






 
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Programming on and around the                    20/09/2005 05:22
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 n and around the         Re: Switching to Java on OS/400 -
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I'll attempt to answer a few questions.

I'm not familiar with the long startup time of Tomcat.
You can create native Java program objects on OS/400 with the CRTJVAPGM
command.
Change the optimization level.  It is *INTERPRET by default.

You can run graphical applications using NAWT on OS/400 but it is not easy.
Below are some notes I have on this.  We never tried it but it may give you
a place to start.

NAWT relies upon the X Window System for its graphics engine. The
recommended X Window graphics server for this release is Virtual Network
Computing (VNC), which runs under OS/400 Portable Application Solutions
Environment (PASE). PASE is a UNIX-like environment capable of running most
binary executables compiled for IBM's AIX operating system. VNC is a product
of AT&T Research Labs, and provides a virtual X Window server; that is, an X
server that does not require a directly attached graphics-capable display
device.

I've never heard of anyone using OS/400 as a development platform.

I've never found Java applications to be resource-intensive on OS/400.
Of course a badly written application could cause problems.

I am familiar with 2 JDBC drivers for DB2/400:
1) com.ibm.db2.jdbc.app.DB2Driver -> Use this when running a Java
application locally on an iSeries (AS/400) machine
2) com.ibm.as400.access.AS400JDBCDriver -> Use this driver when accessing a
remote iSeries (AS/400) system

I hope this helps.

Todd


At 02:02 PM 9/19/2005, Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen wrote:
>I am an experienced Javaprogrammer with
>Windows+Unix experience who have now for a while
>worked with creating frontends for OS/400 backbone calls using Eclipse 
>on Win32.
>
>Just for fun I tried installing and running Tomcat 5.0.30 beta the 
>other day, with the intent of eventually porting our webapps to run 
>natively on OS/400, but we are very careful since that is very new to 
>us
all.
>The sample JSP's and servlets was impressively quick!
>
>I would therefore like to hear if there is experience in this forum 
>regarding the following:
>
>* The long startup time of Tomcat (50 seconds) is due to some 
>precompilation to native code?
>* Can I use graphical applications (Swing) on OS/400 and use some 
>software on Win32/Unix to see the output.  X Windows perhaps?
>
>* I have seen that some corners of eclipse.org mention OS/400 binaries, 
>but not for the native
>Eclipse application.   Is this available, or is
>it perhaps some Websphere package?   How do I
>access that (i.e. what am I to ask the system
>responsible) :)  Would Netbeans run?
>
>* Do anyone use Java on OS/400 as a development platform, or is it 
>solely for deploying applications?
>
>* I found the qsh interface rather sluggish to work with.  Can I ssh to 
>OS/400 instead and perhaps get a more responsive shell?
>
>* What is the resource usage of Java programs under OS/400?  How can I 
>tell for myself?  It is very important that we can determine accurately 
>if this is a feasible
path.
>
>* Do anyone have performance numbers of JDBC-access using the best 
>driver when running on OS/400?  We may have a very data processing 
>intensive application where network performance may be a bottleneck if 
>running on another host.
>
>
>
>Any other suggestions, including further reading, would be appreciated.
>
>Thanks in advance for any pointers.
>
>Best regards,
>
>    Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen



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