Re: AS/400

Lou


>     Take a proposal for making this kind of change to one of our local
> clients (10-15 person shops).

If they are a small shop, and are happy with 5250, why do they want to change?
They could just stay put with their existing hardware and software and not pay 
the
interactive "tax".

If they do need to change, moving to a new platform will surely be much more
expensive than upgrading their existing apps.  I don't believe that Joe's method
would be so expensive.  After all, you can read a DDS file and do automatic
conversion on that.  If their applications are so vast and complex how did such 
a
small company manage to purchase them in the first place?

> They would either laugh you out of the
> room (for the cost), or look at you as if you were insane.  Which, of
> course, you would be for proposing to alter the mass of application
> systems that are currently working in order to avoid some artificial
> limit that IBM has imposed.

But if they stay put, they don't have to pay.  May be you haven't explained the
whole situtation.

> >I imagine that the cost would be a fraction of that of moving
> >platforms.  Joe's
> >technique involves separating UI logic from business logic.  This is
> >something I
> >always do on the AS/400. Are you saying that this is not possible on other
> >platforms?
>
>     Uh no, that is the opposite of what I said.  The implementation
> technique is not applicable to other platforms, not the design.

But your clients have the problem on an AS/400, not on another platform, so I 
don't
see that what you can/cannot do on other platforms is relevant.

> >If so why would you want to leave the iSeries?  You know as well as
> >me that this idea is platform independent.  He also uses Java.  This is not
> >unique to the iSeries either.  Joe's ideas seem to use standard technology.
>
>     I don't have any quarrel with the technique at all.  I've done a
> lot of client-server stuff using data queues and sockets.  But I used
> it where it made sense from an application design basis, not just for
> the sake of avoiding some kind of limit.

In the early 1960's, IBM sold 421 and 444 tabulators (punched card based).  I 
was
always told that the cheaper and slower  444 was essentially a 421 with a
governor.  YOu can buy a multi-user software package today and pay a per user 
based
price.  But the functionality that is delivered is exactly the same, whether it 
is
used by 5 or 5,000 users.  Both of these could be called forms of tax.  But user
based pricing allows a small company to purchase a package for a much smaller 
price
than a large company and may be less than cost.

>     Do you contend that writing client-server apps is just as easy as
> using a traditional DDS display file?

I made no such claim and wasn't aware that that was what you wanted.  We all 
know
DDS, but it is not so very efficient, particularly if you have different screen
layouts for every program without standards for their design.  All you have 
said is
that you want to avoid the interactive "tax".  Joe has suggested a way that you 
or
your clients could do this.  It would be a step towards client server.

> If so, why isn't everybody
> doing it that way?  I can point you to 2 shops full of people who
> have done absolutely *zero* coding this way.
>
> >I disapprove strongly of the interactive charge.  But you have to
> >consider it as
> >part of the total cost of ownership or use a technique like Joe's to avoid 
>it.
>
>     To me it seems like a losing proposition either way.  You can pay
> IBM's tax, or you can put all of your existing plans on hold and pay
> your programmers to change everything.  These shops are finally
> recovering from Y2K, they're not going to drop everything again just
> to run in place.
>
> >It seems that me that you have made up your mind and you are now trying to
> >justify your decision to us. We are not your peers.  I get the impression 
>from
> >your web site that you run your own AS/400 software house.  If so, you need 
>to
> >justify the decision to yourself. Perhaps this is your problem - you cannot.
>
>     I never said my business was leaving the market.  I'm telling you
> what my clients are telling me.  I happen to agree with them,
> especially because whatever IBM does to make their apps run crappy
> affects mine as well.

With respect, if you don't counter your clients' negative attitudes, which I
suspect are not fully informed, you will lose them to another platform and 
unless
you support that platform, you will lose them as clients.  If they do need to 
make
some changes for reasons that you haven't explained, why not take a positive
attitude, tell them that you may have a solution (Joe's) and do a little
investigation of it?

Best wishes

Rob
________________________________________________________

Erros plc

44 (0) 1844 239 339

http://www.erros.co.uk - The AS/400 Neural Database for the Internet

_________________________________________________________


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