Re: Green screen - it's time is over

Joe,
Im lost here,whats wrong with business rules in SQL? I would like to drill
down deep to the nitty gritty of what you dont like aboubt SQL.
BTW I thought IBM invented SQL in the first place
Thanks in advance
Dave
----- Original Message -----
From: "Joe Pluta" <joepluta@PlutaBrothers.com>
To: <midrange-l@midrange.com>
Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2001 6:41 PM
Subject: Green screen - it's time is over


> Man, I thought I was long winded.  The same arguments have been being
> repeated over and over here, to what avail I'm not sure.  But I thought
I'd
> try to recap a couple of the salient points, and then try to make
something
> constructive.
>
> 1. IBM did not one day say, "Let's charge extra for interactive!"  The
price
> per CPW has been dropping for both interactive and batch machines.  It's
> just that the batch machines are dropping much, much faster.  I don't know
> IBM's philosophy, nor does anyone on this list, but I have a feeling it
has
> something to do with trying to get as much revenue as possible from the
> green screen while at the same time moving away from it.  Which brings me
> to...
>
> 2. Green screen is going away.  The old 5250 interactive feature, which
made
> the AS/400 pretty much unique among the midrange world, is gone.  Dead.
> Kaput.  You can still try to hang on to the old architecture, but it will
> cost you.  That's the reality, no matter how much wailing and gnashing of
> teeth happens here.  If you think you can change it, I suggest you get
> together a coalition of people and talk to IBM.  Constantly rehashing the
> argument here isn't going to do anything to change the reality of the
> current situation.
>
> And that's what I want to focus on for a moment.
>
> The truth is that the AS/400, now spelled iSeries, is still the best
> business platform available.  But its uniqueness no longer resides in that
> wonderful integrated 24x80 window that we grew up with.  Instead, it lies
in
> the ability to write powerful applications in languages with tight
> integration to its incredible database.  Personally, I think IBM's
direction
> of pushing everything to SQL is ludicrous, but it is silly for me to whine
> about SQL.  Instead, I need to embrace it as best I can and work it into a
> realistic development environment.
>
> What I can do is to try to stop the proliferation of a couple of bad
> elements:
>
> ODBC.  Plain and simple, ODBC is a horrid idea for anything but the
> occasional data mining application.  If you need to update data, do it
> through servers.  In fact, learn to love the concept of tiered designs,
and
> build your applications accordingly.  It won't cost you a lot, and once
you
> have, it will be wonderful.  It sure beats SQL, which I have shown
> repeatedly to be far inferior in performance to record-level access for
any
> transaction-based updates.
>
> J2EE.  Enterprise Java Beans simply have little place in most
applications.
> The overhead is excessive, and a standard way of defining business objects
> and the methods that update them simply hasn't been developed yet.  Until
> that time, EJB is simply extra overhead.
>
> If we avoid these two things, the iSeries, especially in its server
> incarnation, beats any other machine out there hands down in total cost of
> ownership, and in reliability and scalability.  If we join together to
> develop some standard interfaces that allow data and programs on the
iSeries
> to be incorporated into general n-tier distributed applications, then the
> iSeries will easily take on all comers.
>
> Or, we can continue to bemoan the loss of our beloved green screen.  We
can
> reminisce wistfully about nickel soda pops and drive-in theaters, while
the
> world zips on by with Internet enabled applications running on Microsoft
IIS
> talking to whatever database server currently isn't crashing or locking
up.
> We can get used to unreliable systems and long delays while "indexes are
> rebuilt" or "servers are synchronized".  We can twiddle our thumbs and
> remember the good old days as yet another mission critical system succumbs
> to some hacker's latest love child.
>
> It's up to us.  The future is here, and in the future I see, the iSeries
has
> a huge part.  But it's not going to be as just another ODBC server - it's
> going to be as the central business logic processor of my networked
> applications.  I may have Microsoft, I may have Linux - in fact I may have
> many of those boxes, since I'll need failover for the toy operating
systems
> that run the Flash presentations that smooth-talking dot-com consultants
> sell to management.  But when push comes to shove, my mission critical
> systems are going to be written in RPG, run on DB2, and talk to the world
> through secure messaging.
>
> You with me?  If so, quit worrying about the demise of the green screen.
> It's already happened, but we just haven't admitted it yet.  Right or
wrong,
> the brave new world is upon us, and it's up to us to bring our platform
into
> it.  And if we do... if we do, we'll have not only the best damned server
on
> the market, but a whole new architecture that may just roll back some of
the
> tide of bloatware that has tainted our industry and our profession ever
> since the first release of Windows.
>
> No, I may never write an entire operating system in 32KB again, but I can
> fight to make sure that business rules aren't written in SQL and databases
> aren't updated by Java Beans.  At least for a little while.  And that
isn't
> just tilting at windmills, I don't think.
>
> Joe Pluta
> www.plutabrothers.com
>
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