RE: Where are all of the /400's going.

> From: Evan Harris
>
> Or perhaps you are proposing we do this on a linux box ?

NetMax is a Linux-based "web appliance".


> Except that its a "PC". And probably the "NT guy" is looking after it.

If you're worried about ownership, step up and take ownership yourself.
Describe it as a peripheral for the AS/400, and say you'll tkae care of it.
It's not that hard, and you'll be personally responsible for saving the
company money.


> Because you are giving away control of a piece of the business and IT that
> you shouldn't give away. Before long the PC guy or the web guy is in with
> the marketing manager or the CEO telling them how if they added IIS,
> Apache, Perl, PHP, Zope or whatever turns his particular wheel that they
> could serve dynamic data such as up-to-date price lists instead of just
> static pages.

This is a political discussion rather than a technical one.  Evidently
you've had bad experiences with "PC guys" in the past, so you want
everything on your AS/400 where you have control.  Obviously, there can be
no technical argument against that position.


> By and large I don't disagree with what you say Joe, in particular how
> difficult the economics are to justify, but I see this as retaining a
> strategic service. It is far easier to start configuring your AS/400 HTTP
> server and the other bits and pieces using static pages to understand how
> to do web serving, than it is to argue the case for JSP's or websphere or
> whatever once the webserving is being done from the little box in the
> corner (or however many the NT guys has managed to grow it into.

Web serving can be done - indeed often SHOULD be done - from more than one
platform within your organization.  But since you believe backing up a
single PC is beyond the capabilities of your IT staff, I doubt that
supporting a second HTTP server is going to fly.


> Evan Don't-give-it-away-coz-you-won't-get-it-back Harris

This being your position, no technical argument can have merit and will
simply further clog the bandwidth.  I shall cease and desist.

Joe Pluta
www.plutabrothers.com