RE: System Handbook v4r5?

[Jim Damato <jdamato@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

There are other costs.  Web page content management is not trivial for a
site of this magnitude.  Web links must be maintained and documented.
When/if a company chooses to overhaul the look and feel of their site they
have to either leave a legacy link to old-style pages in the old format or
reformat and relink all content.  A company has to decide if they want
internal and external search engines to drown users with potential search
hits on old documentation.  Documents in pre-web file types (such as Book
Manager) have to be converted to HTML or PDF, or old reader software must be
provided -- compatible with new versions of Windows.  A commitment to x
years of AS/400 documentation snowballs into commitments for similar
standards for 390, RS/6000, Netfinity, S/38, S/36, Series/1... and software
such as Tivoli, Notes, BRMS, DB/2, MQ, San Francisco, Office Vision...

It's not just a matter of leaving some documents on a web server.

I think that the IBM AS/400 documentation site is fairly impressive,
providing a fairly broad selection of manuals going back five releases.

I believe systems providers should be allowed to define standards for
retiring machines, software, versions, and documentation.  There's a great
opportunity for the consulting world to provide legacy support services,
including documentation library archives.

-Jim


-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Bull [mailto:Jeff.Bull@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, December 08, 2003 10:58 AM
To: 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'
Subject: RE: System Handbook v4r5?


The cost of disk space is so cheap these days, particularly if you can buy
it in bulk at cost from within your own organisation.

An archive of key manuals from each model range and OS version would not
cost a huge amount, web-page set up is minimal, maintenance almost zero.

I am not proposing that ALL manuals are archived in this way, though that
would be acceptable :-) , but system builders, system handbooks, software &
hardware upgrade manuals, system operators guide - pretty basic stuff.

I have archived circa 6GB of AS/400 & iSeries manuals on my laptop, .pdf's
and good old .boo's, but there are often manuals I need that I don't have
and can't get.

I just think that IBM should be "big-enough" to look after the users of
older systems, frequently 2nd-user systems, when full-sets of manuals are
not available.  A healthy 2nd-user market is good for the new-sales market
too. 

Kind regards,

Jeffrey E. Bull
OS400 Software Support Consultant

IBM Certified Systems Expert, iSeries Technical Solutions
IBM Certified Systems Specialist, AS/400 System Administration

*      +44 [0] 149 454 9533               swb.   +44 [0] 149 454 9400
mbl.     +44 [0] 786 750 4961               fax.    +44 [0] 149 454 9454
web.     http://www.itm-group.co.uk
 
ITM Group Ltd, Latimer Square, White Lion Road, Amersham, Buckinghamshire,
HP7 9JQ, United Kingdom


-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Damato [mailto:jdamato@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 08 December 2003 16:14
To: 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'
Subject: RE: System Handbook v4r5?


Jeff Bull:

>"Please buy our iSeries servers, but 
>upgrade it every couple of years, or 
>else you can get stuffed".

These days I think this attitude is state of the industry.  If you want to
keep current on many of the proprietary vendor operating systems & hardware
combinations (OS/400, Microsoft, the Unixes...) your hardware is going to
become somewhat obsolete, or limited in functionality within four to five
years (or so).  And of course the big money is in keeping customers on the
upgrade path, not supporting legacies.

With that said, I do think that providing information back through V4R1
(1997?) is pretty good.  If you're hanging onto a system much longer than
that I agree that it would be nice for the manufacturer to provided a
documentation archive.  I personally think that the system owner might view
the documentation as a critical resource, and plan on keeping it under
strict control (and creating backups).

-Jim

James P. Damato
Manager - Technical Administration
Dollar General Corporation
<mailto:jdamato@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>