RE: The Perpetual Myth of iSeries Obsolescence

The reason that people think the AS/400 is obsolete is because it looks
obsolete. We can argue all day long whether terminal interface is better
then GUI for certain types of tasks. The Unix guys do this to they will
talk and talk about how great the command line interface is, but Unix
has a GUI too and when it is appropriate to use they use it.

Imagine that instead of developing windows, Microsoft had instead
upgraded DOS to support more character sets, and then renamed it "system
D", sure you can only use 8 characters in a file name, but that is all
you really need for business use. They could add a virtual machine so
that you could run "system D" on a 32 bit processor or a 64 bit
processor. And everyone would refer to it as a legacy system because it
would look OLD. 

Auto companies spend an enormous amount of money on styling because
people's impressions when they look at a product matter. What if Ford
had a car they called "system T" which was cheap, reliable, safe,
efficient and looked exactly like a model T, do you think anyone would
buy it?

The AS/400 is a good reliable back end system with some impressive
technology under the cover, and I am not necessarily arguing that
anything needs to change. But the reason that everyone who is not
closely involved with the AS/400 thinks it is a legacy system is because
it looks like a legacy system.

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Joe Pluta
Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2006 7:55 PM
To: 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'
Subject: The Perpetual Myth of iSeries Obsolescence

The iSeries supports pretty much every character set available.
Certainly
as many as your standard Windows/*nix box.

The QSYS library system is the only file system that has the 10
character
limit, and that's frankly all a business system needs.  Long
directory/path
structures are needed for text-file-based operating systems that are
fconfigured with thousands of little files, as opposed to an OS with an
integrated database.

But in any case, the iSeries supports long file names just fine in the
IFS.

The fact that the iSeries supports all those technologies IN ADDITION TO
all
the technologies offered by other operating systems is a benefit, not a
disadvantage.

Joe

P.S. I should start a cult: The Church of the Perpetual Myth of iSeries
Obsolescence.  I'd have to rename it every time IBM renamed the box, but
that might actually be helpful from a tax (evasion) standpoint.


> From: Keith Carpenter
> 
> EBCDIC ?
> library/object file system with 10 character names ?
> 
> 
> Unfortunately, changing these things probably has little ROI.
> 
> 
> Michael Jacobsen wrote:
> >> Where do people get the idea that the iSeries system is so
obsolete?
> >
> > Green screen?