Re: IBM Rational Developer for System i V7.1

DennisRootes@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

Or perhaps that might have something to do with the fact that IBM can't seem to market and sell the i5 to anyone but previously existing customers? Much as I think IBM has done a lot for the IT world in general, I think it's done a pretty poor job of selling the <insert new name here> for a dozen years or more. There's no money because there's no installations. But that's only my opinion.

I'm not going to argue this point, although even if IBM had all the marketing in the world, there are ALWAYS going to be way more desktops than business servers, eh? But past aside, the thing everyone should take away from this (and from smoe other things you'll be hearing) is that the System i is far from dead in the eyes of the people who really matter, the Rational tools team. All of the tooling coming out of that group (including the new Jazz stuff) is i5/OS-aware from the get-go, and that's a new concept.

IBM still considers i5/OS as part of the future, although that future might be as a business-rules blade server interfaced to a mashed up front end. And in that world, you need to know a few things: web services, REST, Eclipse and EGL. If you want to take advantage of the new technology that IBM is building, those are the key pieces. Rest assured that RPG and DB2i can figure prominently in that future, but if you want to be on the wave of IBM innovation, it's going to be Web-based and the tools will be built on Eclipse.

Please note, also, that there is no longer a reason NOT to be web-based, since IBM now ships as part of base i5/OS an integrated application server, a version of WebSphere which you can use out of the box.

Joe