NT & National Security ? -- MIDRANGE-L

Hey all

Alot of neat things happening at;

http://forums.infoworld.com/threads/get.cgi?63055

Like the following couple of posts on the topic of the AS/400. (Below)

And other topics like;  " Is the buying of NT by the DOD compromising
national security ?"

John Carr
EdgeTech
74711.77@compuserve.com
804-739-7689
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REAL men use...

     Posted by: imric
     Date posted: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 

     whatever they want as long as it gets the job done. 

     This may be the first time I ever heard anyone compare the '400 to a
Mac, though! 

     The AS/400 has no GUI at all. It's interface is largely menu-driven,
although the command-line
     is interesting; each command is made up of separate descriptive
elements (thus, if you want to
     work with submitted jobs, you would type "wrksbmjob"). The (original)
filesystem on the '400
     IS the database! It DOES use the PPC to achieve it's (now remarkable)
scalability, though.
     IBM has used OS/400 to pull some 'fast-ones'; the infamous delay loops
embedded in the OS
     (slowing down everything) which were there to give a future (at the
time) release a 'boost' in
     performance, for example (IBM has been remarkably cooperative with
developers, though,
     ASNA, in particular comes to mind). There are some really annoying
quirks, as well (10 char
     filenames, for example). 

     Both the AS/400 and Mac have a VERY loyal userbase... 

     So - is the AS/400 the "anti-Mac"? 

     ROFL!

---------------------------------------------------------------

     AS/400's

     Posted by: ChrisR
     Date posted: Tue Jul 14 8:32:52 PDT 1998 

     Tis True that IBM has done a good job of making the AS/400 relevent
again. There for about
     one or two years (95-96) it looked like it was going into the ash
heap. With the Visual Age
     tools and Notes Server, I think it has help salvage the application
development side. Stability
     of the AS/400 and the availibility of line-of-business-applications
has never been a question
     (downtime measured in minutes per year, etc...). 

     I'm a little biased on this subject, however, since I spent all of
1996 writing a product to
     translate from RPG to VB. So most of what I have seen of the AS/400 is
colored through the
     lense of having to plow through a couple of million lines of RPG and
CL. (Actually, the
     RPG-to-VB part was easy compared to the CL-to-VB). 

     Before I drift too far off topic.... 

     One of the sales meetings I had with this translation product was with
an Air Force group that
     ran AS/400's for their PBX's throughout the world. They were seriously
scrambling trying to
     cope with year 2000 issues on code that was over 20 years old. I
remember this meeting
     because there were 6 programmers, 2 middle managers, and 2 who were
actually making the
     decision. Seems that the powers from on high had decided that they
needed to convert from
     an AS/400 to an NT architecture. Funny thing was, the programmers
hated the idea, the
     middle managers didn't care but were trying to keep both sides happy,
and the 2 making the
     decisions wanted NT no matter what any of their techies said. 

     Making a pitch in front of this group was interesting to say the
least. At any rate I hate sales (I
     am smart enuf to know the truth but too honest to be willing to lie)
especially in front of such a
     contentious group.


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