RE: *** ADMIN: IMHO and Survey

I don't think that being enthusiastic about what the 400 can do is
incompatible with being uneasy about its future.  As a former Atari ST owner
(let's have a show of hands from those who never want to see the word
"Atari" again) I'm real familiar with this situation.  

This forum reminds me of the Atari user group I used to belong to.  A lot of
the talk in the user group was about Atari's "marketing."  The other big
topic was things you could do with your Atari. (It was actually a fine music
and desktop publishing platform besides the games.)

The sound off session at COMMON reminded me of what happened at the Atari
club meetings when someone from Atari management came to the meetings.   

I don't think anyone who subscribes to this list has negative feelings about
what the 400 can do.  There are people on this list who are doing
interesting things with the 400 that I couldn't conceive of doing, _and_
sharing the information.  IBM may not have the death wish the former Atari
management had, but they don't seem to care about the 400 too much. 

I don't think it hurts to vent about what IBM is doing (or not doing) to the
400.  Course I subscribe to the principle that if you have something nice to
say about something, you should hold it in reserve in case you need to
apologise later.  <g>   

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nathan M. Andelin [mailto:nathanma@haaga.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, April 05, 2000 11:03 AM
> To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
> Subject: Re: *** ADMIN: IMHO and Survey
> 
> 
> IMHO the "IMHO" posts lately are too negative.  Same could be 
> said for some
> of the sarcasm in this forum.  I for one, am still very 
> optimistic about the
> future of the AS/400.  The reasons are many.  I'll share just one.
> 
> The Internet revolution has caused a dramatic shift in focus from
> workstation based solutions to server based solutions.  Even 
> Microsoft has
> changed directions.  More resources are channeled into their 
> middle-tier and
> back-end products.  COM+, SQL Server, Multi-Tier Architecture, Message
> Services, and Inter-Process communications are the areas of 
> focus.  Problem
> is, the more components you add to an NT server, the less 
> stable it becomes.
> 
> But, my purpose is not to point out the weakness of NT but rather to
> re-emphasize the strengths of the AS/400 as an application 
> server.  For many
> of us, our future projects will include a mixture of 
> graphical thin-client
> technologies (HTML, XML, Wireless Markup Language, Java 
> Script, etc.), but
> also AS/400 based "servers" to deliver content, handle business rules,
> database access, communications, and do the hundreds of 
> things that are best
> handled by a server.
> 
> IBM emphasizes Java in it's application server framework, but 
> many of us
> favor ILE Languages instead.  RPG, C, and Cobol are excellent 
> choices for
> developing the server portion of a client-server application. 
>  Because of
> the emphasis on Java however, relatively few newcomers understand how
> tightly integrated and optimized ILE languages are in the OS/400
> architecture.  It is a mistake to think of RPG and Cobol as past their
> prime.  The traditional use of these languages to support 
> 5250 screens does
> not preclude them from a major role in a client-server 
> architecture.  I will
> admit, however that ILE developers need a better framework - software
> resources that make it as easy to support browser and thin client
> application as it is to support 5250 applications.  This 
> point might be a
> call to action for this community.  Do we sit here and gripe 
> about how IBM
> and others just don't get it, or do we begin building/implementing
> frameworks that enhance and take advantage of the AS/400's 
> unique strengths?
> 
> The technology and economy of the Internet offer a great 
> opportunity for the
> AS/400.  Year 2000 is behind us.  Let's take advantage of 
> this opportunity.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> > 
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