Re: What is an AS/400? -- MIDRANGE-L

Al

Thanks for your help again.

I have been through the links that you and other respondents have so
helpfully supplied and many others that I have found or of which I was
aware.

I have not found one that answers my simple question in a simple way.

So I have decided to write my own answer to my question "What is an
AS/400?"

I have written the first draft and am now wondering how to improve it
yet keep it succinct (which I hope it is).

It is not my idea to cover every aspect of every other operating system
and 
compare them to OS/400.  I do not sell AS/400's.  This is the job of IBM
and BP's
who do. I find it surprising that no such simple overview of an AS/400
already
exists, or if it does that I cannot find it  (but given IBM's record on
marketing
the AS/400 ...).  I have a business to run and therefore a limit to the
time I
can and should spend on this.

My reason for creating the document in the first place is in case
someone finds
out about my AS/400 Neural Database, navigates to my site, is interested
in my
concepts but does not know what an AS/400 is or has an uninformed
prejudice
against it.

I am sure that when I put up my view of an AS/400 on my site, perhaps in
a couple
of week's time, anyone who reads it, including I hope you, will correct
any
stupid mistakes.that I may make and make suggestions for improvement. 
But I am keen to keep it simple.

> There are several outfits that have white papers comparing the AS/400 to
> other operating systems.  I would imagine that they all would be willing to
> work with you, at no cost to you, to jointly craft a summary statement of
> what they have to say about its primary advantages and disadvantages,
> provided that statement has good relevant links to their white papers & other
> services.

I tend to think that documents created by committees are turgid and not
user friendly.  I would rather have my own version, warts and all. 
However,
it will contain a quote to at least one such other AS/400 review,
providing the
authors give me permission to quote them.

As far as links are concerned, I will certainly include some such as you
suggest within the limits of the time that I have available.  I will
also
provide links to this site, http://www.400times.co.uk ,
http://www.ignite400.org and of course IBM.

It does seem surprising that, given that there are quite a lot of sites
with AS/400 links, that no one site seems to cover the ground really
comprehensively. Still, I am not volunteering!  I dare say that the
reason is that it is very time consuming.

> For example, on your web site page in the section "What is an AS/400?" you
> might have a statement like this:
>
> Worldwide there are about 250,000 AS/400s in use.
>
> The X Group (an independent business technology analysis organization) says
> that the major advantages of the AS/400 over other operating systems, such as
> Windows NT, UNIX, and LINUX, include:
> lowest lifetime operating cost for comparable responsibilities;
> superior reliability, with the least unplanned down-time;
> leader in data base integration;
> superior performance, with mature tools to methodically manage this;
> winner of latest contests for speed of transaction processing;
> superior scalability totally 64 bit but 128 bit design;
> the best java support in the industry;
> excellent for managing enterprise middleware;
> extreme security, such as NEVER being infected by a computer virus.
>
> However they also point out that while the AS/400 is perfectly capable of
> hosting PC LAN & internet services, such as e-commerce, there are operating
> systems superior for this kind of task.  To see the whole story on this &
> explanations of the importance of each of these & other elements, check out
> the following white papers.
>
> Links to that Group's relevant white papers.
>
> With sub-heads on each group, that someone at beginning of your page can use
> HTML to rapidly jump to, you would want to include:
>
> Frank's book at midrange dot com
> Andrews Consulting Group that Janet works with
> Gartner Group reports that are widely quoted
> D.H. Brown's report that I briefly reviewed Aug 9 after the link was provided
> by Scott
>
> Probably other outfits are involved in the URLs cited by this thread, that we
> have not yet got a round TUIT on looking into, but I am sure some other
> poster will illuminate, commenting on my post.
>
> You might have an introductory section with links to the home pages of each
> of these outfits with short piece on who they are, then what they agree on
> with respect to where AS/400 leads LINUX UNIX NT.  Also mention that the
> AS/400 is a multi-OS machine in which the best of all worlds can run off the
> same platform.  If you have an application that only NT can run, you can run
> it off NT while running NT off of OS/400 & your users can icon click off the
> same browser interface or DOS-like menu an applications that could run off
> many different OS, then when in the middle of one OS application, hot key to
> one running on a different OS.
>
> A distinction needs to be made between platform for client & for server.
> Many of your individual employees & internet customers might be running work
> stations powered by Windows, LINUX, (name some of the others) on a PC, MAC,
> NC, or twinax 5250, while the host server is on AS/400.  The 400 can support
> all of the examples named, while most other OS can only support some of them.
>
> Now while we on MIDRANGE-L know what all of those abbeviations in the above
> paragraph are referring to, it would not hurt to have links to a glossary
> section, since a fair number of visitors to your site might not be aware of
> NC or 5250 & a little blurry on others that you might list, so an "Oh Yeh,
> what the heck is that?" link can dramatically enhance the overall
> user-friendliness of your site.
>
> Rob, feel free to use any of the text that you have found in my writings.
> Although you might want to give me editorial review of your selection, since
> my reply might include ... oh in this section I was really quoting someone
> else & I did a sloppy job of giving credit where it was due.

I certainly will.  Many thanks for all your ideas.

>
>
> Al Macintyre  ���
> MIS Manager Green Screen Programmer & Computer Janitor of BPCS 405 CD Rel-02
> running on AS/400 V4R3 http://www.cen-elec.com Central Industries of
> Indiana--->Quality manufacturer of wire harnesses and electrical
> sub-assemblies
> +---
> |

Best wishes

Rob

________________________________________________________

Erros plc

44 (0) 1844 239 339

http://www.erros.co.uk - The AS/400 Neural Database for the Internet

_________________________________________________________

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