RE: AS/400 -- MIDRANGE-L


William stated...
           I agree that modernization of apps and getting the business
logic seperated
from the UI is a great idea and a good goal, but the point that I want to
make is that if you have to re-write your apps to get good performance on
the iSeries without paying the *interactive tax*, the people faced with
this
decision may just make the decision to re-write for another platform.

     We are not re-writing our apps and are not running them interactively.
We do so by modifying them to run in batch and exchange information within
a client/server environment. Our applications are performing quite well on
a entry modal AS/400 and don't require significant upgrades to the system
to support this modernization.

William stated...
           The shops that I speak of are small, sometimes without
programming staff
altogether.  They bought the apps or acquired the apps from a merger.  Some
M$ weasel will tell them that NT can do all of the things they want, or a
mixed group of Intel based products can to *nearly* the same thing.  If
faced with the decision to re-write software to avoid the *interactive
tax*,
or go to another platform, which would you choose?

     Most of our customers fit into a small shop category. Some have
programming staff but many do not. It it were not for the AS/400 these
companies most undoubtedly lost time and money with a system they could not
manage.

     If permitted, given enough time and money the M$ weasel may get the
job done. But our customers are not willing to take the chance and give up
such a stable OS/400 solution. They are staying with the AS/400 because of
its track record not because they hope it will become something 'clicky'
from the latest trade magazines.

Ken Slaugh  (707) 795-1512 x118
Chouinard & Myhre, Inc.
AS/400 Professional Administrator/MSE
Client Access Specialist
http://www.cm-inc.com/


                                                                                
                  
                    "William A Pack"                                            
                  
                    <tonypack@bellsouth        To:     
<MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com>                  
                    .net>                      cc:                              
                  
                    Sent by:                   Subject:     RE: AS/400          
                  
                    owner-midrange-l@mi                                         
                  
                    drange.com                                                  
                  
                                                                                
                  
                                                                                
                  
                    07/29/2001 06:01 PM                                         
                  
                    Please respond to                                           
                  
                    MIDRANGE-L                                                  
                  
                                                                                
                  
                                                                                
                  







----- Message from "Joe Pluta" <joepluta@PlutaBrothers.com> on Sun, 29 Jul
2001 19:53:53 -0400 -----
                                    
      To: <MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com> 
                                    
 Subject: RE: AS/400                
                                    

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Lou Forlini
> Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2001 6:03 PM
> To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
> Subject: RE: AS/400
>
> At 8:58 AM -0500 7/29/01, Joe Pluta wrote:
> >I'm confused.  I've just explained how you can completely avoid the
> >interactive tax while at the same time making your applications
> powerful and
> >flexible, yet you're still using that old, out-of-date
> "governor" argument
> >as your decision to move to a less reliable, less secure alternative.
It
> >seems like you're dead set on moving regardless of what solution
> you get, so
> >why pretend like you want an answer that include the iSeries?
>
>     Perhaps.  But your method seems more like telling the driver of
> his hypothetical car that he *can* go 150 MPH if he needs to.  All he
> has to do is sit in the seat upside-down, work the gas and brake with
> his hands and steer with his feet.  Oh, and drill a hole in the
> floorboard so he can see where he is going.

Not at all.  What my method does is basically the same thing that webfacing
does, only without the interactive price.  It decouples the user interface
and the business logic, which is something you should be striving for
anyway.  It's more like replacing your gas engine with a more efficient and
flexible hydrogen cell.  Not an option for someone who can't imagine life
without a carburetor, but great progress for those who can.


>     Why bother?   What's the advantage of changing tons of code by
> applying a technique, probably at great cost, whose design is
> unusable on any other platform and is not the standard even on its
> own platform?

What is great cost?  100K or 200K (less if you grow some in-house
expertise)
and a couple of months of time to convert your existing applications, or
millions of dollars and years of effort (not to mention ongoing costs such
as debugging and retraining) to move them to a new platform that is less
reliable and less secure?

What is non-standard?  By decoupling the business logic from the
presentation, you now have established a zone of change where you can start
redesigning your business logic as true n-tier design.  And n-tier is the
standard that application developers have been using for years, EXCEPT on
the AS/400.  This actually gets you closer to the standard, rather than
farther away.


>     And finally, what's to stop IBM from making a change in the next
> release of CFINT to close the performance loophole exploited by this
> technique?  As long as CFINT exists in its present form, the
> "governor argument" is not out of date, but a real factor.

Unlikely.  It runs in batch.  The only way they could kill the performance
is to kill batch processing or kill Websphere.  Either option kills the
eServer iSeries altogether.

But, hey, I can't convince someone who doesn't want to be convinced.  If
you
want to go to another platform, then by all means go.  My techniques are
for
those who realize that OS/400 is the best business platform available, and
who want to protect their investment in legacy programs and more
importantly, in legacy programmers.  If you think it makes sense to dump
your finely tuned programs and jettison your RPG staff - the people who
really know how your business works - and put your future in the hands of
people who have no clue what your company does, that's your business.
Literally.

Joe Pluta
www.plutabrothers.com

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