Re: Dropping the AS/400 as a Web serving platform -- MIDRANGE-L

Joe,
How much would a good AS/400 box cost these days say in PC power the equal
to
a IBM  Netfinity 7100,7600 that is running Quad Pentium III Xeon CPUs and
say 2G of
memory.
Do you have to pay for number of clients that can connect and what is the
cost of
Development tools you would use per box.
Thanks in advance
Dave
----- Original Message -----
From: "Joe Pluta" <joepluta@PlutaBrothers.com>
To: <midrange-l@midrange.com>
Sent: Monday, October 01, 2001 5:26 PM
Subject: RE: Dropping the AS/400 as a Web serving platform


> > Our back end will
> > remain AS/400 for some time.  But how long will that be, remains
> > to be seen.
> > When will business decisions based on getting more people to get the job
> > done.  No matter how much business knowledge I have - if there are 5
more
> > programmers for other platforms, other then the one I'm on.  Someone is
> > going to do the math soon.  No matter how much the ROI is on the
AS/400 -
> > people will ignore that when they realize they can get more people
faster
> > and easier then they can find people like myself.  More are being
produced
> > every day from Colleges and universities.
>
> An interesting point, but not without some serious flaws.  The argument
> Andrew makes is that colleges are turning out developers who can use IIS
and
> JSP as opposed to programming on the AS/400.  For what?  Not for
enterprise
> level applications.
>
> Give me a representative 10 AS/400 programmers and 10 college-produced
> IIS/JSP developers, and I'm reasonably certain that there are more members
> in the AS/400 group that understand basic business programming.  In fact,
> given 10 AS/400 programmers and 100 IIS/JSP web application developers,
> there will STILL be more actual business programming knowledge in the
AS/400
> group.
>
> The AS/400 is not home to whiz-bang web applications.  But, in case
anybody
> hasn't noticed, whiz-bang applications aren't actually permeating the
> business marketplace.  Instead, the majority of business web applications
> seem to be storefronts - please correct me if I'm missing something here.
> Frankly, I don't care if storefronts are written in VB (provided that the
MS
> machine has only token access to my AS/400!).  That's because the back end
> still has to be something with reasonable performance and ROI.
>
> The true wave of web-based business applications has yet to even hit us
yet,
> and a large part of that is because the platforms they're built on can't
> handle the scaling.  Some of that is due to the architecture, but those
who
> know my stance on SQL will understand my reasoning there, so I needn't go
> into it.  (But as a side issue, I'm reasonably certain that college
> graduates who have taken the basic SQL courses don't have a clue what a
LEFT
> OUTER JOIN is, nor how to apply it in a business environment, so it's not
> surprising that there are so many SQL performance problems in the
industry.)
> The other part is that somebody who has taken IIS, Java, JSP and SQL in
> college doesn't know the first thing about designing a promotions and
deals
> database.  Or a forecasting module.  Or an MRP generation.  So while you
> might see an amazon.com running on a SQL database (don't quote me, I have
no
> idea what they run), you won't see BPCS written in VB anytime soon.
>
> In fact, you won't see an ERP package - or even a decent module - written
by
> a recent CompSci graduate anytime soon.  How many IIS/JSP developers are
> APICS certified, I wonder?
>
> Which leads to an interesting observation.  Rather than worry about
turning
> the AS/400 into a competitor for IIS, why not concentrate on designing
> systems that take advantage of the undeniable strengths of the AS/400: its
> incredibly fast, robust, highly scalable database, and it's unparalleled
> reliability.  The AS/400 is the best platform for implementing business
> rules ever designed, so why not use that strength, rather than diluting it
> with things it doesn't do quite as well?
>
> Let's start thinking about designing applications where the user interface
> actually isn't tied to the database, where the UI can communicate via a
> fast, flexible interface to the transaction processor.  This way, the user
> can decide to opt for running the UI on their AS/400 (for lower volume
> environments), or put a phalanx of web serving PCs in front of the box,
with
> full failover and load balancing.  The PCs do all the graphics and the
> static web stuff (thereby offloading the AS/400) and delegate the access
and
> update of persistent information to the AS/400.
>
> But this means designing clients and servers - true n-tier solutions.
Even
> though we've been talking about it for decades, the truth is that, with
> SQL-based client applications, we're actually moving away from that
> particular Nirvana.  As more and more business rules find their way into
the
> client, there is less need for a fast server - instead, ALL applications
run
> like crap.  Once you've gotten your user to accept a 2-second wait, you
can
> write as bloated of code as you'd like.
>
> I don't know.  I could be whistling past the graveyard here.  But I still
> think the demise of the AS/400 is overstated and a bit premature.  Until I
> start seeing LotusScript experts who can actually write a shop floor
module,
> I'm going to continue to recommend RPG and the AS/400 for business
> applications.
>
> Joe Pluta
> www.plutabrothers.com
>
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