Re: DB and App Agnosticism on the iSeries (thinking about: Questionabout UDB on iSeries)

Pete -- 
As an aside -- why don't you offer the application in two flavors -
iSeries and hosted?  This gets beyond the issue of  platform religion,
and gets your company into the model that many see as the future of
application software.

On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 19:43:51 -0600, Joe Pluta
<joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> So, let's assume that you're past all of the ethical issues I've raised,
> and you really intend to write software that will run on Windows and
> Unix boxes as well as the iSeries.  The only possible architecture
> you're talking about is a browser interface, using JSP and servlets.

As Joe alludes to, this is the Holy Grail of programming, and is
nowhere near reality.  JSP and servlets is probably the closest, but
are still very platform-dependant.  The write once, compile many ideal
is a long way away.  And, it gets WORSE on Wintel/Lintel, because you
have to deal with multiple combinations of database and app server.

> So, your simple "run on more platforms, make more money" concept isn't
> quite so simple.  After you take into account multiple development and
> test environments, multiple support centers, reduced feature/function,
> increased low-end competition and the inevitable lower price point, it
> seems to me that you had better be able to sell a LOT more units of your
> product in order to justify moving to a lower common denominator.

If doing this were straight-forward, everyone would be doing it.  It
is hard, it is expensive, and it is dangerous.  Writing good software
is HARD.  Writing good software

IMHO, you are far better off settling on a platform, and making the
best possible product on the platform.  I am not saying stay put ...
you need to change and improve.  If your app is green-screen, you need
to move it to some form of GUI, perhaps using Joe's product.  But,
don't waste the time and energy that could be spent improving the
product on supporting multiple platforms.

In a very general sense, this discussion is relevant in many aspects
of our lives and careers.  How much effort should we spend focusing on
and building on our strengths, versus trying to improve our
weaknesses?  The most effective answer is that unless a weakness is an
impenetrable handicap, don't focus on it, but instead focus on
strengths.

-- 
Tom Jedrzejewicz
tomjedrz@xxxxxxxxx