Re: Hmmmm.....$1 Billion -- MIDRANGE-L

On Fri, 4 Mar 2005 10:07:07 -0500, Wilt, Charles <CWilt@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> > [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Joe Pluta
> > Sent: Friday, March 04, 2005 9:53 AM
> > To: 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'
> > Subject: RE: Hmmmm.....$1 Billion
> >
> >
> > > From: Steve Richter
> > >
> > > as I understand it, the reason interactive jobs dont
> > > allow threads is because the underlying OS400 code is too
> > buggy to be
> > > made threadsafe.
> >
> > What exactly do you mean by buggy?  There are actual faults
> > in the code
> > today?  Or there are design issues that prevent making the code
> > threadsafe?  (These are two completely different things, by the way.)
> > Furthermore, who told you this?  Someone who worked on the
> > code?  Or is
> > currently working on the code?  Have you actually seen ANY of
> > this first
> > hand?  Have you written programs that fail?  Have you
> > submitted PMRs to
> > address specific issues?
> >
> > Or are you just repeating whatever you might have heard second-hand?
> > (We call this the Dan Rather school of journalism.)
> >
> > Joe
> >
> 
> It's not buggy, was a simple cost vs. benefit design decision according to 
> Patrick Botz,
> 
> "The reason interactive jobs were not enabled to support multi-threaded 
> applications is that large pieces of the internal OS which they use are not 
> capable of handling multiple threads.  The cost to multi-thread enable the 
> whole system was huge.  Therefore the decision was made (way back when this 
> was originally done) to support multiple threads in those environments that 
> did not require an entire rewrite of major portions of the internals of the 
> OS."
> 
> in the thread Steve started about this back in February:
> http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l/200502/msg00626.html
> 
> Nor is the original lack of threads a bug.
> 
> Steve, get over it! If you want to provide such fancy UI's to your users, 
> don't try doing it in 5250. Simple as that.

It is not that simple Charles.  Once the user signs on to the
interactive subsystem there are all of these restrictions, ( multi
threading, 5250 limitations )  which make it almost theoretically
impossible to give the user the interactive usage of the system that
they want.

Which means you have to scrap interactive entirely and start from
where? I understand the whole Java / client access thing but that all
entails a large framework that I have to buy into.    I want to code
.NET front ends to the as400.  It is all doable and a lot of fun to
work on, but there is a lot of infrastructure that the programmer is
responsible for in that setting. There is also a real question of how
secure are your connections between the client and server.   When your
server program on the as400 listens on a private port on the 400 for a
private data stream from the PC client, how sure are you that that
link is secure?

The interactive subsystem provides a secure framework from which
programs can run.  IBM should enhance the interactive subsystem so it
works in the client / server setting.

-Steve