RE: Platform Independence (was George is Farr from where we want to be)

Platform independence?  Not very.  We use JAVA more so to allow for
using the ubiquitous browser and for independence from MS.

Although, I would also have to respectfully disagree with some of
Aaron's points.  While I would not argue that plenty of people have
horror stories regarding native Java performance I think that you will
find a lot of them are of there own making - in essence implemented on a
system that is already running a decent workload, does not have enough
memory, is utilizing an older processor, is not written very well, etc.

1.)  We have a native JAVA program that processes our finite scheduling
system.  This is program that does a lot of IO and I argued up front
that it should have never been written in Java because it was a classic
fit for RPG.  I lost but I will have to say that application runs
blazingly fast and processes many functions and millions of records.  I
doubt that we would see any improvement if it was converted to RPG.  In
addition, by most testing it is as fast as running it on an independent
WINTEL platform.  I have compared it run wise on our i5 to an IXS system
(to eliminate remote database issues) and there is no comparison.  Right
now, I am not in the position to test on a faster Bladecenter type of
unit but perhaps in the future.  The database is remote to the native
application as well.

2.)  We originally implemented WAS (v3) on a 720 years ago.  80% of the
application runs perfectly fine but certain components were a dog.
Processor was not being taxed, we were not short of memory, we just did
not have the processor crank and L2 cache that the application needed.
Shortly thereafter we upgraded to an 825 and 100% of the application ran
fine.  A classic example of implementing Java in a not so perfect
platform.  I would argue that as we have climbed the server ladder 7xx,
8xx, 5xx the potential for this problem has decreased.

3.)  We run WAS and WPS on our 570's and generally speaking these guys
perform very well.  Our major complaint on WPS comes from portlets that
we rely on our parent company for and their responsiveness is not very
good.  

4.)  The native JVM can be a resource hog.  That is why the J9 was
invented.  Certain machines and customers should not be running the
native JVM.  They do not have the horse for it.  Is it a problem with
the native JVM?  Perhaps.  I would just argue that it is as much
environmental as it is platform.

I cannot argue with the complexity.  However, I think that this is not a
JAVA problem only.  Every existing 'modern' application is much more
complex than the traditional RPG model.  Whether it is Java, .NET,
Domino, etc. I think that they are much more complicated either in
architecture or in resulting code length.

Michael Crump
 
Manager, Computing Services
Saint-Gobain Containers, Inc.
1509 S. Macedonia Ave.
Muncie, IN  47302
765.741.7696
765.741.7012 f 

Cluelessness
There are no stupid questions, but there are a LOT of inquisitive
idiots. 
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-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Michael Ryan
Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2007 8:10 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Platform Independence (was George is Farr from where we want to
be)

How important is platform independence to the community? It has little
importance to me. I believe RPG is the best language on iSeries, and I
don't need to write the same code to run on multiple platforms. I *do*
write code on multiple platforms (VB and C on Wintel), but I don't
expect or want to run the *same* code on other platforms.

On 3/28/07, albartell <albartell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

While in that session I was very close to asking the group whether

they gave

a rip about platform independence.