Re: Would it be a reasonable to ask IBM's programmers to, write a %sortsfl(sfl: column)

Scott,

I agree with you that IBM i installation procedures are a pain. But I question your assertion about Apache, Java, WebSphere, Tomcat, PHP, TCP/IP, and stream file operations performing poorly under IBM i compared to other platforms. My personal benchmarking is a bit limited, but tends to indicate that stream file & socket I/O is quite comparable between IBM i and Wintel equivalents. If you have other information, I'd be interested in hearing about it.

I understand the pervasive "perception" that mainstream Web interfaces (Java & PHP) perform poorly under IBM i, but how would one attribute that to OS overhead? I really question that the OS is to blame. It seems that most comparisons are not apples to apples.

A quad-core Intel server may be compared to a single-core IBM i server, for example. It often comes down to a price/performance comparison. One can buy a quad-core Wintel server for about the price of a single-core IBM i server.

While the cost of Intel cores, memory, and disks may be 1/5 the price of Power Server equivalents, the problem is that Intel cores are generally partitioned, and applications deployed across multiple partitions for reliability purposes, so that quad-core Wintel servers end up with somewhat less reliability and performance of single-core IBM i servers.

The remarkable thing about IBM i is not it's support for 5250 interfaces, but rather it's ability to handle complex workloads efficiently and reliability. That may not do much for Java and PHP, but it works for ILE based Web applications.

-Nathan.





----- Original Message ----
From: Scott Klement <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wed, December 9, 2009 12:39:53 PM
Subject: Re: Would it be a reasonable to ask IBM's programmers to, write a %sortsfl(sfl: column)

Wow. John, in your whole tirade, the only complaint I can see against
RPG is that subprocedures require too many lines of code to describe
their parameter list... is that correct?

And because of that, you think that nobody uses procedures (Which I
don't agree with, by the way. More than 60% of RPG shops are using
procedures these days, and the ones who aren't are doing so because they
are maintaining the status quo -- not because it's too many lines of code)

I agree with you that "information hiding" (encapsulation) is very
important, but RPG does that as well as any other language does. Yes,
via procedures.

Really, the biggest problem with this platform isn't RPG. It's OS/400.
OS/400 has some modern features, it's true, but by and large it's an
outdated OS operating on an outdated paradigm. TCP/IP works on OS/400,
but doesn't perform as well as it does on other platforms. Stream-file
access (which by all logic should be faster than database!) performs
very poorly on OS/400 vs. other platforms. Apache, Java, WebSphere,
Tomcat and PHP are all examples of things that we have on OS/400 that
perform better on other platforms. OS/400 just isn't designed for the
type of workload that these modern techniques require from an OS.

Plus, have you tried installing OS/400? It's not exactly a
user-friendly process. You have to go through hundreds of pages of
documentation. No other software installation anywhere puts you through
that! And the documentation isn't very good. If you aren't already
familiar with it from decades of doing it, it's REALLY hard and really
scary.

OS/400 (or IBM i -- sorry Trevor) needs a LOT of work if it's going to
be viable for the future. It's still designed and optimized for 5250
workloads, and really nothing else.

The other really big problem with this platform is the people don't
actively learn and incorporate new concepts. They keep doing things
exactly the same way they always have, without learning about new
features or how it can help them. Only when the rest of the company
puts pressure on them do they take the time to learn something new.

TCP/IP is a great example. With the TCP/IP software I distribute, I've
discovered than more than 80% of shops out there don't have the DNS
resolver configured on their system. You'd NEVER see this in a Windows
or Unix shop. Not only that, but people in this community are baffled
about TCP/IP when something doesn't work. No Windows or Unix admin is
so ignorant of how TCP/IP works!

There's just this general attitude on this system that people shouldn't
change the way they do anything, or learn anything new until they are
forced to do so. (That includes RPG programmers as well as OS/400
admins, by the way.)