RE: Gentran for iSeries.

Sterling had very knowledgeable people. Hopefully, IBM retained them..


Mark Walter
Business to Business Data Integration Specialist
Certified IBM System i Specialist
Paragon Consulting Services, Inc.
mwalter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
717-764-7909 ext. 126


-----Original Message-----
From: PaulMmn [mailto:PaulMmn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, August 13, 2012 11:54 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Cc: Mark Walter
Subject: Re: Gentran for iSeries.

We've been using GENTRAN (which works fine-- the green screen product), but GIS (the web/ifs/JAVA version) is 'interesting.'

When GIS works, it works fine. For routine application issues their help desk is OK. When the issues is related to the iSeries...

My partner-in-crime has been dealing with GIS for upgrades. The upgrade process in the iSeries does not run smoothly! From the mumbling from his desk I know that working with their help desk is not as nice as opening a ticket for iSeries issues. Now that IBM owns GENTRAN/GIS, (and now that the service goes through IBM's
system) he's found that for issues with GIS and java and the IFS he can at least open corresponding tickets on both the iSeries -and- GIS sides and point them at each other. He had some luck getting the GIS guy to listen to the iSeries guy about how the system works. And, we got some of our java issues resolved as well!

The main problem with GIS is that they have 1 guy who knows about how GIS works with the iSeries, but he's usually on vacation or out sick.
If you can catch him when he's available, he does know what's what!

Several years back (before the acquisition) we went around and around with GIS because they swore up and down that the problem was caused because the 'data base administrator' had not reorganized and optimized the indices (and, I suppose, pruned and balanced the B-trees). No matter how many times we explained, and forwarded them copies of the IBM manuals, they could not get it through their heads that the iSeries does all that stuff automatically!

Hopefully IBM can get some iSeries-knowledgeable people involved.

--Paul E Musselman
PaulMmn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

ps-- we suspect that there are about 3 companies running GIS on the iSeries...