On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 3:34 PM, Stone, Joel <Joel.Stone@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
As I stated, all other non-defunct OS's have provided multi-level structures
in their MAJOR object organization (not a side-show like IFS). They all
provide multiple path levels for objects.
What I believe you keep missing is that QSYS is designed from the
ground up to be a database. It's really NOT designed to be somehow
"analogous" to the Unix filesystem or NTFS or what have you. QSYS
really *IS* just a database environment, the way Oracle is.
People keep mentioning Oracle's database-schema structure because that
is, in fact, the appropriate comparison to make.
So if you want to say that QSYS shares the same "design flaw" as
Oracle, that's one thing. I wouldn't even disagree. I have said
myself that it absolutely is conceptually more limiting than a
multilevel hierarchical structure. But frankly, business databases
are typically quite well-suited to traditional database structures.
I grew up with DOS, Windows, and Unix, and when I first encountered
the AS/400, I definitely found it ridiculously constraining.
Everything was laughable and inconvenient and unintuitive. But
eventually I realized that it's not productive to think of "files" in
a QSYS library the same way I think of "files" on other systems.
Especially once you start learning SQL-oriented ways of working with
QSYS, it's a whole new ballgame. Judging by the complexity of some of
the SQL that gets passed around these mailing lists, I'm sure plenty
of IT folks pretty much *only* use SQL to access QSYS files these
days.
Don't think for a second that I am an IBM i convert. I still write
entire applications in a Unixlike way, with no RPG and no PFs. They
just live in the IFS outside QSYS. IFS doesn't *have* to be a
sideshow. And when you want interoperability between Unixlike and DB2
for i, you can get it pretty easily and with pretty good (if not
excellent) performance on the i.
I recommend not thinking of IBM i as synonymous with QSYS. Sure,
that's what shows up first for most people when they log onto a green
screen on the i. But just imagine a Linux box whose primary purpose
in life is to serve as the platform for an Oracle database. Just
imagine that instead of logging onto bash or ksh or whichever, users
of this Linux machine get an SQL*Plus prompt instead. Would you then
say that Oracle's single-level structure is a "design weakness and
limitation" of Linux?
John
midrange.com
