Re: AS/400 vs. IBM i

- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.Frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com - Personal Development IBM i timeshare service.
www.iInTheCloud.com - Commercial IBM i Cloud Hosting.

On 10/23/2019 1:51 PM, Patrik Schindler wrote:

Hello Larry,

seems I got one of those I mentioned. :-)

I appreciate the comment from Craig Richards and I fully agree with him.

To me it is this one thing: When others hear you say "IBM i" or "Power Systems" they expect you to be up to date with the current technology of the machine. To be able to leverage it for success now and forward.

Who are these "others"?

Anyone in the computing game that knows anything about current technology.

When you are up to date, you likely understand those 'minor things' that are different like semi-annual technology refreshes to continue to bring new function. Like SQL to do system administration tasks like looking for files on disk or managing PTFs. Simple things like using network based image catalogs to update multiple partitions with a single set of ptfs or even doing upgrades from that media. They expect you will have set up redundant connections to your network for reliability and multiple paths to your storage for performance and reliability. That storage might even be SAN based giving you many new capabilities. You utilize the vast capabilities of SQL in your applications which are coded in RPG FREE using RDi.

True.

ALL of these are 'Green Screen' things you refer to as being 'the same' as AS/400. But they are not because not one single thing on that list can be done on an AS/400. Don't even try.

That was not my point. I was pointing out that it's about the look and feel, not a lot of (more or less) useful technology advantages and additions to the OS and the hardware. Users don't care about anything you mentioned above. They need to get their work done and the system functioning. And mostly long standing users are saying AS/400 when they really mean the warehouse application in a 5250 window on their local computer. That's my point.

I cry foul on that. They DO! When that one Ethernet cable is severed or switch port fails or switch fails they are down. AND THEY CARE!

When they are down for hours for backup because you didn't leverage HA or VTL or Flashcopy technology. THEY CARE.

When a RAID card chokes and the machine stops because you don't have redundancy. THEY CARE.

When you need to do PTFs to keep the system up to date and you have to spend hours copying them around and fattening up your backups and spending more time and money than you should. THEY CARE.

Even in a simple character based interface, when an inquiry takes many seconds of their time because the logic is RLA and stacked program calls when it could take less than a second when leveraging the power of SQL. THEY CARE.

You see some things they don't know about and when everything is good, sure, they might not appear to care but THEY DO, they just don't know they do.

I'll give you that the users personally don't know about the server in many cases. They use an application. But they absolutely care if it's available and responsive. Try turning it off and listen to the hue and cry!

But when you say "AS/400" you sound like you're living under a rock.

Maybe it could occur to you that this is just your personal perception? I feel you're very emotional about that topic.

You probably have a single Ethernet line, you may still be hoarding a twinax console in your garage wishing it was your console. You fight to run Client Access on Windows 10 because you somehow think it's better than Access Client Solutions and it's web partner Navigator for i. You still feed a single tape into a standalone tape drive every night or just leave it in there and use it every day. You code in PDM, you use RPG/400, file level access and run Query/400. Essentially all the capabilities, IBM has added since the last century are ignored.

Users don't care about that. This is the responsibility of the sysadmin. And even sysadmins are different.

As I point out above they do. Sadly by the time they are aware that it's done incorrectly it's too late. Suddenly they know they care because they cannot do their jobs.

Apparently you're talking about large companies, lots of users and lots of money to keep everything smooth, up do date and neatly hedged code with the latest inventions IBM blessed us with. Please keep in mind that there are others. I consider myself on the very oder end of the spectrum. I'm, tinkering with the system because I'm interested in it. It's my hobby, not my profession. I love the menus and the form based approach of the screens.

Not at all. These capabilities extend right down to the very smallest. And much of it is extremely low cost, often down to implementation costs. No matter how small the company the users hate it when they can't get to their applications!! Even today I dealt with a company that has only 6 users who were unable to work because their server went away. No it was not IBM i it was Windows but I can assure you those users were extremely unhappy sitting there staring at customers across the counter while unable to help them. They cared.

And when that's your attitude I don't want to hire you or let you touch my systems.

I can assure you that this will never happen. See above.

No assurance required. LOL!

And MY reaction is why do YOU work SO HARD to keep a name from the past?!

Let it go. LET. IT. Go!!!

I'm not working hard. How did you get this impression?

Because you wrote an entire wiki to defend the past perhaps?

I'm just tired of endless discussions with programmers or admins who could not make a point from the ordinary user's view. They see new hardware and new OS and new functionality. The majority of users are, well, users and if you talk to them like IBM i, they don't know what you're talking about. If you say AS/400 they're all like "aah, now I know".

Then teach them. As I said another reply, make the the connection for them. Explain the current and future names. Then use them. It won't take long and they will naturally use them too. And even if they don't they will know what you're talking about when YOU use the correct names.

Problem solved!!

:wq! PoC

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