RE: AS/400 vs. IBM i

<Justin>
We have objects compiled in A.D. 1993 that were used today on 7.3.
</Justin>

It's not enough having old Objects running unchanged on a recent release. Each section of Memos to Users has a section "Programming considerations" telling the customer where incompatibilities between releases might happen to existing programms. Now it depends on your applications if some of your programms have to be adjusted to run on the new release as expected. Software vendors handle these problems, deferring the support to the new release until they have adjusted their application. If you want to run their software after upgrade of OS, you have to install the recent release of the vendors software!

There is a big diffrence between the universe of Java and the little island of AS400. In Java you have lots of libraries, most of them for free, making the power of java. Some of these libraries ar part of other software and of your home grown software. With every new release of Java there are som incompatibilties too and there is some memo to users too and most of the existing applications are running unchanged. Only few problems have to be fixed from release to release. To be sure, that all my apps will run as expected, I should install the last release of all my libraries and applications. With some exotic apps it could happen, that there is no release for the current java release. Very similar to as400 customers who where using office vision, just to give an example.

D*B