Re: Difference between AS/400 and any normal web server

The software that ran MySQL and used DB2 for storage was distributed by
Zend, not IBM, although IBM put considerable effort into it. It was
really simple to install and could be used so both MySQL tables and DB2
tables exist in the same application.

It was cumbersome only in that when mixed case names were used you needed
quotes around the names when using that table in IBM i. One solved that
problem by using all upper case names in MySQL. Not to most folks liking,
but it worked.

Performance was a mixed bag only because of the software in the middle
between the DB2 engine and the MySQL engine. It actually worked quite
well.

As to it’s fate, I think it was lost in the corporate changes Zend went
through. It did not generate money directly so I’m guessing it was
forgotten about for that reason.

Last point: Nathan is one of the more learned developer/architects on the
platform. Opinionated sure, but one of our best. He knows “native mode”
far better than many.

On Sun, Aug 21, 2022 at 3:32 AM Patrik Schindler <poc@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hello Nathan,

Am 20.08.2022 um 15:14 schrieb Nathan Andelin <nandelin@xxxxxxxxx>:

The biggest difference from my perspective is that the native

environment supports an native application architecture where all software
runs in the same address space on a single scalable server as opposed to a
distributedsapplication architecture, where web servers, application
servers, and database servers typically run on separate servers.

Allow me to elaborate to explain "native mode" to someone who apparently
doesn't know much about IBM i.

Native mode means what is "the other environment", not PASE, as described
in my direct reply to the OP Jerry Ven. It's also often called "CL
Environment", because its native command shell is "CL", or "Command
Language".

To utilize the full capabilities of IBM i would mean to have each and
everything run in the CL environment. In practice, not many UNIX
applications can (hand have!) easily been ported to there, because software
written on Linux/UNIX assumes a *lot* of things which aren't applicable to
the CL environment (or IBM i in general). Ask for details if interested. A
lot of my personal experience on that topic with OS release V4R5 appears to
be still valid.

I'm not sure if Apache on i in recent releases is a PASE, or a CL thing.
(The older "IBM Web Server" on V4 was running in CL.) As far as I've
understood, PHP is running in PASE only. The OS integrated database DB2 is
running "in CL" (not exactly, but for the sake of initial simplicity I'll
leave it at that), but access to it AFAIK needs to go through a local ODBC
connection. DB2 has many differences to MySQL: Data Types, SQL syntax, etc.
Unfortunately, MySQL is assumed the database of choice on Linux by many
popular PHP based OpenSource projects, such as MediaWiki, or WordPress.
Little of those implement generic ODBC access for databases which would
enable using DB2 with little or no code change at all.

IBM once released a version of MySQL which used DB2 tables as storage
backend. According to some list members, it was clumsy to use and left a
lot of performance to be desired. I don't know what happened to it. I
assume IBM silently dropped support for it.

Maybe there is a PASE port of MySQL, which might enable you to run
existing applications insisting on MySQL, on IBM i. I highly question going
that route, because the main reason to spend money for IBM i *is* the DB2
database, its capabilities stemming from the "OS integrated" approach, and
its performance and reliability.

:wq! PoC



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