RE:SAA Historical perspective

["Bob Cozzi \(RPGIV\)" <cozzi@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hans,

I agree with your comments about there being some good coming out of
SAA.
Getting SQL and C on most platforms was goodness. (Although I gotta
believe virtually no AS/400 programmers care about C, while a growing
number are at least using SQL to query data, an a minority are using it
for lots of cool things.

I actually think all languages (except COBOL <vbg> & TIC) would be on
all platforms. So where's my PL/I? :)

I also realize that most of the engineering/development staff at the IBM
labs weren't too interested in SAA, but some where. Weren't the
mainframers proponents?



Bob Cozzi
cozzi@rpgiv.com
Visit the on-line  Midrange  Developer  forum at: http://www.rpgiv.com


> -----Original Message-----
> From: rpg400-l-admin@midrange.com [mailto:rpg400-l-admin@midrange.com]
On
> Behalf Of boldt@ca.ibm.com
> Sent: Friday, February 15, 2002 7:50 AM
> To: rpg400-l@midrange.com
> Subject: Re: How do we fix IBM's "eServer" mentality?
>
> Bob wrote:
> >With COMMON approaching in two month (www.common.org) we need to
discuss
> >the eServer situation and the downfall of the iSeries/AS/400 systems.
> >
> >Back in the 1980s a grass roots group of us decided IBM's end-all
be-all
> >"SAA" sucked.
> >We helped kill SAA.
> >
> >In my view, we need to declare war on the "eServer" campaign, or
start
> >learning UNIX and Windows NT/2000 Server stuff.
> >
> >I designed a button back in the 1980s with the acronym "SAA" on it,
with
> >a red circle with a slash through it. "No SAA" it sad iconically.
> >...
>
> Bob:  Your memory of events 14 years ago differs somewhat from
> my own.  I remember SAA well.  For a while, I was involved with
> the effort to put RPG into the SAA arena.  (When I told
> management I thought SAA RPG was a bad idea, I got shuffled
> into the team charged with developing the SAA RPG compiler.
> Another poor stiff was then assigned the SAA duties, and later
> left the company.)
>
> I remember the "/SAA" button.  I still have one or two buried
> in my stuff somewhere.  Most of us here in IBM thought it was a
> rather cute collectible.  But did it help bury SAA?  No, I don't
> think so.  Although the idea of complete software portability is
> a mother-hood issue among us computer geeks, it can't be achieved
> by top-down fiat.  IBM must be a customer driven company, and the
> SAA effort just had too little support both within the company
> and among the customer base.  In other words, the initiative
> was essentially still-born right from the beginning.
>
> Now it's interesting to see what of the initiative has survived
> into the present.  Out of all the component in the 3 broad
> areas of SAA (user access, programming, and communications),
> there are really only three survivors with broad cross-system
> support:  C, COBOL, and SQL.  If you want to develop a truly
> cross-platform application now, there are ways.  But these
> techniques are all based on non-IBM systems and standards, such
> as Posix and Java and TCP.
>
> BTW, regarding RPG (this is an RPG mailing list after all), we
> all knew full well that an SAA RPG compiler was a bad idea.
> But the project eventually led to a number of other new RPG
> products, like VA/RPG, CODE program verifier, and ultimately
> RPG IV.  If it weren't for SAA, all of these tools may not have
> come about.  So I suppose SAA wasn't a complete waste of time.
>
> Also BTW, I don't think learning Unix is necessarily a bad
> idea.  There are a lot of good tools in that arena.
>
> Hans
>
> Hans Boldt, ILE RPG Development, IBM Toronto Lab, boldt@ca.ibm.com
>
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