SAA Historical perspective and education

Bob, Hans and rest

I should have known with my 12 years on AS/400.
Could someone lecture me on SAA. What is it? How is it used? What are the
Pros and Cons? What happen to it?

Sorry for the thread interruption.

Dare

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bob Cozzi (RPGIV)" <cozzi@rpgiv.com>
To: <rpg400-l@midrange.com>
Sent: Friday, February 15, 2002 9:17 AM
Subject: RE:SAA Historical perspective


> 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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>
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