Of course, I've got to say a word or two here.

[Guest.Visitor]

Joe, You're right. I didn't explain it in enough detail. I my experience, the 40 Java developers were developing an application on a Sun/Oracale combination using Linux web servers to REPLACE the programs that were running on the AS/400. The CIO was a huge anti-AS/400 bigot that simply feared the AS/400. One by one they took customers to the new Java based platform. After about 5 customers were running they stopped the migration. Access times for information went from sub-second to over a minute. Also, at least twice a day, the database (Oracle) needed to be bounced. (That's "reboot" to you and me.) After about a year of fiddling with optimizing and enhancing performance they slowly migrated the customers back to the AS/400. This company was burning about $1.5 million per month in venture capital money they ran out and the VCs took over. Now, all of the RPG staff is gone and a couple of developers are left. Yes, it was a mismanaged and bungled software implementation. However, it was (previously) a very successful software company that tried to do this. They just couldn't do it in Java very well. I wasn't a part of the Java team so I don't know all of the details. I'm just glad I'm away from there. chuck Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer or previous employers. "Joe Pluta" wrote in message news:3dd57557.7@WebX.WawyahGHajS... | Chuck wrote: | | "First of all, let me say that I don't think Java is the answer. I saw Java drag my former employer into almost non-existence. They had 40 Java developers that could barely keep up with my 5 RPG programmers. In fact the Java programmers failed miserably. So, I would dismiss Java based upon my experience." | | Unfortunately, your experience was a bad one and the project was probably not managed correctly. A joint Java/RPG development project takes a slightly different mindset, because the two languages should be used for entirely different things. Java should be used solely for middleware - preparing data for the user, and retrieving user data and sending it to a the business application. The business logic should be written in RPG. In that environment, it doesn't take 40 Java developers to support 5 RPG programmers. In my experience, which differs from yours, one good JSP/servlet programmer should be able to support several RPG programmers - but this is because the Java programmer is not programming any business logic! | | "ASNA has tools that let the VBscript programmer that knows nothing about the AS/400 to access the AS/400 database. That's a good thing because I have 5 HTML/VBscript programmers that know nothing about the AS/400. They get the benefits of blinding speed also." | | I guess my host-centric nature shows here, but this doesn't seem like an advantage to me. To have non-AS/400 programmers directly accessing the database, even in read-only mode, is a recipe for disaster. If they don't fully understand the relationships between the files, then they have potential for doing some really bad things. But that's my old saw - at all costs, avoid putting business logic on the client. By far the majority of catastrophic system failures I've seen in distributed development environments spring from one common problem: two clients with different business logic. | | And finally: | | "1) The AS/400 is totally isolated form the Internet. The VBscript programs run on a Windows server under IIS." | | For those who wish to run in an IIS environment, that's definitely a plus. For people who have some concerns about the security and stability of IIS, I think this is a pretty strong minus. Since the Gartner Group report, I believe that IIS has lost much of its luster for mission critical systems. So, it's pretty much a matter of what you're comfortable with. | | Joe Pluta | www.plutabrothers.com

[Guest.Visitor]

Dave, You have an interesting past experience. I can believe that it is easier to implement certain business applications and/or functionality on the AS/400. This may indeed be consistent with your prior experiences and I respect that. My experience has taught me that trying to re-write legacy AS/400 applications that have been maintained for several years takes time. This is because these types of applications are more than likely dependant on legacy techniques that are not easily translated into modern programming practices. Also systems of this nature (from my experiance) are poorly documented. I can imagine this being the case in many businesses. While I've never touched Oracle before I can also imagine this being the case for other platforms as well. What I'm saying is that I don't truely believe the programming language to be the ultimate factor that leads to these scenarios. Rather I believe a system that has been poorly maintained over several years (without regard for source control and maintainability) can and will be difficult to rewrite.