IMHO: What Will It Take to Turn the System i Around?

[J.Pluta]

IMHO: What Will It Take to Turn the System i Around?

Molly, my point is not meant to be sarcastic, simply realistic. I like to pull the spin out of things and cut to the heart of the matter. Which in this case is simple: whether or not the poster's reminiscences are accurate they are no longer relevant, since he has no idea what the product or the support is like today. To make the statement that ASNA is a better product and ASNA support is better than IBM's without pointing out that his experiences are four years out of date is a little bit misleading. Leaving out pertinent information like that turns a valid comment into a product pitch. I can tell you that RIGHT NOW, the support for WDSC is probably the best I've ever seen from any part of the IBM organization. While I haven't personally had any experience VARPG issues, I'd be willing to wager that a question to the team won't take eight months for a response. In fact, I'm certain it would be a matter of days if not hours. What Gary Greenacre may or may not have experienced four years ago is hardly a basis for judging the product today. Joe

[mollykj]

IMHO: What Will It Take to Turn the System i Around?

Yes, I am absolutely sure the VARPG product function and support has improved. I don't think greenacre was dissing IBM; he was just relating his own experiences and offering an option to the original author of this article - at least that's how I read it at the time. As to lack of more current experience with VARPG, I agree. However, as many of us know, once you've started on a particular path for learning and using a tool in your shop, the investment in time and money makes it difficult to justify using other tools - especially if there were problems with them the first time you tried it out. If there is anyone who has been following this discussion who has direct experience with VARPG, I personally - and I'm sure others - would love to hear your take on the product as it stands today.

[Guest.Visitor]

IMHO: What Will It Take to Turn the System i Around?

OK. I searched our system regarding that project and found information that confirms that it was in the beginning of 2004 that I had a problem I couldn't resolve. Like I stated previously, the problem was that I couldn't make the file open dialog do what I needed it to do. (I realize that the description of the problem is too vague for you to accept but I can't do any better than that.) In my attempt to overcome the obstacle (with the file open dialog) I looked at everything I could find on the IBM websites related to VARPG and I tried to get technical support from IBM via their website and through our service provider. I wasn't the only person here trying to get technical support and we couldn't get answers when we needed them (in 2004). We looked for training for VARPG and couldn't find that. And I could find only two IBM manuals (redbook and developers guide) and one book (Visual Age for RPG by Example - Meyers & Sutherland) for the tool. We have had better technical support from IBM in other areas and we recently had another good experience. We just couldn't get it for VARPG. OK, I should have said that in the first quarter of 2004 ASNA's tool and support was better than IBM's concerning VARPG. It certainly was my experience and after that I stopped checking.

[J.Pluta]

IMHO: What Will It Take to Turn the System i Around?

"If there is anyone who has been following this discussion who has direct experience with VARPG, I personally - and I'm sure others - would love to hear your take on the product as it stands today." Me too, Molly! In fact, if I can ever free up some spare moments, I may try to play with it myself. Obviously, my take would be limited to VARPG and won't be a comparison to ASNA, but it's better than conjecture, which is much of what we have at this point. Joe

[J.Pluta]

IMHO: What Will It Take to Turn the System i Around?

So, this one issue which you can't recall occurred sometime in 2004, not the middle of 2003. It was serious enough to cause you to scrap the tool entirely and you even have information that confirms that the tool failed, but you didn't actually document the problem. Okay, fair enough. I guess we can just take that scenario at face value and move on. I think Molly's call for recent experiences is a good one. Joe

[SoftwareTrend]

IMHO: What Will It Take to Turn the System i Around?

Look deeper. Very few have move "backwards" to Java. The majority are with a critical mass of people who have moved to ASP.NET. At worse they have dropped VB in favour of the MS C# product. The MS boys have moved beyond mere GUI windows. They've moved to a platform that is the most intuitive and productive tool for developing Web apps. Websphere and Eclipse and the billion variants of JAVA frameworks are just plan clumbersome. They are nothing in comparison to the ease of use of Visual Studio and the ISS servers. EVERY company below the 500 seat mark is bread and butter for MS's ASP.NET/IIS/SQL Server and they completely dominate this market. And as a final result, MS has created a software platform that IS proprietary, superior technically, and unlike IBM they don't seem to see a problem with this approach. Ron

[mollykj]

IMHO: What Will It Take to Turn the System i Around?

Hi everyone, In case you've been following more recent comments on this article and are interested, here's some history from earlier this year about the question of .net - which we got off onto due to Joe's objection to the comparison of asna vs visual age rpg: Glen Kerner ".NET" 1/5/06 11:41am but I will still take a look at varpg. . . . when I have time. :-)

[Guest.Visitor]

IMHO: What Will It Take to Turn the System i Around?

One issue I can't recall? How about one detail I can't recall concerning an issue I can recall? And I should document a problem when I can't even find someone at IBM to receive the report? You asked about using VARPG. I gave my experience. You don't like it; even with clarification. You say that you have no experience with either VARPG or ASNA's tools and yet you classify my comments as conjecture. You are willing to bet that IBM's support for VARPG has dramatically improved. You would bet before you investigate? It would be good to learn about current experiences with VARPG. Here's a start. Read what Glenn Kerner and Kjack wrote in this discussion earlier this year. Discussion in MC Press

[J.Pluta]

IMHO: What Will It Take to Turn the System i Around?

Hey, whatever. You can't remember a show-stopping requirement that caused you to completely scrap an entire technology. That seems odd to me, but that's just me. The same with documenting it; it would seem to me that your management would have wanted some documentation of what caused you to eliminate a free IBM solution in favor of a third-party one. But that's just my opinion. As to classifying your points as conjecture, I hold to my opinion. I have no experience with either, but I didn't say one was better than the other, either. No big deal. As to betting on the support, I base THAT on the incredible responsiveness of the WDSC team for all the questions that have been posted on the WDSCI-L mailing list. Since the products come from the same group, I'm comfortable with my assessment based on my observations of the daily help those people provide for free. I could be wrong; we'll see if I start using the product . Finally (and finally for my input on this thread, at least until I can try VARPG myself), the primary constant I got out of the thread you mention is that ASNA's product is a poor choice for converting existing applications, and that their Datagate product in particular is painfully slow. Is that what you read? Joe

[R.Daugherty]

IMHO: What Will It Take to Turn the System i Around?

I didn't say they all or even most of them went to Java, I said many did. Probably should have said some did. I agree, there is no ambiguity about how to develop under Windows. However, Microsoft has also unambiguously failed so far in attempting to develop their Project Green ERP for business. rd

[J.Pluta]

IMHO: What Will It Take to Turn the System i Around?

"And as a final result, MS has created a software platform that IS proprietary, superior technically, and unlike IBM they don't seem to see a problem with this approach." Hehehehehehe. You've got to be kidding! Throughout the 90's Microsoft's MANTRA was that the iSeries is a proprietary box! Every sales pitch you saw, every argument you read, Microsoft was shoving the "open systems" concept down our throats. Only after Java threatened MS's stranglehold on the desktop and IBM created the most open server platform on the planet did Microsoft suddenly change its tune to decrying that "proprietary is good", and "everything under one roof!" Microsoft's spin engine came into play in full force, but nobody's drinking THAT Koolaid anymore. Integration is the real advantage these days, and nothing integrates better than the iSeries. Joe P.S. "Superior technically". In what way???? By requiring security patches on a nearly daily basis? By being unable to deliver a new release within YEARS of its original delivery date? By requiring more memory on a single PC than we use to support ENTIRE COMPANIES using RPG? Drink deeply of the Koolaid, my good friend, and enjoy the holidays with visions of Microsoft Marketing dancing in your head! P.S.S. More like anything less than FIVE seats is Microsoft's market, because as soon as your software becomes more complex than that, all that push-button programming falls down around your ears. I've yet to hear of a company that successfully dumped an iSeries ERP package to move to Microsoft. Unix and SQL occasionally, with a LOT of work and usually far above the original cost and time estimates, but Windows? Not to my knowledge.

[J.Pluta]

IMHO: What Will It Take to Turn the System i Around?

Molly, you did see that the overall opinion in that thread on the ASNA product was that it was good if you called RPG programs on the host, but slow if you used it to actually write business logic on the client, didn't you? Joe

[David Abramowitz]

IMHO: What Will It Take to Turn the System i Around?

Joe Pluta wrote: Integration is the real advantage these days, and nothing integrates better than the iSeries. IMO this statement is absolutely true, and most unfortunately absolutely irrelevant to many companies. These firms are unaware of iSeries capabilities, and are unwilling to make comparative analysis for ROI and TCO purposes. They will blindly choose Wintel servers, and pay an arm and a leg for Oracle, because finance is familiar with those terms. And.... Finance is making the buying decisions, not I.T. THEN They turn around and tell I.T. to cut costs. Dave

[tleach@sierrapine.com]

IMHO: What Will It Take to Turn the System i Around?

My two cents Hi Everyone! I just wanted to say that my take on all of this is as follows: We all love our iSeries/As400 and we want IBM to do whatever is necessary to re-establish it as the premier computing platform on the entire planet in the minds of everyone! And to do this by marketing a price competitive box! As for the tools that we use to do our jobs, whatever you use that gets the job done for you and still uses the iSeries as the backbone, is the right tool to use! As for the VARPG vs. ASNA AVR issue, I have not used VARPG, so I cannot comment on it. But I have used ASNA's products, which I have mentioned previously in this thread, and I find it to be able to do what we need to have done, and it does it very effectively too! I have it running windows programs at our remote locations and it works just fine in terms of response. I have also used it to create web applications that are working very well for us too. As for converting applications, we are considering trying out ASNA's Monarch product, which converts all of your green screen applications into AVR .Net code. If anyone has tried this product, I would like to hear how it worked for you. Tony

[Guest.Visitor]

IMHO: What Will It Take to Turn the System i Around?

You are right; it's just you. You aren't reading for the purpose of understanding. You confuse forgetting a detail of a problem with forgetting the problem and you won't give it up. It wasn't that the file open dialog didn't work as advertised; there was just something I wanted to do with it that wasn't advertised and I couldn't discover how to do it. It's also an unfounded opinion that my management didn't get something from me in writing about the situation. They did. No, I didn't read what you got out of that other thread...not at all. Gary