Weaving WebSphere: IT Starts with an "i"

[lujate]

"I hate this concept. Every fiber in my IBM midrange evangelizing body screams against this concept..." Absolutely! We are now using WDSc because we had the software and I took the initiative to install it on my PC. Otherwise, we would still be using PDM/SEU. That is the reason is why we have not done anything with EGL.

[H.Boldt]

Weaving WebSphere: IT Starts with an "i"

Joe wrote: "I hate this concept. Every fiber in my IBM midrange evangelizing body screams against this concept, because I'm just so comfortable with the idea of being able to use any development tool whenever I need it. ..." DITTO! DOUBLE DITTO! Here's how things work on my computer desk: Let's say I want to try something new. Once I learn what new tools I need to do it, I pop in my openSUSE 10.3 install DVD, and I run the "Install Software" dialog. Bingo! The tools I want to use are now available! And at no cost to me!!! I'm reminded of the time I wanted to cut a CD of family photos on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of my mother's family in Canada. The material was web based, and so could be used on any type of computer. But to make things easy, I wanted the CD to automatically load into a web browser when inserted into a Windows PC. So I tried searching the web for the code. The first umpteen dozen hits from Google were for sites offering the code for a price. Being unsatisfied, and stingy, I continued on until I found for free the one single line of configuration code I needed. I hadn't realized that the Windows world had taken "a la carte" pricing to such an extreme! There may well be a valid business model for "a la carte" software component pricing, but I'm not sure if I quite get it, especially when compared with what's offered by most Linux distro's these days. Take openSUSE 10.3 for example - you get a whopping 4.1G of free software. And it's good stuff too. Going "a la carte" simply reinforces the idea that software is subject to commodity pricing models, and they'll be hard-pressed to price their offerings at a competitive level. On the other hand, continuing to price midrange hardware and software at a premium level can't be sustained either, IMHO. Cheers! Hans

[nandelin]

Weaving WebSphere: IT Starts with an "i"

Joe, Thanks for putting Mike Smith's keynote points into perspective. I enjoyed reading your additional insights. With respect to i5 blades, the recent announcements appear to represent a significant transition from one phase of life to another for the i5. For the first time in its history the i5 (or i6, perhaps) could be a plug-in component of a larger system having multiple interchangeable Power and Intel blades housed alongside one another in a single chassis; along with interchangeable disk drives. This is quite different from having an i5 with integrated System x server, or partitions for AIX and Linux, in that i5/OS is not necessarily in the driver seat. When Frank Soltis addressed our users group, and one member complained about the price of iSeries disks, Frank simply suggested that they begin ordering from the pSeries group; suggesting that the disks were identical; that only the pricing was different. When an i5 blade is sitting adjacent to AIX, Linux, and Windows blades, and they're all sharing the same disk array - well you can see that the traditional i5 pricing model would be out of wack in the new context. It also appears to me that this event could be the thing that un-bundles i5/OS from the hardware it runs under. If you have an i5 blade immediately adjacent to an AIX blade, what would stop you from replacing the AIX blade with i5/OS, or visa versa? We're seeing another step toward server hardware becoming commodity-like in nature. At some point, I expect IBM to even stop reporting i5 revenue separately from other hardware. I expect to see i5/OS priced separately too. Actually, operating systems, databases, and application servers, and other runtime environments are becoming more homogenized, too. There's a 32 bit JVM running under PASE, and a comparable 64 bit version running alongside the native virtual machine, and a comparable one that runs under AIX, and Linux. Then there's PHP, which is similar. At some point we may see more Ruby on Rails applications running under PASE, perhaps along with Perl and Python. Your point about seeing more separately priced software, and user-based pricing is a big one. Many traditional I5 shops hate choices (more complexity), but we're seeing that trend continue, regardless. Notwithstanding IBM trying to make that complexity easier to manage through virtualization and related technologies, it won't be as simple as it used to be - not by a long shot. In my mind, the significance of EGL is still unpredictable, but I acknowledge that it's strategic to integrating otherwise disparate development and runtime environments. I hope there's a niche for a person like me who steers clear of distributed architectures, disparate development, and disparate runtime environments. Yesterday I tried to order V5R4 cummulative PTFs from FixCentral, where the HTML page loads a Java Applet to compare your software inventory to IBM's. An IBM support technician worked with me for a couple hours trying to get it to work. We were running into multiple SQL and JVM errors. He finally concluded that I needed PTFs in order to order PTFs under FixCentral. But the native SNDPTFORD command worked fine ;-) I'm planning on sticking exclusively to the native virtual machine for Web applications, but I'll try to keep informed about what IBM is doing with EGL. Nathan.

[Guest.Visitor]

Weaving WebSphere: IT Starts with an "i"

Joe said: ...The introduction of PHP is going to muddy the waters for another couple of years until people realize that it takes even more work to create a commercial, production PHP environment than it does to build one in Java. I've taken a good look at PHP (Zend Core) on the iSeries and it looks lots easier to use than J2EE/Websphere. I much prefer PHP syntax/use to Java syntax. Zend Core has a PHP tool kit, similar to the Java toolbox. We're a medium size business. Well, I mean PHP without a framework. Maybe that's the kicker. PHP code without a framework ends up looking like spaghetti code - MVC all mixed in one file. But I don't think a good framework would take long to learn, like Zend's Framework. Chris

[J.Pluta]

Weaving WebSphere: IT Starts with an "i"

I'm not going to spend a lot of time on the language debate. I've programmed long enough that I can tell the difference between languages and I'll give you my insights, you can take them or leave them. There are two flavors of PHP: with and without OO. Without OO, PHP is just another scripting language. Yes, it's easy to use, but then again so is BASIC, but I wouldn't use it for programming business applications. Scripting languages appeal to the same type of programmer that Visual Basic does. Typically, that's not industrial strength business applications. With OO, and specifically with PHP 5's OO, PHP has perhaps much of the syntactical requirement to be a good programming language (as oppose to scripting). However, it misses on two counts: tools and typing. And in some ways, one feeds off the other. PHP is a weakly typed language, which means that you really don't know what type of data a variable might hold. Because of this, debugging is an adventure, and analysis is "grep and pray". PHP works great until you hit a certain critical mass, at which point you're in deep trouble. Now it may or may not be that some frameworks help to ameliorate some of these issues, but the fact is that the language has these built-in characteristics which, in my opinion, make it less useful for large-scale development. Joe

[Guest.Visitor]

Weaving WebSphere: IT Starts with an "i"

As Joe referred..."granularity" could put many a programmer between a rock and a hard place. But on the other hand, how are you going to get these guys out of the Mesozoic era. The downside to bundling: Query Mgr, RLU, and embedded-SQL have been there a long time, and WDSC's been there a short-time. I've had to literally drag some folks by the feet, kicking and screaming, into Query/Mgr, RLU, and embedded-SQL in ILE/RPG, until they get this look in their eyes and you hear'em say..."Ooooohhhh, that's cool!". Likewise, I've spent months trying to convince "The Company" that WE ALREADY HAVE WDSC v7.? There's nothing to buy...and all we have to do is INSTALL IT AND START USING IT...!!! And I still get "Are you sure we have it?" Hoo-hoo :-)

[nandelin]

Weaving WebSphere: IT Starts with an "i"

I'm pleased with the user-based pricing on the new entry-level models, and see how it could be an advantage on the bigger servers too. Unbundling and pricing the hardware and software separately also makes sense to me, so long as there's a try and buy option, or a subscription for a big bundle similar to the MSDN subscription from Microsoft. Ironically people who want all the new software bundled with the hardware also cry foul against the interactive tax. What do they think was subsidizing new development these past several years? If people are buying the new software, you know you have a good product. If it's bundled, you don't know whether people are using it, or if they're resenting having subsidized a boondoggle. If I'm interested in evaluating new software, I normally begin with the free publications. I don't need an install CD until phase II of the evaluation. Nathan.

[lujate]

Weaving WebSphere: IT Starts with an "i"

"Likewise, I've spent months trying to convince "The Company" that WE ALREADY HAVE WDSC v7.? There's nothing to buy...and all we have to do is INSTALL IT AND START USING IT...!!! And I still get "Are you sure we have it?" Hoo-hoo :-)" How well would it have worked if you had to purchase WDSc separately?

[Guest.Visitor]

Weaving WebSphere: IT Starts with an "i"

Even when you/we already have the stuff...You can't get people to use the stuff that's "new" to them. The example scenario being: We bought a new machine. IT Mgmt wants to get "current" so they purchased WDSC instead of PDM...Assuming it would be so granularized. The question is: How well with "they" work now when they are forced to get "current". If you already have the product: You gotta force most programmers to use it. If it's the only development product you have...You're still forcing the would-be's to use it.

[H.Boldt]

Weaving WebSphere: IT Starts with an "i"

efnkay wrote: "If you already have the product: You gotta force most programmers to use it. ..." I'm all for using more up-to-date tools. But I'm opposed to the idea that programmers must be forced to use some tool they're not comfortable with. Take IDE's for instance. There are several things wrong with most IDE's. First, some have humongous resource requirements. When I was still on the RPG team at the Toronto Lab, I did some testing on WDSC. The first thing I got was a fast dual Pentium machine with about 1.5G of RAM. That is just so obscene, in my opinion. You shouldn't have to get the fastest machine available just to do development. If you want to keep up-to-date, you'll be forever upgrading your hardware! (Mind you, when I got shuffled in the 2004 re-org, I got to keep that powerful machine, and I certainly appreciated that!) Second, I don't like being forced into someone else's model of doing development. As computer people, we all know how to use the tools at our disposal. We can build our own FTP scripts. We can write our own tooling using our favorite scripting languages. And we can share them with others on the team if called upon. If you have a sufficiently robust desktop system, all the pieces should already be in place, and without requiring tonnes and tonnes of machine resources. Programmers, including the crusty old-timers, should all be counted on to know how to do development any old way they feel comfortable with. Force them to use some fancy-pants new tools, and they may feel resentful. If some specific tool does have some unique advantages, let some on the team use it, if they want. If others can see a productivity advantage, then let them start to use it on their own terms. These are my humble opinions. Cheers! Hans

[Guest.Visitor]

Weaving WebSphere: IT Starts with an "i"

A buddy of mine is a commercial plumber. I asked him if plumbers now-a-days can still get the job done (whatever that is) with ONLY the tools that were available to them in the 1970's. He answered..."Well yeah...they could, but the job would take longer and may not get diagnosed correctly without modern tools." (Example: The camera at the end of the "snake" that they use now to see visually what's plugging the line.) Also true in programming: The answer is the same. "Well...yeah, They can get the job done, but it may take longer, and is usually a bell or whistle short of being "good". The application not the programmer!

[H.Boldt]

Weaving WebSphere: IT Starts with an "i"

What's the most important part of computer programming: the analysis, or making the actual code changes? All too often in the IBM midrange world, programmers seem to be offered two very different choices. Such as RPG vs Java, or SEU vs WDSC. But there are a lot of other tools available to the programmer. You can take advantage of other tools, such as grep, perl, sed, and awk, to name a few. Or you can build your own application specific tooling. I'll give you an example from my old job: One of our testing methods was to compare assembler output before and after a code change. But the diff output was horrendously difficult to read. This was a big problem for me especially since my work item resulted in a lot of diffs. Millions of lines of diffs! So I whipped up a tool (written in my favorite language, Python, of course!) to convert the diff output to a set of easy to read html files. My tool was smart enough to differentiate between different types of diffs, and mark the less important diffs in a different background color. This was an application specific tool that made our testing work a lot easier. Sure, perhaps an expert in WDSC can bash out more code than an expert in SEU. My point is that if you know how to use any typical GUI based editor, along with the usual suite of GNU / Unix tools, you can also be more productive than that SEU old-timer. Cheers! Hans

[J.Pluta]

Weaving WebSphere: IT Starts with an "i"

Hans, I've tried really hard to ignore your posts as they become increasingly anti-WDSC and anti-IBM, at the expense of anything resembling facts. I don't care if you call them opinions or not, when they're this far off base they're simply FUD and I have to step in. FUD1: "humungous resource requirements" WDSC 7 runs perfectly fine on a standard $700 desktop. 1.6GHz processor, 7200RPM disk drive, 1GB of RAM. If you want to do web development, you should spend a few hundred more dollars, get a dual-core and another GB of RAM. You can't run Windows on much less. (And if you're going to start ranting about non-Windows desktops and the joy of awk and grep then you position yourself very clearly and I don't have to write much else.) I'm not even going to bother with the other stuff you've posted. But before you waste more forum space, please take the time to get your facts right. Joe

[J.Pluta]

Weaving WebSphere: IT Starts with an "i"

"Sure, perhaps an expert in WDSC can bash out more code than an expert in SEU. My point is that if you know how to use any typical GUI based editor, along with the usual suite of GNU / Unix tools, you can also be more productive than that SEU old-timer." Well, I wasn't gfoing to say anything else, but this is even more blatantly anti-IBM noise. It is meant to imply that some Unix-based tool is as productive as WDSC, and that is pure nonsense. WDSC provides RPG-specific tooling unavailable in any GNU or Unix tooling. No GUI editor comes even close to WDSC's support for ILE development. The Outline feature alone will recoup the time spent installing the product almost immediately, and is unavailable for RPG in any other tool. There are numerous other i5/OS and ILE specific capabilities that no Unix tool supports. I'm realy tired of this stuff, Hans. I don't like to come down on anyone in the lists, but this sort of factless bashing has got to stop now. Joe

[H.Boldt]

Weaving WebSphere: IT Starts with an "i"

Joe: I've not only been a professional programmer for years, but also a hobby programmer for even longer. The one thing that always bugged me about the Windows world is that in order to use the most current development tools, I always had to have the most up-to-date hardware as well. Perhaps a company can justify that expense, but it always bugged me that I not only had to shell out hundreds of dollars for the latest and greatest dev tools (IDE, compiler, etc), but I also had to continually upgrade my hardware. For years, I just couldn't justify the expense just for hobby programming. Sure, I'm a Linux bigot. I don't deny it, and I'm quite happy to shout it from the rooftops even. The thing I loved about Linux when I first started using it 10 years ago was that I no longer had to spend the big bucks to do simple computer programming. And I no longer had to upgrade my hardware on each new release of the latest and greatest dev tool. And the s/w was all free. That is, no cost, and the freedom to do whatever I wanted with it (within the generous bounds of the GPL). For years quite a few years, I was quite happy doing hobby programming on a P2 with 128k RAM. Recently, I upgraded to a more modern machine, but heck, there's so much RAM I doubt if the O/S has ever touched the swap partition! My point is that, regardless of the cost of upgrade, the upgrade should not be necessary. If you used Linux, you'd know the joy of not having to continually upgrade hardware on each new release. Is that "anti-IBM"? Look, these days, IBM is one of the biggest supporters of Linux. Cheers!