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  • iSeries Training

    O.K. Maybe I asked too specific a question. It's been a week since my original post and no replies. Some of you reading this must be trained. What worked for you? Whatever it was, please document it right here for all to see. Many Thanks.

  • #2
    iSeries Training

    hi Frank, I got my AS/400 training from a consulting company that hired me back in 1989. They ran classes teaching RPG, COBOL, CL, and operations over about a 10 week period and then sent us out to be billable. Very high retention rate for the students, very high rate of being billable from the training. Training course material was fairly standard, I've seen similar through the years through people at other consulting companies and corporations with internal AS/400 staff that I've worked for. Most of the rest that I'm aware of were trained by community colleges teaching RPG courses. But of course you know all that, so I'm not telling you anything new here. Maybe you're asking about training on new technologies on the AS/400? The only thing needed as far as I know is "I Didn't Know (you could do that with RPG IV)". I have no idea how anyone would learn about the AS/400 now. IBM has destroyed the system and made technical information about it almost impossible to find. The only way I can find anything anymore is through Google, and once I get to someplace in an IBM site from there I can't even bookmark it to get back. If things were like this back when I started I would have never touched anything that said IBM, and thus I wouldn't be here along with everyone else not here to respond to your question. rd

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    • #3
      iSeries Training

      It has been most unfortunate, that due to lack of offerred training, much has come by way of osmosis. Dave

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      • #4
        iSeries Training

        I recently completed (12/04) an Associates degree in Midrange computing offered by a local community college in Houston, TX. While I am glad that I got the degree and it has helped me with the iSeries I am somewhat disappointed in the curriculum. 2 classes in systems operation which were basically CL, 2 classes in RPG (1 for RPG III and 1 for RPG IV), 1 class in Cobol. The systems classes were taught at the V4R5 level and didn't hardly cover anything about security, or setting up device controllers, or lan setup/TCPIP, etc. The RPG classes covered the basics and just barely touched on ILE. The practical stuff I have learned on mine own doing research on the internet and just seeing what works to get a particular task or goal completed. I guess my biggest gripe is the cost of IBM classes. I don't personally have and my company won't spend the $2000+ it seems to cost for just 1 of their classes. As an aside to this, why get training if you can't get a job. I recently touched base with a head hunter at a firm here in Houston that specializes in IT jobs. He told me that he sees very few AS400/iSeries jobs. His advice to me was get a Microsoft Certificate. Chuck Rudolphy

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        • #5
          iSeries Training

          Hi Chuck, The training is standard, same training I got from a consulting company back in 1989 (with no reference to ILE of course . No AS/400 programming course will cover admin stuff like security, device controllers, or communications setup, those are admin courses, but same is true for any programming course with any operating system. I was surprised that those courses are still available, thinking something good was happening in Houston, and then I see nothing different there. I spent a year and a half looking for an RPG programming job before finding one last year and there was always a vague job listing or two for Houston on various job boards but nothing from either the job or the person placing the ad that could be determined to be legitimate. But where there's smoke maybe there's fire... Microsoft Certified is easy for a recruiter to say, as far as numbers go there's clearly a lot of MS admins running around. That's supposed to be part of the problem. But I read not long ago that even the ubiquitous MS certified admin thing is saturated. But it doesn't teach programming. And around and around we go. rd

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          • #6
            iSeries Training

            Manta Technologies has been providing AS400/iSeries training courses for many years. Check out their website at http://www.mantatech.com/

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            • #7
              iSeries Training

              Yes, we use Manta courses here also. chuck Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer. "feeal" wrote in message news:6b363aff.5@WebX.WawyahGHajS... > Manta Technologies has been providing AS400/iSeries training courses for > many years. Check out their website at <http://www.mantatech.com/>

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              • #8
                iSeries Training

                Depending on the subject matter, iseriesnetwork.com (http://www.iseriesnetwork.com/edu/e-learning/) has online courses with an instructor that start at about $325 for non-members and a bit less for members. Some are during the day and some are in the evening. The classes are one hour per week. I have not taken one personally, but the classes are sold out quickly. Some of the topics they cover are SQL, Java, RPG IV and .Net from an i5 perspective. Other options are Manta (http://www.mantatech.com/), iSeries400Experts.com (https://secure1.ucg.com/boston/tis/products.html), Brian Meyers (http://www.bmeyers.net/dvd.php), Rochester Initiative (http://www.lab400.com/products.asp), and ATS (http://www.ibmuser.com/train/train.htm)

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                • #9
                  iSeries Training

                  Frank, There are also some very good self teaching books on the market. I believe the best to be by Paul Conte and Brian Meyers. They are textbook format, with review questions and even some Lab exercises. Of course you need access to an iSeries to do the Labs. You can probably find these resources on the MC Press website. Good luck in your search for a training method that best suits your needs. Linda Cain

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                  • #10
                    iSeries Training

                    I've been self-employed in this racket for many years and it's a full time job to keep up with the continually changing technical landscape. iSeries News is a great source of technical information and there are lots of good books on RPG IV, SQL, Subfiles, WDSC, etc. I supplement that by trying to get to COMMON or other technical conference every year or two. There is lots of free educational material on the web including these sites for IBM & SQL: IBM General Developer Roadmap SQL Just an observation from the last 20 years: the best shops I work at stand a head and shoulders above the rest because their managers encourage education and see great value in conferences such as COMMON.

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                    • #11
                      iSeries Training

                      Folks, you are not alone. System i education VERY high on Mark Shearers list of things to address this year and beyond. Watch what is coming out of the University of Nebraske and more. One really great lady in IBM Rochester has been given a FULL-TIME responsibility to gear up the Community Colleges and more for System i education. I will forward this link to her so that she might contribute. But face it, colleges do not want to run an RPG program because they can get more students in and out of a MS program with little or no effort. The new System i programs in colleges are going to center around Java, PHP, etc. Languages that can attract students and jobs. A few folks in this thread mentioned COMMON. This is a great source to get caught up on System i education, but you can hardly send a newbie and expect them to understand RPG. When i was coming up i took classes at the local community college. After landing a job at a consulting firm, I was mentored by a guy who really knew his stuff and that help was priceless. One question I would ask of the folks in this thread who know RPG and more: What have you done to mentor someone who ma be showing some aptitude? In addition to some of the education locations on the net, I would recommend forums like midrange.com, etc. These are the mentors of the 21st century! Good luck!

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                      • #12
                        iSeries Training

                        RPG courses aren't going to be offered like they used to unless there are jobs like there used to be. And they shouldn't be. I've heard of no company dropping the AS/400 because they couldn't find RPG programmers. On the other hand, recruiters are out there trolling for anyone who can spell J2EE. Companies also won't buy an AS/400 and start using RPG because resumes are coming in with RPG as the keyword. In other words, training the students for a job isn't going to create the job. But the theory as I understand it is that people trained in a skill, who recognize the value of the skill, will be youthful advocates in an enterprise should the decision arise as to which way to go. Extremely dubious theory in my opinion. In fact, I think it's ludicrous. People running IT are of a certain background, and they are there because it already uses their background or they were hired to bring it in. We're talking Unix versus Windows versus mainframe versus AS/400 versus Linux versus Sun. Even the so called platform neutral stuff like J2EE is really very database and OS specific, based on what the IT management's experience is. If and when the jobs come back, so will the training. IBM should at least make sure that anything that other OS'es have that make them not described as lacking a GUI interface like OS/400 is should be available front and center as much as the other OS'es. XWindows should ship running in PASE, a Gnome client interface for Linux and a GTK equivalent client for Windows, better yet an Eclipse based GUI client that people see as the system interface out of the box. No one has Websphere as their OS interface except IBM screwing us over with it, because they can. No one else even has a web page as their OS interface emanating from anything, much less Websphere. There is no reason for us to be compared unfavorably to any other OS because everyone else is said to have a GUI interface and we don't. That's what Shearer and the others need to deal with. The training will take care of itself, when there's something to train for. Java and PHP on a POWER5 CPU under the auspices of System i instead of running on Linux on Intel? Holy cow. Good luck with that. rd

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                        • #13
                          iSeries Training

                          Has anyone tried using the interactive iSeries training courses available at www.datatrain.nl ? How would you rate this training? Would you recommend a different source of training material? Which one?

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                          • #14
                            iSeries Training

                            Ralph - Thanks for documenting your thoughts and for helping to get this discussion going. I'm glad that you were still here to respond to my question! It turned out to be an insightful thread.

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