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J.M. said: "Don't develop your web infrastructure on iSeries. Because the day will come when you need to scale larger, then you will be kicked in the knees by IBM when you need to do it." I wholeheartedly disagree with your statement. Had you said, "don't develop your web infrastructure on Webshpere," then I would have wholeheartedly agreed. Websphere is a hog and a dog and is not only costly in hardware but very expensive in personnel resources. We have a very healthy internal web site that runs using the Apache server with all of our programs developed in RPG ILE using Websmart. Not a lick of Java in sight and it's blazingly fast. So, as you can see, it IS possible to do web development on an iSeries. That is, of course, if you can fight the lemming urge! chuck Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer.
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Beware! Scaling WebSphere Portal on iSeries Cost Prohibitive
Just taking into account the cost of the processor as the entire cost of the iseries is somewhat incomplete. Consider RDBMS costs, OS costs and OS features, and more. By the time that you are finished counting up the extra costs that you would have to purchase that are already a part of the iseries, you may come to a different conclusion. Dave -
Beware! Scaling WebSphere Portal on iSeries Cost Prohibitive
IBM's current pricing offers a Standard edition which is attractive pricing but doesn't do much and Enterprise edition where they charge you for everything to the max and is prohibitively expensive. It seems to be IBM's answer to 6 quarters of declining sales. Lets get it from the faithful.Comment
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Beware! Scaling WebSphere Portal on iSeries Cost Prohibitive
Chuck, Thanks for your feedback and insight. I disagree with your statement regarding WebSphere. We have run WebSphere for 2.5 years on OS/400 and the performance is awesome. And the native database access makes it even faster. Why would anyone want to web-enable RPG? Aarrgh. Only those who have a significant investment in RPG business logic, I suppose. Those of us that do not, go Java, and rightly so. So what happens when you want to "portalize" your RPG with Websmart? Is that even an option? I am not familiar with the software. Regards, J.M.Comment
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Beware! Scaling WebSphere Portal on iSeries Cost Prohibitive
David, I agree. The AS/400 is the best business computer on the planet. It is well worth every penny one pays for the hardware and OS. It's just the portal software that is kicking our ^$#$. J.M.Comment
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Beware! Scaling WebSphere Portal on iSeries Cost Prohibitive
IBM has heard my plea and is happily working with us to soften the blow. Updates forthcoming...Comment
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Beware! Scaling WebSphere Portal on iSeries Cost Prohibitive
J.M. I must say that if we were writing RPG directly I'd probably have chosen to go the Java route. Writing web pages in RPG is ugly and messy. Fortunately, I can say that we never see the RPG that is generated via WebSmart and work only in a PC exclusive IDE that is provided by WebSmart. The web pages are laid out on the PC using any PC development product (my preference is Front Page) and the code is written in an easy to use PC development environment. No learning of APIs no learning of RPG CGI programming. It's all wrapped up in WebSmart. And, here's the kicker... A good RPG programmer can learn WebSmart in about 6 hours of mentoring. I know, I've trained 9 of my staff members. Within 2 weeks of dabbling in it (hey, they've got their other work to do also!) they are very proficient at producing web programs. Within a month they're experts and can program as proficiently in WebSmart as they did in RPG. Within 3 months they're doing dazzling things! No matter what you tell me I'll never believe that an RPG programmer will be as efficient in Java as they were in RPG with less than a year of hands on work. Here's the real kicker.... If you so desire, the code that WebSmart generates doesn't have to be RPG, it can be Java. It's your choice. But, since Java is interpreted and not compiled I can't see how the same functions can possibly be faster than the native language of the machine in compiled form. Plus, the HTML in WebSmart programs is stored as compile time tables in the RPG program. No need to access the IFS at all. I can't see how Java can beat that for performance. No JVM involved either. I'm not sure what your "portalilze" question means. But BCD has a portal product that's very modular and very powerful that they will give you for free if you only pay the maintenance. And, BTW, their portal product is written in WebSmart. chuck Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer. "moss400"Comment
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Beware! Scaling WebSphere Portal on iSeries Cost Prohibitive
IMO it would be interesting to view the resulting Web-Smart RPG code. DaveComment
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Beware! Scaling WebSphere Portal on iSeries Cost Prohibitive
I have. "David Abramowitz"Comment
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Beware! Scaling WebSphere Portal on iSeries Cost Prohibitive
Chuck Ackerman wrote: I have and....................... What did you find? DaveComment
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Beware! Scaling WebSphere Portal on iSeries Cost Prohibitive
I found what I expected from BCD, very clever programming. I originally started using BCD's Progen in 1989 and I learned a lot about RPG programming from looking at their code. These guys are smart, very smart and it shows in their coding. I haven't spent a lot of time reviewing the code generated from WebSmart, it works and I trust their techniques. I do know that the code generated uses a lot of procedure calls that do a lot of the work. What exactly are you looking for? Certainly you could give their product a 30 day trial and see the code for yourself. chuck Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer. "David Abramowitz"Comment
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Beware! Scaling WebSphere Portal on iSeries Cost Prohibitive
Chuck, Chuck said: "But, since Java is interpreted and not compiled..." As far as I know, a Java program on the iSeries (on the IFS root) can be converted to native machine code by using CRTJVAPGM OPTIMIZE(40). ChrisComment
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Beware! Scaling WebSphere Portal on iSeries Cost Prohibitive
We are a small business that started doing web development about 3 years ago. We opted for an small AS/400. So far, we have about 15 dynamic websites running on AS/400 with WAS 5 Express. We need more CPW to handle the Java workload. We are looking at a i550 and Portal on iSeries. Whoa!. To run portal on iSeries, it costs $115,000 per processor. To add insult to injury, my IBM Business partner tells me not to run portal on iSeries because other customers who have attempted it, had serious performance issues. My BP is telling me to run portal on Linux. He says IBM knows they have a problem with iSeries JVM performance and are working on a fix. In the meantime, we the customer appear to be penalized. They tell me that I will need at least two of the four processors to run portal and if I want to scale it to 100 users, I will probably be using the 3rd processor. Ok, let's see. 3 processors x 115k per processor = $445,000.00 to run portal on iSeries for 100 users. Needless to say, IBM needs to come to their senses here and realize that they are making this offering cost-prohibitive for most businesses let alone small businesses. They need to go to Serial number pricing instead of processor pricing, otherwise, they shouldn't even offer the product on iSeries. My warning to those of you who may have been give a free license of WAS 5 Express with your Enterprise Addition (spelled incorrect intentionally for effect). Don't develop your web infrastructure on iSeries. Because the day will come when you need to scale larger, then you will be kicked in the knees by IBM when you need to do it. J.M.Comment
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Beware! Scaling WebSphere Portal on iSeries Cost Prohibitive
But, since Java is interpreted and not compiled I can't see how the same functions can possibly be faster than the native language of the machine in compiled form. If you're under the assumption that Java is intepreted and not compiled, then of course you wouldn't be able to see how the same function would possibly be faster than the native language of the machine. Java hasn't been purely-interpreted since the first JIT compiler came out in 1996. OS/400 also has another method, CRTJVAPGM, which attaches a native machine-compiled version of the program to the java package. However, according to the Redbooks, the JIT has progressed to the point where it is faster for a number of things than the pre-compiled CRTJVAPGM. Properly implemented, both RPG and Java form competitive, performant solutions. The reason Java has a bad rep on the iSeries is because it is more sensitive to the core processor speed, and until the i5, a Java-enabled AS400/iSeries had never been on the leading edge in terms of processor speed.Comment
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