President's Message from Peter Maher

It seems everywhere I turn these days I hear the prophets of doom and gloom regarding the iSeries. If its not one company going to Unix/Linux its another going to NT. This causes me to stop and take a step back and evaluate. Is the AS/400 - iSeries Dead? Will the iSeries see its shadow and will we have "6 more weeks" of bad news or will the long hoped for "Spring" be just around the corner?

Those who know me well know I am the optimist's optimist (some say even say I am unrealistic at times) so I believe that the iSeries has at least one more last gasp. Not because of any great pronouncements from Rochester but because I believe that the iSeries is the best box going.

Now my belief in the box wont save it - no that’s up to all of us banding together and fighting for the box. We have to be willing to stand up to those who want to bury it. But we must fight with logic and not emotion. Why have most of the companies that have "abandoned" the iSeries left it? In my opinion those of us who were in the position to fight were unprepared. We were victims of complacency and the iSeries superb track record. We stopped learning. We resisted the "new technology", the unfamiliar and the untested. Now we have a lot of catching up to do.

How do we catch up? Well each shop is different and each person is different but it is my opinion that if we want to be working on iSeries boxes in the future we better get on the education bandwagon and fast! I know some folks who are taking night courses in web design, html, JAVA and anything else they can their hands on at the local community college or tech training center. Others are getting CDs and doing computer-based training.

Still others are taking advantage of the courses offered by IBM, News400 and Midrange Computing. Whatever you do - JUST DO IT!

Folks I'm talking about taking personal responsibility for your future. IBM won't do it. COMMON won't do it.

WAM won't do it. It's all up to YOU! The next time your CEO sticks his head in the door and tells you about the newest thing he read about on the plane back from Palm Springs, surprise him and be prepared already.

The Results Of Our First Poll Are In

In order to try and understand the needs of our members we have instituted a series of short surveys. It is our goal to serve the WAM members as best we can and since none of us has developed mind reading abilities we feel this tool will help us. I do want to thank all the members who responded and assure those of you who made suggestions that we are working on them.

So here are the results:

1) How often do you go to WAM meetings?

Never 24%
1-2 times a year 28%
Always 6%
Only when the topic/speaker interests me 54%

LESS 66%
MORE 26%

LESS 56%
MORE 38%

NO 78%
YES 16%
What Day? Thursday

JAM 2001

In response to the overwhelming demand JAM will stay the first Friday in December. So mark your calendars now for December 7th 2001 - JAM 2001!

The Board will begin planning for JAM 2001 soon and we need your ideas. Please let one of us know if there are any topics or presenters that you would like to see. We are committed to making this the best JAM ever and to do that we need your input.

This Month's Meeting

So you have been thinking about adding Windows 2000 to your desktops or your CEO has told you "You ARE migrating all the desktops to Windows 2000" but you aren't sure what is involved. Well this month we are pleased to present Joe Francis from Microsoft. Joe's topic is Windows 2000. Joe is a Senior Technology Specialist with Microsoft and he specializes in Windows 2000. I know we all will learn something at this meeting! (This is your chance to leave your comfort zone and learn about something newJ)

New Meeting Site this month we will be trying a new meeting site. The meeting will be at the Gaithersburg Hilton. This location is located right off I-270 exit 11. From exit 11 turn right on to RT124 east (Montgomery Village Avenue) Turn right on to MD 355 (Fredrick Pike) At the first light turn right onto Perry Parkway - go past Montgomery Ward - Hilton is on the RIGHT

(Traffic Hint: Bring a friend and take the HOV Lane it’s a Breeze!)

Board of Directors

President - Peter Maher ph 703.834.3706 fax 703.834.3707 1stplace@crosslink.net

Vice-President - Jack Fugiel ph 301.489.1103 fax 301.474.1609 jack.fugiel@whihomes.com

Secretary - Don Rima ph 703.742.3744 fax 703.742.0448 dr2@cssas400.com

Treasurer - KB Soni ph 301.590.7121 fax 301.590.0213 kbsoni@aol.com

Director - Ross Massey ph 410.672.7070 fax 410.799.9066 rmassey@dpsolutions.com

Director - Mark Grimley ph 703.264.0643 fax 703.264.1753 mgrimley@cox.rr.com

See you at the meeting

-Peter

FEBRUARY MEETING

WINDOWS 2000 - An Overview

with Joe Francis of Microsoft

Come join us on February 20th as we feature Joe Francis of Microsoft. Joe will be guiding us through the installation and configuring of Windows 2000.

Joe's presentation / demonstration will include the following topics:

• Review of Windows 2000 platform
• Various flavors of Windows 2000 and their system requirements
• Overview of the feature set in Windows 2000 Active Directory
• Interoperability with other platforms
• Discuss interoperability with Novell, Unix, and Host environments
• Upgrade scenarios, and best practices
• Desktop migration to Windows 2000 Pro
• Server migration from NT4 Domains

Tuesday February 20th, 2001
Gaithersburg Hilton, Near I-270 and MD 355 on Perry Parkway

6:00pm networking/cash bar
6:30pm Dinner
7:15pm Joe Francis
8:30pm Adjournment

MEMBERS FREE 30.00 Non-Member

Treasurer's Message

All prior year members should have received their membership renewal invoices during January. Although most of you have since sent in the checks, there are still quite a few memberships not yet renewed.

If you have not taken care of it, it is time now to renew your memberships for another year. I will appreciate if you can take care of the renewal at the earliest so that we can focus on another year of activities for you.

If you have any questions, or if you will like to start a new membership, please feel free to call me.

Your 2001 membership can be renewed or a new membership started by sending in your check for $100 for the annual fee. The checks made out to WAM may be sent to:

Washington Area Midrange
12023 Blackberry Terrace
North Potomac, MD 20878

-K B Soni
Treasurer

Guest Column

RPG is Dead, Long Live RPG

By Jon Paris

This is an opinion piece - my opinion - I don't expect you to agree with everything I say here, indeed I suspect that tomorrow when I re-read this I may not fully agree with it myself! What I do want to do though is to get you thinking about the tools you use and why.

For many years I was convinced that it was IBM's lack of marketing that prevented the AS/400 (for AS/400, read iSeries, if your brain has been reprogrammed!) from occupying the premiere spot among business systems that most of us believe it should have. No doubt many of you reading this still feel the same way. In recent months however I have begun to feel that perhaps we should look elsewhere for some of the cause of our problems.

How did I come to feel this way? Well certainly no small part of it stems from the frustrations I feel over the slow adoption rate of RPG IV. As a member of the original team at IBM that pushed the company to produce the compiler, there is undoubtedly somewhat of a “fatherhood” issue at play here. Beyond that though is the frustration that comes from listening to RPGers constantly come up with excuses as to why they still continue to code in RPG III. By the way, if your main language is RPG/400 don’t go getting smug, it is after all just RPG III with a name change. OK, OK, so IBM did add a couple of new op-codes, but there really is very little difference between the two dialects.

In my opinion, there is absolutely no justification whatsoever for anyone to code any new programs in RPG III. None. Nada. Rien. Zippo. How can you possibly justify using RPG III when RPG IV is superior in every conceivable way? RPG IV has:

• Better string handling
• More powerful arithmetic and logical operations
• Enhanced readability (and easier to read = easier to maintain)
• Many powerful new features added with each release
• A learning curve measured in hours rather than days

If RPG IV were the only example, I would be inclined to think that it was the language itself that was the problem. But it is not.

Take SQL. It has been largely ignored by most of the AS/400 community while being embraced wholeheartedly by other platforms. Now I agree that we can lay some of the blame for this at IBM’s door. Undoubtedly performance problems during the early days did nothing to encourage SQL’s adoption, and IBM’s current pricing policy towards the development kit doesn’t help. Somehow though I don’t think that this is really the problem. Would it really make a difference if SQL performance were to exceed that of native database I/O? Would everyone rush to use it if IBM were to offer the development kit for free? Experience says that the answer is “Probably not”. The fact that the rest of the computing universe is embracing SQL as the standard method for data handling seems to carry no weight. Yet it is that very universe in the ever present form of NT and Unix/Linux that threatens to bury our favorite platform.

The key to all this I suspect is that RPG III, native I/O coded by hand and OPNQRYF is “good enough”. That simple phrase probably sums up the whole thing. We have met the enemy and it is “good enough”.

Now before you all start writing rude letters to the editor, let me say that I don’t believe that IBM is blameless in all this. They have done much to help foster the “good enough” inertia that seems so prevalent in AS/400 shops. Certainly the lack of advertising does little to help us convince others of the benefits of the platform, but I doubt that any company could spend enough on advertising to correct this perception problem. Even if you had the dollars, could you afford to outspend Microsoft? In my opinion there are other factors at work here.

A major contributor has been IBM’s approach to RPG and hence to the majority of its AS/400 user base. Please note that in this regard I am excluding the RPG compiler team at the Toronto Lab from “IBM” in this statement because they have poured their hearts and souls into giving RPG the attention it deserves. Nevertheless, from IBM’s actions (and lack thereof) you can only conclude that at some point it was decided that RPG was single-handedly responsible for holding the AS/400 back. It should therefore be “punished”. IBM could have actively promoted RPG IV to Business Partners and end-users, and encouraged them to use it to update their existing systems. Instead they chose to take a “throw away that old rubbish” approach. First we were told that SmallTalk was the answer, then C++, and last but not least Java. These might be a viable approach for the bigger players such as J.D.Edwards, but not for the many thousands of smaller BPs around the world. In recent times we’ve seen some softening of this attitude, but for many it is too late.

Don’t misunderstand me - the platform desperately needs modern languages like Java to gain respect outside of the community and to provide a future growth path for existing applications. What it doesn’t need though, is for IBM to ignore the reality of the existing user base. You need look no further than the infamous “Hamburger” ad to see how RPG is perceived by some within IBM. Even ignoring such doings, by my estimate, IBM have spent some 90%+ of their budget in support of the 10% of the business partner community who could afford to wholeheartedly embrace SmallTalk/C++/Java/flavor-of-the-month. If you do the math, you’ll see that that left less than 10% of the budget to be spent on the remaining 90%+ of the AS/400 community. The result? Business partners and customers alike have stood like deer in the headlights, not knowing which way to turn. Interestingly enough this makes them an easy target for any huNTers who pass by. Told that they should throw away their RPG but unable to afford to do so, they have continued to code the packages that most of us rely on in RPG III. In doing so they provided the perfect excuse for their customers to continue down the tried-and-true RPG III path.

So where’s the good news? Well IBM recently made a positive change in their pricing policy which should be welcomed by the AS/400 developer community, and I encourage every AS/400 shop to take advantage of it. They have reduced the price of Code/400 to $300 US per seat and included in the new packaging (known as WDT/400) VisualAge for RPG, VisualAge for Java, and a new version of Websphere Studio loaded with AS/400 “goodies”. To me the beauty of this is that you can buy the tool you need today -- let’s say Code/400 to replace the outdated SEU -- and get all the other tools “free” so that you can experiment with future directions for your applications.

Of course it will have been a waste of effort on IBM’s part if we, as the AS/400 community, continue to believe that outmoded tools such as SEU, RPG III and OPNQRYF are “good enough”.

Jon Paris
Jon.Paris@hal.it

This Article First appeared in the Toronto Users Group Magazine and is reprinted with permission

JAM 2001 - December 7, 2001