President's Message by Don Rima

Would you believe... we're actually getting inquests about JAM 2005!? People are already marking their calendars for the JAM on November 4, so mark yours and plan on being there.

Again this year, we're trying an ad hoc mix of speakers. We're going to try to stick with the 3rd Tuesday of the month, but as you can see again this meeting, we're moving our dates to accommodate the speaker's schedules. I don't really have a problem with doing this if I can give folks a 4 week notice (hopefully) so that they can plan accordingly, as I like to know things as well in advance also.

This month, we've got Joe Pluta doing a day seminar on Websphere, RPG and Eclipse. Very timely stuff and Eclipse is fast becoming a very hot development environment to do not only RPG but a lot of other coding projects as well. And, many of you have Joe's books on Eclipse and Websphere... bring them to dinner or the seminar and I'm sure you can get him to autograph them for you. Frankly, Joe literally "wrote the book" on some of these environments and you'll find his presentations to be not only fun to attend but some of the best you're going to be able to find.

Just a quick heads up, in May we have confirmed Jon Paris for our speaker. He'll also be doing a seminar on the latest in RPG and the evening WAM meeting as well.

See you at WAM on April 5th. Register early and bring a friend!

April 5th Meeting

In this presentation, Joe Pluta presents a little bit of the background of these three powerful tools and identifies where they are best used, as well as where they're not such a good fit.  He explores a few of the older myths about SQL and ODBC, as well as some of the newer "urban programming legends" that have grown up around this often misunderstood technology.  Finally, he presents an overall architectural approach that places each technology where it belongs.

Joe Pluta is the founder and chief architect of Pluta Brothers Design, Inc. He has been working in the field since the late 1970s and has made a career of extending the IBM midrange, starting back in the days of the IBM System/3. Joe is a pioneer in using WebSphere with the iSeries, and is one of the leading advocates and teachers of Java/RPG interoperability. Joe is also the author of several books. E-Deployment: The Fastest Path to the Web, Eclipse: Step by Step, and WDSC: Step by Step all deal with web enabling the iSeries and using the Eclipse and WDSC toolsets to do so.

Tuesday April 5, 2005
Holiday Inn - College Park
301-345-6700 for diretions
5:30 PM Networking/Cash Bar
6:00 PM Dinner
6:30 PM Presentation