President's Message by Don Rima

We at WAM hope you and yours are off to a good and prosperous 2007.

I've finished reading the JAM evaluations and without exception it appears everyone had a great time. We're working on the program for JAM 2007 even this early in the year and I would expect by our April meeting timeframe should have a solid date and some roughed in schedule items for you to start planning around.

This year, we're going to be continuing our seminar series which will be followed by an evening WAM meeting and we're going to plan for one every 2 months. Frankly the membership was telling we were killing them with kindness and bringing in too many speakers for people to be able to carve out time to attend. So, we're spreading things out a bit.

In February we have Blair Wyman from the IBM Rochester Lab giving us a full day presentation on PHP and Java with subjects like:

• PHP - H is for HUGE
• Intro to Java Native Interfaces
• Using the Java Native Interface
• Using the Java Virtual Machine Tools Interface (JVMTI)
• JDK 1.5 Enhancements Overview

The Future of Java on System i

Support for Java technology in i5/OS is in the midst of fundamental change, as IBM converges on a single virtual machine implementation across all its platforms.  This session details the change embodied by the adoption of this new VM its content, timeline, rationale and impacts and charts IBM's progress so far.

This new VM brings with it known impacts good and bad to compatibility, performance, and long-term migration.  These          impacts are outlined, along with IBM's plans for their automatic detection and mitigation in most cases.

Impacts that defy automatic mitigation are expected to be rare; i5/OS facilities for their identification will be described and  demonstrated.

By the end of our meeting, you will understand:

• Java support in i5/OS, and how it is changing;
• the timeline of the change, and where we are in it;
• the impacts of the change, both good and bad;
• how to determine whether to try the new VM for yourself.

See you at WAM in College Park.

Register early and bring a friend!

February 27th Meeting

The Future of Java on System i

Tuesday Februray 27th, 2007
Holiday Inn - College Park
MD Rt. 1 and I-95
6:00 pm networking/cash bar
6:30 pm Dinner
7:00 pm Presentation