Re: Unix

[James Rich <james@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 5 Dec 2001 steven.donnellan@simonjersey.com wrote:

> (sound of a fuse leading to a huge bang in background...)
> I have a friend on another AS/400 site, but the 'powers that be' want him
> to ditch the AS/400 box and go Unix (at least they didn't suggest XP!!!)
> What arguments can he give so that he keeps the little black box we know,
> love and trust?
> A V5R1 + Linux installation isn't an option, he needs to be able to
> deliver an argument based on what he's got now in V4R5.

First let me get into my nuclear bomb shelter...

Maybe moving to unix wouldn't be bad?  Of course the business needs to
look at the considerable costs of changing platforms and retraining, etc.
But I work on both unix and iSeries every day and I have to say I like
unix better.  It can do more.  And it seems to me it does more better.  I
would far rather admin a unix machine than an as/400.  But I'm not going
to put our as/400 software on unix just for the sake of running unix.

Far better is to use the advantages of each platform to get what you want.
Most of our customers now have one as/400 and one unix machine.  Each box
does its tasks well, and each is suited to different tasks.  Together they
make for a reliable, simple, and fairly low cost system.  It would be
stupid to try to convert all the OCL36, CLP, DDS, RPG36, RPGIII, RPGIV,
etc. to run on unix.  It would be equally stupid to not take advantage of
sendmail, procmail, apache, ssh, IMAP, NAT, proxy arp, RIP, GNOME, KDE,
NFS, remote booting, secure email clients, mozilla, Nautilus, Star Office,
MySQL, perl, python, C, C++, java, X11, etc.  Of course some of these
things can be done on either platform and one platform may work better for
you.

Now I'm closing the hatch on my shelter...

James Rich
james@eaerich.com