Re: What's up at COMMON?

[Jim Essinger <esinger@xxxxxxxx>]

Sunday LINUX workshop was good, but brain numbing with 8 hours of lecture 
and labs.  It was a good overview, and well presented.  Any problems were 
overcome fairly quickly.  You had to make a choice between the workshop, 
and Opening session/iSeries Town Hall.

Nice CL enhancements announced, but that seems to have leaked early, as 
there has been some discussion here already.  I especially like the loop 
control (do while, do until, do for) with ways of exiting the loop(s) 
(nesting is allowed to 25 levels) I really like the CASE, WHEN, OTHERWISE 
structure to make coding easier to read.  I no longer have to code Nested 
IF within Nested if within ...  Matches well with my COBOL stuff.  I also 
like that you can open and read up to 5 files.  Can't write/update them 
with the CL commands, but that might be coming.  Could QM - SQL to 
update/write records from CL.  New INT data types to let you get to some 
API stuff you could not do.  Talk about future releases doing 
pointers.  PTFs are/will be available to allow code that was compiled on 
V5R3 with V5R2 in mind, to run on V5R2.  That way if you have multiple 
machines/LPARs you can move one to V5R3 and use the new CL stuff.  The new 
stuff won't compile on V5R2, PTFs only fix the run time.

Also some changes to the way IBM will handle time on the iSeries in 
V5R3.  Thanks Al Barsa for a great presentation on the time changes. UTC 
will be the storage of date/time on the system, to be interpreted when 
displayed or used.  Sysvals to set time zone.

Full sessions with handouts running out early.

No CUDS on Tuesday???  What's up with that?  No dinner either.

Opening reception sponsored by IBM and AVNET was a fun event.  There was 
even dancing - but it was not Al Barsa on the tables.  He did his dancing 
in his time session.  Ask the experts was early (5:15 to 7:30) and ended 
after that.  What are we supposed to do with out CUDS that goes to 
midnight?  I have too much blood in my alcohol stream!

Seems to be fairly quiet otherwise,

HTH Don!

-----------------------------------------------------------

Jim Essinger
Senior Programmer/Analyst
UnLtd / SLFI / IMA
PO Box 730
Fruitland, ID 83619

208-452-4058 Extension 133
esinger@xxxxxxxx

------------------------------------------------------------

At 09:27 PM 5/4/2004, you wrote:

> Its  quiet here -  announcement buzz at town hall Sunday, followed 
> by  broadcast from a room at  common(not open to attendees)other 
> then  by  perhaps  ciber cafe or  own Laptop  connected ti Internet 
> via  wireless.. ( Audio?) No known  attendee  complaints.
>
>  A lot  of Linux  sessions one first  day offered were  pretty  full.
>
>
> --
> Glenn Ericson
> 718 898 9805
> gericson@xxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
> >
> > It's been really quiet here regarding COMMON...  OK, folks down there, set
> > down your beer can's for a minute and tell us what's happening...
> >
> > Don in DC