Re: Microsoft goes after the iSeries -- MIDRANGE-L

Listed below was my synapsis of the "Midrange Alliance" after hearing 
about it in one of the newsletters a few weeks back. 

I posted this in the comp.sys.ibm.as400.misc newsgroup. 

Interesting enough I received a phone call out of the blue from somebody 
claiming to be a Computerworld reporter last week asking me about the 
significance of this for the iSeries marketplace. He was apparently 
looking for some sort of angle.

I told him that in my opinion, this is simply a marketing campaign to try 
and get more people to use .Net for web development.

I truly feel that this is just going to muddy the water for people looking 
to do iSeries web development. I overheard two women at the recent COMMON 
in Toronto trying to decide if they should go to the CGIDEV, .Net, Java or 
Websphere classes and in the end they decided to go to none of the 
classes. 

The "Midrange Alliance" certainly doesn't add clarity to the marketplace 
:-)

Post from newsgroup:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
 
I almost laughed out loud when I read about the "Midrange Alliance".
It makes you feel patriotic that the "Midrange Alliance" is protecting the 
world for us, doesn't it ? :-)
We went through the cross-platform development evaluation process this 
year and here's what we concluded:
ASNA was out of the question because they are pretty specific to the RPG 
developer environment and don't support cross-platform development with 
the
Visual RPG product.
We also looked at Lansa as an option for cross-platform development and 
ruled it out because it generates proprietary C code on the back end and
apparently has a large learning curve.
I recently talked to them about generating pure Java Servlets out the back 
side so we're not locked into their proprietary runtime licenses should 
the
company go away. We're still waiting for a response on this. My 
expectations are not high at this point.
Here's where we ended up for now:
We are developing our cross-platform code using Java, Servlets, JSP and 
JDBC as the common coding methods. While we use the Websphere Development 
Studio Client software, the Netbeans IDE from Sun and the Tomcat Web 
Server are FREE options for deploying Java web applications that run on 
the iSeries or on a Windows Server.
Here's where things get really funny:
The Microsoft site talks about needing an iSeries CPU upgrade to run Java 
apps on the iSeries. While this may sometimes be true to run the code
natively, the Tomcat and Websphere server software can be run on a Windows 
Server and the web applications can directly utilize the AS/400 database.
In both situations the data still lives on the iSeries.
Pretty powerful and cool because the Java code stays the same in both 
scenarios.
This sort of negates the "Midrange Alliance" claims that an iSeries 
upgrade is needed to run Java/Websphere developed applications.
Run the app server on Windows and leave the data on the iSeries.
Make IBM and Microsoft work together :-)
Regards,
Richard Schoen
RJS Software Systems Inc.
"Providing Your....iNFORMATION NOW!"
Email: rich...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Web Site: http://www.rjssoftware.com
Tel: (952) 898-3038
Fax: (952) 898-1781
Toll Free: (888) RJSSOFT

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
 
message: 3
date: Sat, 8 Jan 2005 00:16:06 -0600
from: "Joe Pluta" <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
subject: Microsoft goes after the iSeries

Up until now, I had been a fan of ASNA and their products.  That all
changed when I read the following:

http://www.theserverside.net/news/thread.tss?thread_id=30588