RE: news400 goes negative on IBM? -- MIDRANGE-L

IBM's DRDA is supposed to be an "open" product, but other DB vendors only
make it half-open, maximizing their benefit. Oracle and Microsoft both have
DRDA drivers that will let THEM get and put data on DB2, from their
respective products (Oracle DB and SQL Server). Their drivers do NOT allow
updates to THEIR database from DB2.

So... is IBM expected to provide native RPG connectivity options for Oracle
and SQL Server? IBM has enough issues keeping DB2 features synchronized
between its various platforms. Imagine the mess with trying to connect with
the various flavors of third party databases. Perhaps IBM should create a
native ODBC bridge that allows DSN style setup...

As for the business decision, why would I need to access MySQL, Oracle, SQL
Server, Informix, Sybase, from the iSeries? Maybe that's where the data is.
The AS/400 people aren't always in the position to dictate the software
being used; other functional business units are, with input from IT.
Sometimes the package you need only runs on SQL Server; the cost and time to
write an inhouse-equivalent package is prohibitive. Sometimes, the vendor
drops support for DB2 (in the case of the crib management/work order system
Mainsaver), and you are forced to either run an unsupported version of the
software or migrate to SQL server. Sometimes your business unit says, "Hey,
I bought this package to manage project X, put it on a server for me."
Corporate standards dictate new systems run on platform Y, and "legacy"
systems are phased out.

My 2 cents,
Loyd



-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carel Teijgeler
Sent: Saturday, May 21, 2005 2:49 PM
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: news400 goes negative on IBM?

Michael,

Your last sentence may open a dead horse discusion, as people writing
RPG-CGI programmes might disagree.

The problem in this discussion is, that the AS/400 is an "open system",
which allows you to connect from other platforms to retrieve data from the
AS/400 (ODBC, OLE/DB, for instance). But from the AS/400 you cannot connect
to other platforms (non-AS/400) that easily, unless you have DB2 installed
and (I assume) the DRDA driver running as a task (then this should also
connect to something like SQL Server or Borland's InterBase).

Because that latter is not a real simple possibility, the AS/40 is not that
open, at all.

Just my 2 Euro cents.

Regards,
Carel Teijgeler

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 20-5-05 at 17:41 Michael Ryan wrote:

>Nah...if the iSeries is a backend database, then you don't need to have RPG
>access SQL Server. You may need to have C Flat access DB2 on iSeries...I
>understand that...but the reverse doesn't hold. Now, if you want to have
>applications that run on the iSeries access different databases, don't
write
>those applications in RPG. Write it in Java. RPG is a language designed for
>IBM midrange systems to access IBM midrange systems. It was never developed
>to be cross platform or cross database. It's Report Program Generator for
>crying out loud. Sure, I can do a lot with RPG, and I do...but it's not the
>language for cross platform applications - it's the language for a
>centralized iSeries.



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