RE: Platform Independence (was George is Farr from where we want tobe)

in essence implemented on a system that is already running a decent

workload, does not have enough memory, is utilizing an older processor, is
not written very well, etc.

Interestingly enough, these are all things that we "can get away with" when
coding RPG.  Yes an RPG program can still kill a system, but I think that
happens much less often than in the Java environment.  I didn't put the word
"scholarly" in there simply because I was lacking word choice.  You have to
know A LOT about the ins and outs of Java components to 'get it right' when
creating a large application with the potential for a lot of concurrent
users.  In RPG you are there much quicker.
 
Good to hear about your other failures to successes with Java. I don't hear
much of the successes believe it or not.  But like you commented in #1, a
lot of these things could/should simply be implemented in RPG as that is the
language most shops support.  Introducing a new language into the mix in any
shop has MANY ripple effects (think QA, Support, Training, Debugging, Split
knowledge on multiple platforms, etc)

Thanks for your comments Mike,
Aaron Bartell

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Crump, Mike
Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2007 8:33 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: RE: Platform Independence (was George is Farr from where we want
tobe)

Platform independence?  Not very.  We use JAVA more so to allow for using
the ubiquitous browser and for independence from MS.

Although, I would also have to respectfully disagree with some of Aaron's
points.  While I would not argue that plenty of people have horror stories
regarding native Java performance I think that you will find a lot of them
are of there own making - in essence implemented on a system that is already
running a decent workload, does not have enough memory, is utilizing an
older processor, is not written very well, etc.

1.)  We have a native JAVA program that processes our finite scheduling
system.  This is program that does a lot of IO and I argued up front that it
should have never been written in Java because it was a classic fit for RPG.
I lost but I will have to say that application runs blazingly fast and
processes many functions and millions of records.  I doubt that we would see
any improvement if it was converted to RPG.  In addition, by most testing it
is as fast as running it on an independent WINTEL platform.  I have compared
it run wise on our i5 to an IXS system (to eliminate remote database issues)
and there is no comparison.  Right now, I am not in the position to test on
a faster Bladecenter type of unit but perhaps in the future.  The database
is remote to the native application as well.

2.)  We originally implemented WAS (v3) on a 720 years ago.  80% of the
application runs perfectly fine but certain components were a dog.
Processor was not being taxed, we were not short of memory, we just did not
have the processor crank and L2 cache that the application needed.
Shortly thereafter we upgraded to an 825 and 100% of the application ran
fine.  A classic example of implementing Java in a not so perfect platform.
I would argue that as we have climbed the server ladder 7xx, 8xx, 5xx the
potential for this problem has decreased.

3.)  We run WAS and WPS on our 570's and generally speaking these guys
perform very well.  Our major complaint on WPS comes from portlets that we
rely on our parent company for and their responsiveness is not very good.  

4.)  The native JVM can be a resource hog.  That is why the J9 was invented.
Certain machines and customers should not be running the native JVM.  They
do not have the horse for it.  Is it a problem with the native JVM?
Perhaps.  I would just argue that it is as much environmental as it is
platform.

I cannot argue with the complexity.  However, I think that this is not a
JAVA problem only.  Every existing 'modern' application is much more complex
than the traditional RPG model.  Whether it is Java, .NET, Domino, etc. I
think that they are much more complicated either in architecture or in
resulting code length.

Michael Crump
 
Manager, Computing Services
Saint-Gobain Containers, Inc.
1509 S. Macedonia Ave.
Muncie, IN  47302
765.741.7696
765.741.7012 f 

Cluelessness
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-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Michael Ryan
Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2007 8:10 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Platform Independence (was George is Farr from where we want to
be)

How important is platform independence to the community? It has little
importance to me. I believe RPG is the best language on iSeries, and I don't
need to write the same code to run on multiple platforms. I *do* write code
on multiple platforms (VB and C on Wintel), but I don't expect or want to
run the *same* code on other platforms.

On 3/28/07, albartell <albartell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

While in that session I was very close to asking the group whether

they gave

a rip about platform independence.

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