Re: ibm earnings report

[Jon Paris <Jon.Paris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 17-Jul-08, at 8:49 PM, Nathan Andelin wrote:

> THE ENTIRE IMPLEMENTATION of SQL on the AS400 smacks of incompetence
> and I believe it was not ROCHESTER that was responsible, but rather  
> the
> influence of the 'big-iron' in TORONTO.
> (rant rant rant) apologies

First of all I don't agree with Nathan's "incompetence" remark - I  
have had many issues - particularly with the pre-compiler but  
"incompetent"?  Anyway there are two things fundamentally wrong with  
this particular argument ...

First, you can't hang this one on Toronto.  DB/2 for the i is a home  
grown Rochester product and that in part was why it lagged behind the  
other DB/2 implementations for so many years.  They could not take  
advantage of the DB/2 Universal code base for enhancements to SQL.  I  
believe that these days they may be able to pick up some of the DB/2  
code from Toronto but that is a relatively recent thing.

Second, the "big-iron" influence was mostly felt in Santa Teresa (or  
Silicone Valley lab as I think they call it now).  Toronto was never a  
big mainframe shop - although their major sources of revenue were from  
mainframe (IMS/DB?) and AS/400.  They parleyed that revenue into  
developing DB/2 for AIX and Windoze - and those (particularly SQL  
Server) were much bigger influences than the big iron.  They were  
probably doing the right thing architecturally speaking - at least MS  
appear to have thought so or they wouldn't have hired away the chief  
architect (Jamie Hamilton - husband of Jennifer for those who recall  
her RPG/400 days).

Not that Toronto Lab (under the Software Group and lately Rational)  
haven't done some monumentally dumb things related to "i" - but let's  
at least criticize them for what they _have_ done!

Jon Paris

www.Partner400.com
www.SystemiDeveloper.com