Re: Native sFTP?

[Simon Coulter <shc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 25/04/2009, at 9:16 PM, Richard Schoen wrote:

> I would vote for spending the time getting more comfortable with
> QHELL/PASE over re-writing an application that already works fine as- 
> is.

The problem with this approach is that lazy vendors will provide  
applications that "run" on OS/400 but really don't. They will be Unix  
applications running in PASE **pretending** to be OS/400 applications.  
IBM has done a good job of integrating PASE with OS/400 so you can  
capture PASE output and process natively however PASE is like the  
Win3.1 environment provided with OS/2. Lazy vendors said they  
supported OS/2 when they really only provided a Win3.1 application  
that ran in a Win3,1 environment. This was a significant factor in  
killing OS/2.

You can already see this happening with IBM products (such as Tivoli  
and Websphere) and 3rd-Party products such as Zend. There are others.  
It's the thin end of the wedge and will contribute to the death of our  
much loved system. The only reason they get away with it is because to  
most people, especially users, the interface is the application. If  
that runs in a web browser or in a client of some sort then the back- 
end becomes unimportant to them. It is the technicians trying to  
create a stable environment while fighting with the vagaries of  
WinDOS, Unix, etc. that suffer and as a result so does the company  
paying for it.

If you allow PASE and QSHELL applications to supplant native  
applications, not only do you get a truly ugly command interface, but  
you start to remove much of the reason for choosing OS/400 in the  
first place. AIX applications running in PASE take almost no advantage  
of OS/400. Once all your so-called OS/400 applications are really PASE  
applications you have to ask why am I running these on AS/400-iSeries- 
System i-etc. Why not just move them to an AIX box or some other  
variant of Unix supported by the application vendor? Especially if you  
already own the necessary hardware and OS for some other "mission- 
critical" application.

Be very wary of relying on PASE applications. You are helping drive  
nails in your own coffin.

Regards,
Simon Coulter.
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