Re: native PHP in V5R4???

["Dave Odom" <Dave.Odom@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mike,

You are one of the very few that have responded to this that GET IT and
has done something to improve the image of the platform!!   And you did
it with the Presentation Layer which is the "wiz bang/blinking lights"
that most users and mangers see.  Kudos to you!!    However, the back
end technology IS looked at by lots of CIOs and the like and what they
see and hear is the iSeries is not even considered by the rest of the IT
world to be a real RDBMS and it still uses the obscure (to them) RPG
language.   So, perception is problem Presentation and Data Base Layers.
  I grant you the Presentation layer is a great place to start.      

Now if I can just get others to "see the light", follow suit and turn
around the perception.   But until that happens the platform's
competitive status is in jeopardy.

Take care,

Dave 

>>> meovino@xxxxxxxxx 2/24/2006 12:21:57 >>>
On 2/23/06, Joe Pluta <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> The truth is that most anything you can do in SQL outside of a few
> vendor-specific extensions you can do on the iSeries.  And then, when
you
> need extra performance, you can go to native I/O.  In fact, RPG is
the only
> language I know of that allows you to access your database both ways,
which
> in my mind makes it leading edge!

If we're worried about perception, why are we talking about back-end
technologies?  The folks who are managing by in-flight magazine and
making IT decisions are doing so because they believe that 5250 is
dated technology (and I'm not going to debate the validity of this
belief as I believe there are situations for both 5250 and GUI [and I
am my company's webmaster]).

We are rewriting and enhancing a 5250 application (very little data
entry, mostly inquiry, a great candidate for a GUI) using JSP/Java
(running on WebSphere on iSeries) dealing with the iSeries back end. 
We have a mix of record level access and SQL, RPG program calls, and
some MQT's mixed in for good measure.  Our users are going NUTS over
this.  They are all telling us that they "did not know that the AS/400
could do this."  It's been able to do this for years; it's the IT
staff that hasn't been able to do this (not enough web guys to put on
an internal project until now).  The users ASSUME the platform is old
and incapable because we are not producing the kinds of apps they
want.

We have all the tools we need to provide world-class GUI applications.
 If we can provide applications that meet or exceed user expectations
(both presentation and performance), we don't need to worry about some
knucklehead saying that we need to migrate to UNIX/Oracle or
Windows/SQL Server or whatever.

Mike E.