Re: Truly later thinking...Honey, grab me another beer! -- WEB400

All,

I've been too quiet for too long. Time to throw my hat in the ring.
Forgive me if I miss a precise detail, but this is how I know the
story...

First to Jon, sorry pal, if you think I am in a position to leak
anything going on behind the scenes I'm afraid I can't. Got my peepee
whacked real hard on that one since I succumbed to the dark side :-)
But will be glad to share what I can!

Second, a history lesson for Net.Data. It was about 1996 or so when the
DB2 folks at IBM decided to create Net.Data and Net.Commerce as the
applications and solution to lead them into the web space. Even better
was that Net.Data was given away as a part of DB2. Just a couple of
years later, software group comes along with the new solution to cure
everything that ails you:"WEBSPHERE!" I was a BIG believer in Net.Data.
It was a HUGE time saver and an awesome solution when it was the ONLY
scripting language available for the i5, AS/400, iseries, etc. But
because Websphere was a chargeable product, it had a revenue stream. A
revenue stream that funded development. And so began the long journey
to optimize WAS, etc. to run on a computer with less than 4 cores. Poor
Net.Data had no revenue stream. No marketing budget short of a line
item on an occasional DB2 marketing slick. So development was cut late
in the 20th century as all roads led to WebSphere. And the worst timing
I have ever seen! This, I believe, is one of IBM's greatest mistakes:
to let Net.data wallow in obscurity while WebSphere was pushed and
grown. Had IBM embraced it, I believe it could have been so much
more...but I digress. (Note: The US Postal Service Tracking System and
Borders.com were Net.Data sites)

So in late 2004 I wrote an article calling on IBM to sh-t or get off the
pot on web scripting languages. I demanded that they either embrace
Net.Data and enhance it, or make PHP a supported solution. At that time
Rob Ward had an unsupported version of PHP that was drawing a lot of
attention. In 2005, as the result of my blathering on and involvement
in the COMMON Americas Advisory Council I had the pleasure of walking
Doron Gerstel (then Zend CEO) and Mike Pinette (Zend VP Bus. Dev.)
around COMMON in Orlando so they could see for themselves the wonderful
market opportunity that existed within the i5 space. By the third day
of the conference they had developed the business plan and were
believers. IBM and Zend signed the three year deal in early 2006 to
bring PHP to the i5. When PHP was delivered, the requirement was
considered closed by both IBM and COMMON. I would have liked IBM to do
it themselves, but legal and licensing put a stop to that some years
ago. A discussion for a different thread.

So, where to go today? There are a lot of churches in this religious
war. If you are learning something new, I can't fathom why someone
would try to learn Net.Data when for the same price you can learn PHP.
PHP is truly cross platform, supports and advocates both a procedural
and OO model, has textbooks up the Wazoo, has BOATLOADS of code on the
web that is free for the taking and has more than one guy supporting it
in the back offices of Zend and the open source community. I loved
Net.Data and I COMPLETELY respect Peter's position. But to quote the
great communicator: IBM has "voted with their feet!" By the way, when
IBM tore down the Net.Data forum Peter single handedly salvaged it for
all platforms! THANK YOU PETER! But, ask Peter what language he used
to build the new forum :-) Also, it is my opinion that PHP is a FAR
more forgiving language to code than Net.Data. (FWIW)

Actually, I like where Peter is going with this. How about we all go
for the shootout, eh? Get those specs out there and we all toss our own
version of an application in the language of our choice? Put our
examples up on hotscripts.com so all can see. If Peter does Net.Data,
I'll do PHP. Maybe Joe can do Java or EGL or whatever tool IBM hands
him to play with. Richard can use .Net and then wheel his rack full of
servers in to run it. Can we get Brad to throw it together in RPG/CGI?

Well gang...you got game?

Regards,

Mike