as400

If your web services on the Integrated Web Services server of OS/400 are running a little bit slow you might want to install the latest PTFs.

The attendance of the recent COMMON conference in Reno, Nevada (US) was another sign of the continuing decline of the IBM AS/400 platform.

Once in a while you stumble upon weird limitations of applications or APIs. The latest one I have seen is a limitation of the Integrated Web Services Server for i (aka AS/400).

When you spend your days working with free software you lose track of the crazy prices of some commercial software products. For example: SQL on the IBM AS/400 (or whatever the platform is called nowadays).

I was a little surprised that Mycroft did not have a Firefox search plugin for AS/400 PTFs.

Deploying a web service on the Integrated Web Services for i5/OS server is cumbersome. You have to step through a wizard in the IBM Web Administration for i5/OS browser interface. This is extremely slow and error-prone. Fortunately there is a way to automate the deployment of your web services.

IBM's AS/400 is the only survivor of the era of the midrange computing. Unfortunately IBM has always been struggling with its image in the market place: rock-solid but incredibly dull. Somehow they seem to think that changing the name of the machine every couple of years is the best way to make the platform look sexy.

Commercial software packages that are based on open source components often have a hard time following the release cycles of their underlying components. Basically this means you end up using the 'previous version' without the latest fixes and enhancements.