The Naming of the System
Some people insist that the current IBM i for Business OS running on current IBM Power Systems hardware has nothing to do with the initial AS/400 anymore, and as such may not be called AS/400. This is to prevent confusion, and to emphasize that the modern system has nothing to do with it's ancestor, which is commonly seen as dusty, old-fashioned, hopelessly outdated and legacy stuff[1] which must be replaced by current state of the art technology. By insisting on a new name, these people assume that those other people will eventually learn that the above systems are distinct.
While this statement is true as seen from the hardware evolution's point of view, it's not so true when considering the operating system presentation to the user. When an user does some tasks with OS provided tools via green screen, there are only slight differences. Usually the user only recognizes a certain difference in how fast the system processes requests and that's all about it.[2]
So what's the difference, then?
All efforts to convince people that IBM i is not AS/400 will be negated when they see a classic so called green screen (Terminal Emulator Software, or even a Hardware Terminal) with character based user interface, obviously connected to the latest and greatest IBM i on Power Systems. In fact, the whole discussion revolves around green screen versus Point-'n-klick UIs.
Character based UIs are considered bad by certain people while applications presenting content in a web browser's window are considered superior by the same ones. IBM i as well as the AS/400 derive most of their look-and-feel from these green screens. Most new users instinctively hate them. Most users working with the system for years won't welcome changes, because they maximized speed and possibly could do most daily tasks with a blindfold. When presented with a new, browser-based UI, protest will almost certainly arise.
Background
The AS/400 was designed as a business helper machine, to put it simple. Tasks in classical business environments revolve around structured data which has to be entered, processed, stored, reviewed and maybe printed. This hasn't changed substantially over the course of decades and so hasn't OS/400, i5/OS, IBM i, you name it.
To come around full circle: Most people[3] still call the latest and greatest IBM i on Power Systems AS/400. They do it because the application they use every day looks the same as in 1989 when it was young and fresh. They probably learned, that this application runs on the AS/400.[4] They usually refer to the UI of the main application as AS/400 and not the hardware, not the OS.[5] How can they know that with every decade there has been a replacement of the hardware with accompanying upgrades of the OS,
- to keep pace with increasing number of concurrent users as the company grows,
- to keep pace with increased storage needs as databases are fed with more and more data,
- to keep pace with more tasks the machine is expected to process, because of the last two reasons,
- to comply with EOL policies by IBM, so if anything goes wrong, IBM can be blamed.
For this very same reason, I refuse to call the aforementioned system anything else but AS/400. Everybody knows what's meant by that term and that is the most important point.
If you disagree, you may leave this Wiki alone anytime and build your own.
See also
- From itjungle.com:
- From helpsystems.com:
- Did You Inherit an AS/400? by Bill Onion/Briteskies Blog
Footnotes
- ↑ Not only by IBM sales people but also by certain IBM i enthusiasts.
- ↑ From a system administrator's point of view, there are indeed substantial differences: Added functions result in more menu items to choose from, etc.
- ↑ To be precise: Most users.
- ↑ Probably when there's downtime needed and the IT department informs the users.
- ↑ Which is tugged away in a dedicated room for stuff like that.