By looking at the title of this article, you must be thinking why we have named it IBM AS400 as AS400 doesn’t exist anymore. Also, some of you may think that “/” between AS and 400 is missing.
Well, you may be right on your part. But what you don’t know is AS400 and AS/400 are not the same. And this simple analogy of more than three decades of IBM adventures will explain the reason for the same.
Moreover, this article is written especially for CIOs, CTOs, developers, and vendors who think of AS400, and immediately an image of “Green Screen” comes into their mind.
But this single thought has wasted millions of dollars on unsuccessful immigrations, and many technical people have lost their jobs. It’s not hard to see why they came up with this idea.
Although there are various articles available on the internet to describe the platform, none of them has painted an easy-to-remember and straightforward picture for the reader.
But, not to worry, as we have painted that picture for you. Just go through the articles and get a view of easy-to-remember pointers.
Let’s get started.
The first AS/400 was released in 1988. RPG III was the main programming language used in it. RPG III can also be called RPG/400 due to some hardware changes. The system also came with a database and presentation files. The first is the DB2/400, and the last is the green screen.?The operating system (OS/400) and the internal hardware can’t be left behind as the platform cannot do anything without them.
In 1990, the RPG400 appeared and did not cause much excitement among RPG programmers.
The next version of AS/400 was introduced in 1994 – AS/400 Advanced Series. With this came the significant enhancement to RPG. It had different names – RPG IV, ILE RPG, RPG / ILE, and RPGLE. When it was further improved in 2001, more labels were added – RPG IV and RPG5. Most programmers have used the label RPGLE and still do.
Furthermore, RPGLE has two flavors, the OPM version, and the ILE version. (Most companies use OPM flavor.)
In 2000, the platform was renamed as eServer iSeries.
This was the biggest mistake IBM has made in the system. The IT world generally uses a two-part naming tradition. The first part combines the iterations, and the second part names the iteration.
For example – Windows 3.1, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 7, and Windows 10. or JDE World A7.2, JDE World A7.3, and JDE World 8.1.
Furthermore, The AS/400 operating system also used this naming tradition – OS/400 V4R5, OS/400 V5R1, and OS/400 V5R2. IBM, of course, had their reasons for breaking the tradition, but the unexpected thing was that people called the platform iSeries or AS400.
Read More: https://www.integrativesystems.com/journey-of-the-brawny-ibm-as400/