iSeries Today: Part 1 of 2

By Jack Woehr

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IBM iSeries Chief Scientist Dr. Frank G. Soltis enjoys a balmy October afternoon on 14th Street

It's the third week in October, 2002 and the banquet halls and meeting rooms of the Denver Convention Center are teeming with programmers, managers, admins and other IT types, and, of course, vendors in display booths as COMMON, a self-constituted IBM user's group dating from the 1950's, gathers for another of its semiannual workfests. The constituency of COMMON is primarily composed of the customers of what are nowadays called "midrange systems," effectively the AS/400, oops, make that the iSeries Server. About a year ago IBM went on a renaming spree to make sure all their major computer offerings were some kind of "Server," with mainframes drawing "zSeries Server" from the hat, etc. The result is that everyone at COMMON repeats "AS/400-I-mean-the-iSeries" until with practice it dances trippingly off the tongue.

I have for years found the rich and layered software environment of OS/400 (the iSeries operating system) to be a congenial self-contained programming universe, but at the same time I've wondered whether I'm merely indulging a private vice. So I hopped downtown to take a look around and try to get some answers to cosmic questions: Like, is OS/400 still really there for the up-to-date geek metalhead?

The Shoe Must Go On

The turnout for this superbly organized conference is good and the attitude is upbeat, but table talk includes the economy, with layoffs and rumors of layoffs. One possible sign of economizing on the part of attendees is the news that COMMON missed its convention hotel room booking to the tune of a low six-figure contractual penalty due to inviduals and groups seeking out rooms cheaper than those formally associated with the venue.

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