AS / 400 and the old rockers who never die: still active decades after birth, and there is a demand for professionals

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1591485157 598 1366 2000.jpg

AS / 400 and the old rockers who never die: still active decades after birth, and there is a demand for professionals

In the late 80s IBM released its AS / 400 systems with OS / 400 operating system. These business computers were posing a small revolution by integrating their own relational database and multi-user support, and soon various branches of the industry began to implement it extensively.

For some time now, these systems have been in the background, but there are various sectors such as banking or insurance in which the developments made on this platform continue to operate on a daily basis. Not only that: keep going having demand for AS / 400 professionals that they are scarce and that according to several experts in the sector have secured work on a platform that has been adopted to the new times.

AS / 400 “may be slow, but never falls”

He talked a lot about AS / 400 in his day Carles del Collado (@cdelcollado), who at the beginning of the 90s worked as head of a publication dedicated to these systems. In his circle, he told us, recently started receiving demand notices from professionals with AS / 400 knowledge, a technology that for many seemed forgotten.

Carles1

It is something that has happened in other areas: languages ​​such as Delphi, FORTRAN and especially COBOL have also been relegated to the background for some time, but as with AS / 400 systems, the problem is not that they are not in use, much less: the problem is that there are fewer and fewer professionals who can maintain these systems and applications.

Del Collado commented on how companies in the banking or insurance sector continue to use AS / 400 systems in their modern infrastructure: Today these systems are not called that, and IBM renamed them System I (the operating system is called IBM I, just plain) to adapt them to the new times.

The funny thing, Collado told us, is that according to his perception “people reject this type of environment, but the systems are and will continue to function“The demand for programmers exists because these systems are implemented in mission-critical environments, and as in other cases, migrating them to other platforms ends up being more complex than maintaining them and combining them with new technologies.

In fact, he explained, the IBM RPG language — not to be confused with role-playing games — that was used for business applications is still used in IBM System i, but in these machines coexist with many other modern programming languages like Java, Python, C, C ++ or Perl. Even so, the RPG language continued to evolve, and as he told us “in 94 RPG IV arrived, which changed and allowed us to avoid that somewhat more rigid format that the language had”.

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To these components, they are joined by the DB2 database management system and those already legendary non-programmable terminals that dominated systems development and management years ago.

Text mode was the absolute protagonist, and certainly seeing the system in action can frighten even those who are used to working in console mode, among other things because in AS / 400 – here you have an introduction to the system – many things are capitalized. It was a bit of a loud system.

That did not matter too much, because if there was something that was guaranteed with these systems they were especially stable. It was something that he remembered very well from Collado, who stressed that “It could be slow, but it never fell

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In fact, he was telling us about an occasion when there was an electrical problem: he got a good cramp and the machine restarted, but after an hour recovering “it started working as if nothing had happened there“Other machines would never have recovered from that,” he commented smiling.

“Programmers are retiring faster than machines”

Jorge Gros He is an old rocker in this segment, and in fact, his company, Software Greenhouse, continues to work with many companies that maintain AS / 400 systems in their technological infrastructure. In fact, it affected precisely how IBM has turned this machine into a server “where you can run everything, including multiple operating systems, Java or web servers

These servers, he tells us, are like any other, “but with POWER processors and a unique feature, that support legacy applications programmed in RPG, which comes from the years even before AS / 400, that is, System / 34, System / 36 and System / 38 that preceded it. ” A curiosity: AS / 400 may well have been called System / 40, in fact.

Jorge Gros

The problem that occurs in these implantations is that “applications work, but nobody knows how they are made. Those who introduced business logic to applications are no longer there. “The situation is analogous to that of other platforms, and in AS / 400, he noted,” Programmers are retiring faster than machines. Both in development and in systems technique. Since no one trains new people and young people don’t seem to care, people get along as best they can. ”

In fact, as far as Gros knows, there are no clear training resources in this segment. Companies that have a senior programmer “They sign up kids and teach them RPG and AS / 400 systems technique, and based on this new people enter the platform, but still it is not enough “.

In certain cases, the platforms supported by AS / 400 have been adapting to the new times. through so-called modernizations that are carried out in different degrees.

These include, for example, adding graphical user interfaces to abandon traditional “green screens”, but also modifying the code and deploy AS / 400 in hybrid environments to work as part of a web service which can be used through a browser, desktop or mobile. As Jorge Gros pointed out, “there are important companies that help other companies to modernize these applications.”

The presence of AS / 400, he adds, is still very important. “They are in all sectors. The installed base has decreased, but with the possibility of integrating new technologies in the machine, things have changed.” In fact, this expert spoke of how in other times “consultants criticized AS / 400 as a thing of the past and outdated, and evangelized with SAP about Oracle or Windows and tried to convince customers to migrate. ”

So, “the remaining systems are those where migration is very difficult. Legacy applications are deeply rooted, “Gros explained, adding that” with the machine that IBM has made, it is no longer necessary to migrate, you already have the whole new platform around your old applications. ”

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What is needed is maintenance “And that is a problem,” he commented. “That’s where all these tools that document AS / 400 systems come from and their databases allow you to trace to see what happens when you tap on the program to solve possible problems.”

At IBM they have it clear: AS / 400 is alive and well

That portrait of the AS / 400 situation would not be complete without the participation of IBM, the company that created these systems. At EuroXlivewe got in touch with Alberto García, Director of Systems for IBM Spain, who explained to us what that situation is.

Alberto Garcia

For starters, García wanted to make it clear that AS / 400 is still very much alive. In fact, he admitted, “that is something that we are often asked a lot and we may be the ones who we have not correctly transferred the message to the technical community

As this directive clarified, those systems have been transformed and “today what exists is the IBM I operating system that runs on IBM POWER machines. IBM i is compatible with OS / 400, it still has its great advantage, which is a base data (DB2) integrated within the operating system, but allows you to run many more loads, including many Open Source options

At IBM, they are also clear that these systems are still very widespread. The latest market report, created by Help Systems, reveals that above all it is present in the industrial and banking sectors, and the demand for professionals is evident.

In fact, García stressed, “no RPG programmers or AS / 400 system technicians are unemployed in order to attract more professionals, the platform’s programming language has been modernized, creating Free RPG, which is more like a “modern” programming language, and on the other hand, other more popular languages ​​such as Node.js have been ported. , Python or Ruby and you can even run .NET with Mono, with Java being available for many years. ”

Ibmi Application modernization is one of the aspects that is most worked on today in active AS / 400 systems. Source: Help Systems.

It is a platform that is also very far from being abandoned. “The latest version of V7R4 operating system came out in 2019” he pointed out to us,” and IBM has a public roadmap for the platform, which they are already working on for the next two versions (each version usually comes out every 3 years), with functionality updates every 6 months. ”

The future of AS / 400 and its evolution, IBM I, seems clear, but we asked Alberto García if the legacy systems of the past are transferable to other modern platforms or are it better to keep them as they are. To that question, he answered that these legacy developments they are not only present in AS / 400, “but in many other Java or .NET developments.”

For García “the platform is modern and advanced and the future is here, as we can see in the customer stories that IBM began publishing as a result of the platform’s 30th anniversary. ”

In these success cases, he indicated, “we can see clients running microservices, 3D configurators with Unity, blockchain platforms or the largest production node-network installation in the world, an example no longer for the IBM i conferences but in their own node conferences “. Alberto García went a little further and launched a singular final comment: “I bet more than once you have connected to an IBM i (or formerly called “AS / 400”) on the web without your noticing

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Taking a look at the AS / 400 of a lifetime

That last statement by those responsible for IBM is more than feasible, of course. In fact for this article, we try tinkering with an AS / 400 system, something that is possible thanks to some services that allow access to one of these systems with a kind of temporary account.

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There are those who go further: past technology enthusiasts and collectors also seem to want to rescue the platform, and these types of servers can even be found for sale. One of those users managed to buy a 1997 model, an AS / 400 150 and managed to get it up and running and even “surfing” the internet with it in text mode.

At HackADay precisely they had years ago how to take a look at this platform. On the PUB400 website, it is possible to request an account – it takes a day or two to give it to you – and when you get it you will have access to that machine through a terminal compatible with the IBM 5250. There are some applications available for this, such as tn5250, which allows us to access these systems and enter the username and password, something that in itself is already a challenge.

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It is because even entering the text in the appropriate field is somewhat difficult, and in fact activating the account became a trial and error task because the first thing that one should do after that initial access is to change the password, something that if you try to do you will see that it is a little crazy at least from this application.

After that step, however, we will be able to access that environment that AS / 400 systems presented. The text-mode interface is quite cryptic and it is not at all like traditional operating systems.

There is no prompt or command prompt from which to execute commands, but it is all based on choosing consecutive listing options to at some point be able to add modifiers or even write some code in RPG.

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The experience, of course, is quite a journey into the past where you probably many of you will feel as lost as me. To avoid it, yes, there are resources like this or video tutorials on YouTube that help you take those first steps and achieve more than just go from option to option.

Be that as it may, it seems clear that AS / 400 is still present in many sectors, and it may not be a bad idea to give this platform a chance if any of our readers you are considering options for finding a job in the future.

It may not be the most modern platform in the world or the most attractive at first glance, but what is likely is that the shortage of professionals in this sector is a much more powerful argument for those who choose it.