midrange.com – In My Humble Opinion

Norm Dennis made a very interesting comment in response to a post by a person new to the system …

Well firstly, it’s not an AS/400 it’s an E Server I Series, er , i Series,
um, System i, oh stuff it, Trevor can you explain?

While Norm did make the comment in jest … he does make a very good point … what the heck DO we call the system?

Yes, I know, it’s an often argued topic in the community … and it’s been beaten to death.  But the fact that it keeps coming up indicates that it remains a sore point.

Personally, I alternate between AS/400 and iSeries.  Occasionally I’ll refer to it as “IBM i”.  Most everyone else in my office calls it the “400″.

Let’s look around, shall we?

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This post is about Eclipselink and my experience using it with the System i. It also describes some problems I ran into so you can avoid them if you try Eclipselink.

Eclipselink is Eclipse Persistence Services Project, version 1.0 was released July 9, 2008. See http://www.eclipse.org/eclipselink/ I won’t go into the history and general explanations. For some background on Eclipelink see http://eclipse.dzone.com/articles/introducing-eclipselink. I will say that Eclipselink based on 12 years of commercial usage as Oracles’s Toplink product. Eclipselink is mature and solid.

The focus of this post is

• Eclipselink is easy to use and works well with DB2 on System I and
• solutions to some problems that I ran into.

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This morning, on my way back from COMMON, I received email from a friend informing me that Al Barsa had passed away last night.

This news hit me very hard … Al has been a pillar of the AS/400 (yes, I use that name deliberately) community for many years and a friend. His passion and enthusiasm for the platform could be matched by very few.

He’s been an active participant in the midrange.com lists almost from the their inception … always willing to share his knowledge, never hesitating to help someone out, pointing them to the right manual, or clearing up some technical detail.

His COMMON sessions were always well received and very informative (if a bit rushed … but, heck, how else are you going to get through all the system values in a 2 hour session ).

My flight leaving Nashville this morning was delayed due to thunderstorms in the area … which, in retrospect, make sense … there’s bound to be some turbulence when a spirit with the the passion and enthusiasm such as Al’s has passed.

From the accounts I’ve heard, he passed away in his hotel room while working on his laptop … no doubt revising his sessions for the next COMMON conference.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to Al’s family.

midrange.com will be making a contribution to the COMMON Educational Foundation in Al’s memory.