|
iSeries Overview
Porting
Porting to the System i family (including iSeries Servers) has changed dramatically over the years. The object-based system architecture is different from most other platforms. System i has been radically expanded to include new technologies to address previous porting challenges. As the system developed and integrated these new technologies into the existing structures, the object base of the system has been used to great advantage. The i5/OS developers have introduced totally new object types that embody new concepts and deliver new standards without impacting existing system objects and behaviors. This leads to:
- Long range stability of System i family and features
- Upward compatibility of System i functions and features
- Faithful implementations of standards, meeting solution expectations from other platforms
- Integration opportunities between existing System i applications and data, and newly deployed solutions
Seeing that porting was a potentially high and on-going cost for applications coming from other platforms, the System i development laboratory provided technologies that would dramatically reduce the porting cost and hasten the time to market for a new solution. The following are three examples of technologies that radically reduce System i deployment costs:
- The Integrated xSeries Servers (PCs running Windows or Linux plugged into System i under the covers, using disk space managed by i5/OS)
- i5/OS PASE (AIX runtime that uses the PowerPC chip directly without needing any emulation)
- AIX or Linux running in a System i logical partition
The flexibility in the system architecture allows System i to implement such technologies without breaking existing applications. Better yet, the system has provided opportunities to leverage existing code while extending it with the new technologies to provide yet better solutions for System i customers!
With the variety of technologies that may be leveraged, PartnerWorld recognizes that solution providers can use some assistance. Often, which technologies to use is influenced by their source platform.
General porting information
· Overview of System i architecture
· Porting services
· Getting started
For Porting questions, contact: rchgo400@us.ibm.com
Infrastructure
After considering deployment of the application code on a System i, there are other aspects to getting the solution over successfully and keeping it running successfully. One longer term investment, in systems and skills, is considered in the infrastructure topic. Infrastructure surrounds the solution, rather than being part of what the end-user sees. None the less, infrastructure has real affects on how and when a new solution can be delivered.
System Resources
You need hardware, operating system, and related software to develop and test on, for your support team. A System i can be acquired from IBM, System i distributors, and other market sources. You will want to be sure that the server you acquire has the capabilities and support you need. For example, Linux running in a partition on a small System i would require a fairly contemporary system. Some technologies are only supported on certain System i hardware. Where that is the case, these considerations are noted.
As you are ramping up your porting and development, the
System i infrastructure page gives you options accessing a System i.
Skills
Part of your infrastructure in supporting any platform involves maintaining skills for that platform. Your developers, quality assurance, administrators, and system support people will need System i skills.
Many of the skills you already have in your development shop for building and testing can be exploited on System i. For example, if you know UNIX development, you will find several shells and build environments that are familiar to your developers. On the other hand, you may want to extend your skill set with new tools and a new development environment, depending on how you do your System i deployment, and depending on what other System i facilities and applications with which you want tight integration.
When one of your System i customers has a question, he or she is likely to talk about work on the system in terms of 'jobs', for example. You will want your support person to be able to understand and speak the operations language familiar to the customer. You will also want to effectively partner with IBM support if you should need to do detailed troubleshooting for your System i customer.
There is a wide variety of education on System i for customers and Business Partners from IBM, IBM Academic Initiative for System i, other third parties, and on the web. It can be delivered via traditional classrooms, satellite, self-paced study, and/or a combination of these. There is material for system administrators, programmers, and end users.
Processes
Once you have access to a System i, you will want to address the specific technical processes next. Considerations include your developers' expertise in build and testing (unit test, system test, quality assurance testing, etc.) and which System i technologies you plan to use to deploy your solution.
System i customers expect high quality solutions; they rely on them to run their businesses. Reliable, repeatable processes help create this kind of solution as the System i team observed in being an early Malcolm Baldridge Award winner. A robust quality assurance cycle is an important part of the sofware development process.
Some System i technologies allow you to build your System i solution on other platforms, raising the efficiency of your build processes. Your System i testing for these technologies may be just a "snap in" to your existing test infrastructure. Other System i technologies facilitate customer-specific tuning. Your System i solutions may involve setting up System i-specific processes, especially if your solution integrates existing System i data or other solutions. As you select your deployment environment, you will want to consider your development processes and synergies.
If you would like assistance understanding which technologies would be most effective
for you to use, Contact us.
Tailoring
After you complete development or porting of your application, you will want to consider a few other things. Customers usually like familiarity -- doing things in the application that look and feel like what the customer is expecting. Sometimes, for a high-profile solution, this means keeping the application interfaces exactly the same across all of the platforms it runs on. For other solutions, it can mean tailoring part of the look and feel -- like the installation -- to what the customer does for other solutions running on the same system. This tuning conversation is what we call "Tailoring your Solution" to the target platform.
Many topics are included in the tailoring discussion Not every solution will take action on every topic. In fact, many will only need to work on one or two topics. None the less, you should consider all the topics to ensure that you have not overlooked anything.
For some solutions, the tailoring can be staged. A low level of tailoring delivered in a first release may be sold into larger customer shops with more skilled personnel. Then as the solution is marketed to smaller shops with less staffing, more tailoring facilitates a turn-key solution.
A high level description of each of the tailoring topics can be found on the Tailoring page along with links and details on "how to" address them.
|
