Re: AS/400 and DB2 vs. Unix and Oracle

Last week I posted the article "AS/400 vs Unix. It has been very interesting to see the different posts. As indicate in my original post we have been a Unix/Novell shop for the last 5 years, running Oracle 6 and Oracle 7. After reading the posts, I'm not convinced that the AS/400 is any better than Unix. The majority of the posts have concentrated on the hardware side and reliability. From what I can see there is not much of a difference.

Having read the arguments, I more curious about the application side. What makes the AS/400 and DB2 more attractive than Unix and Oracle.

We are running on Oracle 7.1.6, soon to be 7.2. We have been running in a client server shop with Windows 3.1, using Uniface, Power Builder and Objectview.

We are looking for a Inventory Control/Merchandising system, that can support 150 locations running Novell, where the data is batched through a nightly DOS process back to the Head Office. Currently JDA's MMS running on the AS/400 is the favorite.

Perhaps someone can answer the following questions.

1. Are there more Business applications on the AS/400 than there is on Unix?
2. Are the costs for these types of applications typically more or less on these types of systems?
3. Any recommendations on either AS/400 applications or Unix applications. For the Unix applications, it would be preferable that they run with Oracle.
4. What kinds of Retail locations are running Unix and Oracle. I've heard or read that Starbucks, Walmart and Home Depot are using AS/400s.

I look forward to the all the excellent responses.

Below is some of my thoughts on why Unix is better. Below that is the original post, which I've included for the benefit of the readers of the Oracle newsgroup, which I've cross posted to.

Thanks in advance.

regards,

->Gerry Schenk
->gschenk_at_wimsey.com

In support of Unix, this is what I can see.

1. It is very progressive. The OS has been around for 20 years and foundations of the Internet are based on Unix. It has a lot of support and is a very open system.
2. I can add practically anything to our Sparcs. In our shop, I have used a variety of drives. Drive selection is based on price, availability, speed and cache. I've added modems (Practical Peripherals, USR), printers (HP 3D, 4SIMX, dot matrix), terminals(Wyse 60s), drives (Seagate, Micropolis, Fast Wide - 20MBs), tape drives (DLT, 8MM, 4MM, QIC).
3. Software. Ton of software from the Internet. eg. Cern's httpd(has proxy capabilities with caching), Tpage(pager software that allows us to page if a process or machine is down), various editors, ftp utilities(ncftp), gnu tools (grep, gcc, rcs), news software(inn and cnews), mail software (pop2, pop3, pine, elm, sendmail, smail), time sync software(ntp), perl(scripting language), faxing software(hylafax), comm software(uucp, ecu, kermit), compression software(gzip, pkzip, and pkzip compatible unzip and zip). Plus many more.
4. Reliability. Our Sparc IPX with 64M RAM, 7G of disk, 2 SCSI controllers and has been in operation since 1991. In that time we've only had one serious problem and that was caused by the power supply on the external case that we put two drives into. Other than that it has been working reliably. It is running SunOS 4.1.3 and I am inclined not to upgrade it to SunOS 4.1.4 because it works. It has been a little work horse.

  We also have a Sparc 1000 with 320M RAM, 60G of disk, 2 system boards, 4 CPUs and 6 SCSI controllers. The problems we've had included two power supplies which gave out. One time the power supply went out at 9:00am on a Sunday and Sun had it repaired by 2:00pm the same day. Other problems have been mainly with hard drives that we have added. One of the problems involved a bad batch of drives from the manufacturer and the other involves heat.

Our biggest problem has been that we didn't anticipate the amount of data that were going to store. As a result, we have 18 seperate drives, where we should have RAID.

The majority of the arguments that I have heard for the AS/400 is that it is a Business box, it is more reliable and that you don't need the same amount of support staff that is required for Unix.

As for the business part of the box, the AS/400 is certainly being promoted that way. As for reliability, I feel it is just what you put into the box. As for support, it depends on how you want to pay for it. You either have it internally or you pay for it through service contracts. We don't have a large staff. To service the boxes, we basically have 1 sysadmin and 1 dba, and neither of us is 100% system admin.

• Start of original post *****************

  We have been using Unix since 1991, primarily SunOS 4.1.x and Solaris 2.x. Obviously our experience base is with Unix and Oracle, not with RPG, DB2 and AS/400s.

The intent of this post is not to start a flame war, but rather get some opinions on the strengths and weeknesses of the AS/400 vs. UNIX.

I work for a company that has a 150 retail locations. Our primary platform at the store is Novell, with the Head Office system on Sun Sparcs, which includes a Sparc 1000 running Oracle 7.

Most of the applications and reports have been developed in house, written primarily in C and Uniface. This includes the Purchase Order System and inventory control.

Recently a new VP of Finance was hired on, who is in charge of the IS group. This new individual is very much against development and much prefers "canned" packages. As such all development has pretty much stopped. He is also familiar with IBM's AS/400 and wants to replace the existing system with a AS/400 package. His complaint about the current system is that it lacks proper inventory control. This is something that we were working towards, but the project was cancelled.

We've had discussions about this and he is convinced that the AS/400 is more popular, that packages on the AS/400 are less expensive and more readily available. He claims that he cannot find a reasonably priced Inventory Control UNIX based package.

I have very little exposure with an AS/400. What are the pros and cons of the AS/400 vs. UNIX. I'd appreciate any feedback.

Thanks in advance.

->Gerry Schenk
->gschenk_at_wimsey.com
Received on Sun Jan 14 1996 - 00:00:00 CET