I like going to COMMON and always feel like I learn some good things the times I've gone, but won't be going this year (too far and too expensive).  I think I've been about 4-5 times, most recently in Anaheim.

I won't be going this spring. I like going, and if I don't go in the spring, I try to hit the shorter fall. This year, the fall will be in Indianapolis, which is only a bit over an hour away, so I will drive down each day so no airplane fare and no motel.

I would have liked to have gone this spring but it didn't work out.

My employer is phasing out the AS400 (Power System) over the next year or two so I'm not even asking if I can go. Sigh. My last COMMON was Anaheim 2007. 

Would go if it was later in the year, say early or late summer so I can combine it with a family holiday. Way thing are now it is too expensive for me to join. Would like it though... Have fun out there!

Phase out eh? Sounds all too familiar in my ears. Need to learn me another trick...again.

If I had any common sense I would not make these comments. They are NOT necessarily true in each and every instance but they are true in many instances. 

I read here that someone is having their power system phased out, replaced probably by some windows server situation. Some times (not always), that is our own fault.

Let me give you a few examples of what I mean... I am familiar with a company that is still on V4R5. Running on some pretty old hardware. They never continued to request upgrades, etc. and so yes they are still all green screen and many things that they might do (web services, etc.) they can't because of the age of the system. Another company is on V5R3 and they could actually upgrade but haven't, again...

You see, part of our jobs is to make the machine shine so to speak (if we want to keep it). For example, in my case, the ibm i (and yes it is running V7R1), is serving up internal (and external) websites for the users, it is doing all sorts of web services from credit card (and paypal) authorizations and approvals, to loading and retrieving data from the ecommerce sites, it is shuffling files between the web server and the digital presses, it is talking with the digital press to know what jobs are being printed, it is tied with the scale system (a windows based system), so that when the package crosses the scale the ibm i knows about it, and I could go on and on and on. 

It presents a graphical dashboard for the executive staff and several other graphical (i.e. browser) tools for the staff, and I could go on and on and on.  

And still a good portion of the code is running in S/36EE because we migrated 5 years ago from some guest/36 sessions, and now nearly all files are sql defined db's, we use webquery (besides query/400), and all sorts of tools at their disposal. The i plays well with others.

Now I am sure there are companies that have did the maximum with their power systems and someone else decided they were moving off the platform, but I think too often, that may not be the case.

I didn't say that to upset anyone, but I was in a room with a bunch of ibm i users, and asked them how many was running php on their boxes to be able to present things in a browser (and yes I know there are other ways to do that), and not a single hand went up. Whats wrong here? I mean I have php running, and reading/writing to db2 tables, etc. works just great. And as I shared before, our web programmer who had never seen an ibm i, who knew nothing about db2, wrote a comprehensive front end order system that leverages data we have on our ecommerce servers but these pages run locally and he manipulates all the db2 tables, etc. and it was no big deal.

That is my two cents, please hold your tomatoes (i.e. don't throw tomatoes at me).

chris 

How about May 4-May 7th, not April 4-7.  If you go in April you won't find too many "i geeks" there (grin).

chris

Thanks clbirk, fixed it! Wow