Moving programs from one release to another

This post comes from a question I was asked this week.

In our scenario the company has two IBM i (AS400) servers, the development and testing server we will call DEV400, and the “live” server will be LIVE400.

DEV400 was upgraded from IBM i 6.1 to 7.1 to allow for the purchased ERP application and home-grown programs to be tested that they are compatible with the new release. LIVE400 is currently 6.1, and will be upgrade to 7.1 “sometime this summer”.

The programmers have found that they cannot just compile programs on DEV400 and use the SAVRSTOBJ command to copy them to LIVE400. When they do they get the CPF3743 error informs them that “The file was saved from a more recent release of the operating system”. What to do?

RPG III let it rest in peace

When the IBM System/38 was released, in 1978, it came with a new version of RPG, RPG III. This was a language that was very advanced for its time, introducing many features we recognize in today's RPG. When the AS400 was released in 1988 it too had RPG III as its main programming language.

Now, 35 years after its birth it is time to let RPG III go and let it RIP.

When OS/400 V5R1 was released, 2001, IBM said that they would be no longer adding anything new to RPG III, and that RPG IV, first introduced in V3R1 in 1994, was the way to go.

Since then IBM has added all kinds of built in functions and features to RPG IV, and now RPG/free, that make it a much better and easier language to work with.

Family tree of the IBM i

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the launch of the AS400.

How much has changed since I first encountered a B50, and started learning RPG III.

How many of you worked with the B models?

Click to see larger image.

Angus the IT Chap posted three images showing the evoluton of the IBM i on his blog, which you can see here»

The story of how the AS400 got its name is given in a book authored by John Sears. It was originally going to be called the Application System/40, or AS/40. IBM's PC development team complained about the name. They had just developed the PS/2, and if the midrange group was to take the double digit numbers they would be restricted to just ten models, PS/0 - PS/9. Therefore, IBM's management decided that the PCs could have the range of numbers 0-99, midranges 100-999, and mainframes would have the range 1000-9999. Thus the AS/40 became the AS400.

I remember the PS/2 and the PS/1, which came after the PS/2. Were there any other PSs?