Are you a faithful green-screen user?
Are you a faithful green-screen user that refuses to upgrade your systems? If so, what are your top three reasons for staying put?
-- Debra Tart, associate editor, Search400.com
Software/Hardware used:
Software/Hardware used:
ASKED:
December 26, 2005 10:43 AM
UPDATED:
January 3, 2006 8:38 AM
Answer Wiki:
Top three reasons - time, money, staff. And all are interrelated. I am the entire IT staff at a small manufacturing company. Therefore, my users believe if an item in the company has a circuit board in it, it's up to me to keep it running smoothly (my background is as a midrange programmer for more years than I want to admit). That includes, desk top PC's, telephones, network and server, iSeries, etc. Consequently, there is very little time to spend on the iSeries. Some programs are 10 to 15 years old and desperatly need to be upgraded to at least RPG/400. Although the situation is definitely a challenge, I enjoy it and am always optimistic that I can make some progress towards the 21st century.
To see all answers submitted to the Answer Wiki: View Answer History.
1) Familiarity-The green screen is the serene gateway to our IT world. Somewhat user friendly and logical(vs. Unix any flavor hands down)
2) Fat iSeries client access. Originally coded in C++, this application now is a Java hog of system memory and resources.
3) Reliable. Green screen tells no tales.
Oh yea, when you know the commands (or how to find them), its the easiest way to go. I would have to agree on the memory issue, that ops navigator is a PIG! It drags down a windows pc that it is just used as a last resort!
JohnDavid responds:
I think we need to have a look at the type of work that needs to be done through the terminal (or GUI interface) before choosing either. For bulk input such as capturing batches of invoices etc. nothing beats the speed of old faithful green-screen.
However, with ERP, B2B and all other things modern that can now be done electronically the age of bulk input is slowly coming to an end. What we tend to have now is that the transaction is being generated at the source of the interaction – I place an order for a product and all transactions are generated immediately and not accumulated for batch processing at some time later.
Bacause of this and other nice facilities I think that we will slowly migrate to GUI such as with windows.
Green-screen also works in page mode (the preferred method on AS/400) which means that I will fill a complete page, press enter and get the whole page validated. Any errors will can then be corrected on the whole page. With GUI we can change this to perform validation as fields or columns are being entered.
I think the application will dictate the preferred method – green-screen or GUI. As an example, capturing bulk input for a market analysis – green-screen. Providing on-line web enabled ordering to the world definately GUI (NOT green-screen).
Green-screen also has a bit of a negative perception – old, out-dated, etc. Of course us AS/400 users know better. I still insist on a green-screen console.
It works well the way it is.
There’s always so much more work to do that who has the extra time or resources to re-do something that works well the way it is.
Training, both developers and users.