The Application System/400 (also known as AS/400, iSeries (since 2000) and System i5 (since 2006)) is a type of minicomputer produced by IBM. It was first produced in 1988 and, as of 2006, is still in production. This article is about the year 2000. ... 2006 (MMVI) is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Minicomputer (colloquially, mini) is a largely obsolete term for a class of multi-user computers which make up the middle range of the computing spectrum, in between the largest multi-user systems (traditionally, mainframe computers) and the smallest single-user systems (microcomputers or personal computers). ... International Business Machines Corporation (IBM, or colloquially, Big Blue) (NYSE: IBM) (incorporated June 15, 1911, in operation since 1888) is headquartered in Armonk, New York, USA. The company manufactures and sells computer hardware, software, and services. ... 1988 (MCMLXXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 2006 is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Features

The AS/400 is an object-based system with an integrated DB2 database that was designed to implement E. F. Codd's relational database model, which is based on Codd's 12 rules, in the operating system and hardware. DB2® is IBMs family of information management software products. ... A database is an organized collection of data. ... Edgar Ted Codd Edgar F. Ted Codd (August 23, 1923 – April 18, 2003) was a British computer scientist who made seminal contributions to the theory of relational databases. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Relational model. ... Codds 12 rules are a set of thirteen rules proposed by Edgar F. Ted Codd, a pioneer of the relational model for databases, designed to define what is required from a database management system in order for it to be considered relational, i. ... An operating system is a special computer program that manages the relationship between application software, the wide variety of hardware that makes up a computer system, and the user of the system. ...

Instruction set

The AS/400 survives because its instruction set (called TIMI for "Technology Independent Machine Interface" by IBM) allows the operating system and application programs to take advantage of advances in hardware and software without recompilation. TIMI is a virtual instruction set, which means that it is not possible for user-mode programs to utilize the instruction set of the underlying CPU, thus ensuring hardware independence. This is conceptually somewhat similar to the virtual machine architecture of programming environments such as SmallTalk, Java and .NET. The key difference is that it is embedded so deeply into the AS/400's design as to make all applications and even the bulk of its operating systems binary-compatible across different processor families. An instruction set, or instruction set architecture (ISA), describes the aspects of a computer architecture visible to a programmer, including the native datatypes, instructions, registers, addressing modes, memory architecture, interrupt and exception handling, and external I/O (if any). ... Computer software (or simply software) refers to one or more computer programs and data held in the storage of a computer for some purpose. ... In general terms, a virtual machine in computer science is software that creates an environment between the computer platform and the end user in which the end user can operate software. ... Smalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed, reflective, programming language designed at Xerox PARC by Alan Kay, Dan Ingalls, Ted Kaehler, Adele Goldberg, and others during the 1970s, influenced by Sketchpad and Simula. ... Java is an object-oriented programming language developed by James Gosling and colleagues at Sun Microsystems in the early 1990s. ... The Microsoft . ...

Note that, unlike other virtual-machine architectures in which the virtual instructions are interpreted at runtime, TIMI instructions are never interpreted. They constitute an intermediate compile time step and are translated into the processor's instruction set as the final compilation step. The TIMI instructions are stored within the final program object, in addition to the executable machine instructions. This is how a program compiled on one processor family (eg. CISC) can be moved to a new processor (eg. PowerPC) without re-compilation. The program is saved from the old machine and restored onto the new machine, whereupon the operating system discards the old machine instructions and re-translates the TIMI instructions into machine instructions for the new processor. In computer science, run time (with a space, though often its spelled without one) describes the operation of a computer program, the duration of its execution, from beginning to termination (compare compile time). ... In computer science, compile time, as opposed to runtime, is the time when a compiler compiles code written in a programming language into an executable form. ...

The AS/400's instruction set defines all pointers as 128-bit. This is one of the surviving features of the System/38, which used the 128-bit address space to enable all devices, including disk and tape storage, to be directly addressable. The IBM System/38 was a computer. ...

Hardware

The AS/400 was originally based on a custom IBM CISC CPU which used a CPU architecture known as Internal MicroProgrammed Interface (IMPI) and an instruction set similar to the IBM 370. It was later migrated to a PowerPC-based RISC CPU family eventually known as RS64. The latest models are based on the POWER5+ processor.^[1] A Complex Instruction Set Core (CISC) is a microprocessor instruction set architecture (ISA) in which each instruction can execute several low-level operations, such as a load from memory, an arithmetic operation, and a memory store, all in a single instruction. ... Intel 80486DX2 microprocessor in a ceramic PGA package A central processing unit (CPU), or sometimes simply processor, is the component in a digital computer that interprets instructions and processes data contained in software. ... The System/370 is a model range of IBM mainframes introduced in the early 1970s as the successors to the System/360 family. ... PowerPC is a RISC microprocessor architecture created by the 1991 Apple-IBM-Motorola alliance, known as AIM. Originally intended for personal computers, PowerPC CPUs have since become popular embedded and high-performance processors as well. ... Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC), is a microprocessor CPU design philosophy that favors a smaller and simpler set of instructions that all take about the same amount of time to execute. ... The IBM RS64 family of processors is used in the RS/6000 and AS/400 server product lines. ... POWER5 dual-MCM POWER5 quad-MCM POWER5 is a microprocessor developed by IBM. It is an improved variant of the highly successful POWER4. ...

Software

Here Debian Linux is running natively on an iSeries Logical Partition.

The AS/400 includes an extensive library-based operating system, OS/400, and is also capable of supporting mutiple instances of AIX, Linux, Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003, with either single-processor internal blade servers (IXS) or externally-linked mutiple-processor servers (IXA). Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1400x1050, 241 KB) Summary Screenshot of Debian Linux running on an IBM iSeries model 9406-520. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1400x1050, 241 KB) Summary Screenshot of Debian Linux running on an IBM iSeries model 9406-520. ... It has been suggested that Embedded Debian be merged into this article or section. ... Tux the penguin, based on an image created by Larry Ewing in 1996, is the logo and mascot of Linux. ... An operating system is a special computer program that manages the relationship between application software, the wide variety of hardware that makes up a computer system, and the user of the system. ... OS/400 is an operating system used on IBMs line of AS/400 (now called iSeries) minicomputers. ... AIX or Aix may be: Aix, a genus of two species of dabbling ducks, the Wood Duck (Aix sponsa) and the Mandarin Duck (Aix galericulata) AIX operating system Athens Internet Exchange, (AIX) a European IXP a place name: Aix-la-Chapelle, or Aachen, a city in Germany in France: Aix... Tux the penguin, based on an image created by Larry Ewing in 1996, is the logo and mascot of Linux. ... Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT, SEHK: 4338) is an international computer technology corporation with 2005 global annual sales of close to $40 billion USD and about 64,000 employees in 85 countries and regions which develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of software products for computing devices. ... Windows 2000 (also referred to as Win2K, W2K or Windows NT 5. ... Windows Server 2003 is the name of Microsofts line of server operating systems. ...

LPAR (Logical PARtitioning), a feature introduced from IBM's mainframe computers, facilitates running multiple operating systems simultaneously on one AS/400 unit. A system setup with LPAR can even run different operating systems on different partitions while ensuring that one OS cannot run over the memory or resources of another. Each LPAR is given a portion of system resources (memory, hard disk space, and CPU time) via a system of weights that determines where unused resources are allocated at any given time. The operating systems supported (and commonly used) under the LPAR scheme are OS/400, AIX and Linux. Mainframes (often colloquially referred to as big iron) are large and expensive computers used mainly by government institutions and large companies for legacy applications, typically bulk data processing (such as censuses, industry/consumer statistics, ERP, and bank transaction processing). ... OS/400 is an operating system used on IBMs line of AS/400 (now called iSeries) minicomputers. ... AIX (Advanced Interactive eXecutive) is a proprietary operating system developed by IBM based on UNIX System V. Before the product was ever marketed, the acronym AIX originally stood for Advanced IBM Unix. ... Tux the penguin, based on an image created by Larry Ewing in 1996, is the logo and mascot of Linux. ...

Other features include an extremely fast database management system, a menu-driven interface, multi-user support, terminals (IBM 5250) and printers, security, communications, client-server and web-based applications. All software necessary to run the AS/400 is included and integrated. More than 2,500 business software applications were available when the first AS/400 was delivered in 1988. Applications can run without modification on any model in the product line, from small, single-processor machines up to those with 64 multi-core CPUs, due to the AS/400's virtual instruction set. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Multi-user operating systems allow multiple users to utilize the computer and run programs at the same time. ... IBM 5250, originally, was a particular model of a terminal device sold with the IBM S/34 minicomputer system. ...

iSeries servers also support common client-server-based technologies such as ODBC and JDBC for accessing its database from client-based software, created with languages such as Java, Microsoft Visual Studio .NET and other languages. Client/Server is a network application architecture which separates the client (usually the graphical user interface) from the server. ... Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) is a standard software API specification for using database management systems (DBMS). ... Java Database Connectivity, or JDBC, is an API for the Java programming language that defines how a client may access a database. ... Java is an object-oriented programming language developed by James Gosling and colleagues at Sun Microsystems in the early 1990s. ... The Visual Studio . ...

Programming

Programming languages available for the AS/400 include RPG, assembly language, C, C++, Java, COBOL, SQL, BASIC, PHP, PL/I, and REXX. Several CASE tools are available: Synon, AS/SET, Magic, and Lansa. RPG or RPG IV is a native programming language for IBMs iSeries (aka AS400) minicomputer system. ... Assembly language commonly called assembly or asm, is a human-readable notation for the machine language that a specific computer architecture uses. ... The C Programming Language, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, the original edition that served for many years as an informal specification of the language The C programming language is a standardized imperative computer programming language developed in the early 1970s by Dennis Ritchie for use on the Unix operating system. ... C++ (generally pronounced see plus plus) is a general-purpose programming language. ... Java is an object-oriented programming language developed by James Gosling and colleagues at Sun Microsystems in the early 1990s. ... COBOL is a third-generation programming language. ... SQL (commonly, but incorrectly, expanded to Structured Query Language — see History for the terms derivation) is the most popular computer language used to create, modify and retrieve data from relational database management systems. ... BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of high-level programming languages. ... PHP is a scripted programming language that can be used to create websites. ... PL/I (Programming Language One, pronounced pee el one) is an imperative computer programming language designed for scientific, engineering, and business applications. ... REXX (REstructured eXtended eXecutor) is an interpreted programming language which was developed at IBM. It is a structured high-level programming language which was designed to be both easy to learn and easy to read. ... Categories: Stub | Software engineering | Data management ... Synon/2E was the original name of a CASE tool for the IBM System/38 and (later) AS/400 computers. ... In the context of computer programming, magic is used to describe code that handles complex tasks while hiding that complexity to present a simple interface. ... LANSA is classified as a 4 GL. In its native form on the AS400 it takes advantage of the AS400 command prompting for all of its commands. ...

Commands in the Control Language (CL) are promptable and most provide cursor-sensitive help to make entering parameters easier. A command name consists of a three-letter verb and a subject part, also referred to as a noun. Some command names provide a "modifier" as well. This is intended to make it easy to understand CL code. The AS/400 control language (CL) is reminiscent of JCL and consists of an ever expanding set of command objects (*CMD) used to invoke traditional AS/400 programs and/or get help on what those programs do. ...

Examples:

• CRTUSRPRF - Create (verb) user (modifier) profile (noun)
• DLTLIB - Delete (verb) library (noun)
• CPYF - Copy file
• WRKACTJOB - Work with Active Jobs

For traditional business programming languages such as RPG, COBOL, C and SQL, the AS/400 has support for external files, display files and object-oriented programming, which allows for increased programming productivity. It also supports Unix-like file directories, industry-leading support for Java, client-server technologies and a native Apache web server, for "modern" and GUI-style applications. In computer science, object-oriented programming, OOP for short, is a computer programming paradigm. ... Java is an object-oriented programming language developed by James Gosling and colleagues at Sun Microsystems in the early 1990s. ... Client/Server is a network application architecture which separates the client (usually the graphical user interface) from the server. ... Gui is short for Guilherme or Guilhermo or an iteration of that, in English it translates to Will. ...

Integrated Language Environment

Despite the lack of a "UNIXy" background, the AS/400 has, over the years, picked up the programming/runtime model found on UNIX, Linux, and PC systems. Traditional AS/400 programming is a "one-stop shop", where a programmer writes computer code, compiles the code, and then executes the code. There is no link step that is found in other environments. A diagram of the operation of a typical multi-language compiler. ...

However, in 1995, that changed. IBM re-christened the one-stop shop programming style "OPM" (for Original Programming Model) and introduced a new language paradigm called "ILE" (for Integrated Language Environment). ILE had significant enhancements over OPM, including the ability to create modules (similar to .obj or .lib files), and then bind (link) the modules together into a single executable. The executable could be created as a program or a service program (service programs are similar to .lib or .dll files). 1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... For information on linking pages within Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Links. ... A computer program or software program (usually abbreviated to a program) is a step-by-step list of instructions written for a particular computer architecture in a particular computer programming language. ...

The real power of the ILE environment is in the "integrated" aspect, however. Modules in ILE-compliant languages (RPG, COBOL, C, C++, and CL) could be created and bound together. For the first time, AS/400 programmers could exploit the strengths of multiple ILE-compliant languages in a single program. Also, with the introduction of service programs, standard routines could be externalized more easily, and modularity increased. To ensure proper migration to the ILE environment, OPM RPG and COBOL programs could be migrated to ILE easily. RPG or RPG IV is a native programming language for IBMs iSeries (aka AS400) minicomputer system. ... COBOL is a third-generation programming language. ...

Interoperation with the Java language is also supported, though not as tightly as with the ILE languages. The iSeries Java implementation is distinguished by the degree to which it is embedded in the operating system. Java is an object-oriented programming language developed by James Gosling and colleagues at Sun Microsystems in the early 1990s. ...

History

The AS/400 was the result of the combination of the System/38 database machine (announced by IBM in October 1978 and delivered in August 1979) and the System/36. The first AS/400 systems (known by the development code names Silverlake and Olympic) were delivered in 1988, and the product line has been refreshed continually since then. The programmers who worked on OS/400, the operating system of the AS/400, did not have a UNIX background. Dr Frank Soltis, the chief architect, says that this is the main difference between this and any other operating system. The IBM System/38 was a computer. ... The System/36 was a minicomputer marketed by IBM from 1983 to 2000. ... OS/400 is an operating system used on IBMs line of AS/400 (now called iSeries) minicomputers. ... Frank Soltis, an American computer scientist, is IBMs Chief Scientist for the iSeries computers. ...

The AS/400 was the first general-purpose computer system to attain a C2 security rating from the NSA, and in 1995 was extended to employ a 64-bit processor and operating system. The TCSEC was issued by the United States National Computer Security Center (an arm of the NSA) as Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria, DOD standard 5200. ... NSA seal The National Security Agency / Central Security Service (NSA/CSS) is believed to be the largest United States government intelligence agency. ... 1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... In computing, a 64-bit component is one in which data are processed or stored in 64-bit units (words). ...

In 2000 IBM renamed the AS/400 to iSeries, as part of its e-Server branding initiative. The product line was further extended in 2004 with the introduction of the i5 servers, the first to utilize the IBM POWER5 processor. The architecture of the system allows for future implementation of 128-bit processors when they become available. Existing programs will utilize the new hardware without modification. This article is about the year 2000. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

See also

• AS/400 Control Language
• AS/400 Libraries
• AS/400 object
• OS/400
• IBM 5250
• iSeries Architecture

The AS/400 control language (CL) is reminiscent of JCL and consists of an ever expanding set of command objects (*CMD) used to invoke traditional AS/400 programs and/or get help on what those programs do. ... A library (*LIB) on the AS/400 is an object that is used as a system directory to keeps track of other objects. ... On most other platforms everything is a file. ... OS/400 is an operating system used on IBMs line of AS/400 (now called iSeries) minicomputers. ... IBM 5250, originally, was a particular model of a terminal device sold with the IBM S/34 minicomputer system. ...

References

1. ↑ Soltis, Frank G.. When Is PowerPC Not PowerPC?. (HTML) The 400 Squadron. URL accessed on 2006-03-18.

2006 (MMVI) is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... March 18 is the 77th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (78th in leap years). ...

External links

• IBM's System i5 homepage