AS/400 emulator

T

technocator

New Member
Hi,

I am just getting started with AS/400. However, unlike Visual Studio or other software, I cannot install something that helps me get started with learning AS/400. Is there any emulator that I can install on my laptop that would help me learn AS/400?

Also, which is the programming language that is used with AS/400?

Where can I get AS/400 learning material from? Is there any site (like stackoverflow.com for .Net) that would provide me lessons/help on AS/400 and its language? If I need a book on it, which would be best to get started quickly? I have to learn this technology in about a month so I can understand the logic written in this and port it to .Net. I got a new opportunity for which I have to do this and I just have a month before I start working on the new project. Please refer this post that I posted (http://www.computerforum.com/223665-need-guidance-understand-future-400-net-related-opportunity.html) for details.

Just so I undestand it well I would like to establish a kind of analogy between AS/400 and .Net working environment.

When working with .Net, we have an OS (mostly windows).
On top of that is intalled the .Net framework which provides the core of .Net.
There are languages like C#, VB.Net etc using which programs are written for .Net.
There is visual studio for the development tool.

I need to understand in a similar fashion if I want to write ans AS/400 program what all things do I need as I mentioned above for .Net.

All the help is much appreciated. Thanks!
 
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Cromewell said:
... The last time I programmed on an AS/400 we used a terminal emulator (http://sourceforge.net/projects/tn5250/) but that requires an as/400 to connect to. It doesn't emulate the whole system.
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A terminal emulator doesn't emulate ANY part of an AS/400, it emulates a terminal only but it is required to to be able to access the AS/400. The link Cromewell posted above will allow you to create a free account which I was able to do. Cool! It's been about 15 years since I did anything with an AS/400 so should be fun to play with.

Pretty much any programming language could be used on an AS/400 depending on what compilers and such are installed on the server.

Here's a generic AS400 YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7980eoVjz08
 
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Thank you Cromewell and Strollin. The you tube video was atleast a good start to understand working with AS/400.

A great help would be if you could point me to an ebook that would help me get started real quick with basic constructs of programming (in AS400) like variables, conditionals, loops, jumps, procedures and other things that you think as commonly used in real world AS400 apps (mine is a financial application so may be a few things used in financial domain programs that you could highlight would be great).

So as I understand, there is a terminal (emulator) using which I connect to the AS/400 server. It is through the terminal that I send commands to AS400 and everything there is menu/command driven as shown in the video.

I created the free user account on the german site but I haven't tried anything on it yet. Let me put my understanding here and ask a few more questions. I might come up with a few more once I have tried something on AS400.

The german site hosts the AS400 server and using the telnet client we connect to the environment. Once in, we can do whatever programming we want to do using the menus/commands and a language that works with AS400.

Que 1. So AS/400 is just the physical server, it is the OS or is it everything including the physical box, the OS, DB and something else?

Que 2. In development/production environments, there is this AS400 hosted somewhere so developers can connect to them and do their job, right?

Que 3. Like modern systems where special DBMS is used for storing data, does AS400 have any such system that could be installed on it or it just has its own internal way of saving data?

Que 4. And as I understand once I am into the menu system, I would be using the programming menu to write actual code using some kind of language - RPGLE probably, right? Is there any other programming language that could be used to code in AS400?
 
technocator said:
Thank you Cromewell and Strollin. The you tube video was atleast a good start to understand working with AS/400.

A great help would be if you could point me to an ebook that would help me get started real quick with basic constructs of programming (in AS400) like variables, conditionals, loops, jumps, procedures and other things that you think as commonly used in real world AS400 apps (mine is a financial application so may be a few things used in financial domain programs that you could highlight would be great).

So as I understand, there is a terminal (emulator) using which I connect to the AS/400 server. It is through the terminal that I send commands to AS400 and everything there is menu/command driven as shown in the video.

I created the free user account on the german site but I haven't tried anything on it yet. Let me put my understanding here and ask a few more questions. I might come up with a few more once I have tried something on AS400.

The german site hosts the AS400 server and using the telnet client we connect to the environment. Once in, we can do whatever programming we want to do using the menus/commands and a language that works with AS400.

Que 1. So AS/400 is just the physical server, it is the OS or is it everything including the physical box, the OS, DB and something else?

Que 2. In development/production environments, there is this AS400 hosted somewhere so developers can connect to them and do their job, right?

Que 3. Like modern systems where special DBMS is used for storing data, does AS400 have any such system that could be installed on it or it just has its own internal way of saving data?

Que 4. And as I understand once I am into the menu system, I would be using the programming menu to write actual code using some kind of language - RPGLE probably, right? Is there any other programming language that could be used to code in AS400?
Click to expand...

1. Usually it's the whole package, the hardware and OS.

2. Generally, if your job requires AS/400 work they have the machine sitting somewhere in their datacentre (or under someones desk :P) and it's accessible over their network.

3. Generally you are looking at DB2 on an AS/400 if you want a database. I'm sure there are others for it, but that's the one I usually see paired with it. As far as how it saves data to the disk, OS/400 (or whatever you have running on it) takes care of that for you.

4. Programming on it may involve screen design (called SDA), RPG, COBOL, SQL (again, usually DB2), C, etc. Basically any language where the compiler has been ported.
technocator said:
@Cromewell: BTW, the chain of command quote is cool!!!
Click to expand...

Shamelessly stolen from Firefly, Jayne said it.
 
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