This article was orginally published in IT Jungle.
Richard Schoen has been doing presentations on using Microsoft .NET technology in conjunction with IBM i on Power Systems at COMMON for several years. At a recent Omni User meeting in Chicago, Schoen was speaking again on this subject and it certainly seemed to be a topic of interest as a larger than normal attendance was recorded.
This is not exactly a mainstream topic because Microsoft and IBM don't see eye to eye on a lot of things . . . running Windows natively on Power Systems machines being a perfect example. This is a constantly festering wound that won't heal. We all know Windows could be made to run on Power-based servers. No less of a source than Frank Soltis will tell you the reason there's no Windows on Power boxes is political, not technical, and that the two companies have talked about it to no avail. And the result is that anytime a company makes a decision to use .NET, there will be a Windows server involved, not an IBM i machine.
Another way to attack the problem is to get Windows applications running atop Mono, the open source implementation of the .NET framework that is based on the ECMA standards of C# and the Common Language Runtime, instead of doing a full Windows port. Since Novell was acquired by Attachmate last year, the Mono project is being backed by a new company called Xamarin, which was founded by Mono founder Miquel de Icaza, who was previously working at Novell. So the Mono project is alive and well, and it is not too late to add it to IBM i. (It has been rumored that IBM ported Mono to run inside PASE, the AIX runtime environment embedded in IBM i operating system. That idea was bottled up and kept in a darkroom never to see the light of day.)
The situation--no Windows and no native .NET on Power Systems--has led developers down the path of Java and a lot of other methodologies--most recently PHP--to make the platform more interoperable with other platforms and more friendly with mobile devices, which is the way of the world.
"As people are modernizing their applications, they are choosing development languages. I favor using Microsoft .NET," Schoen said last week in a phone call with IT Jungle. "There's a lot more companies than you might think using the technology. There's just not typically much public information about it. I started doing sessions at COMMON a few years ago because of this. It's one of those alternative options that needs to be shared with those who want to listen."
At RJS Software, the company that Schoen owns and is its technical guru, Microsoft technology plays a big role in developing products, particularly those that are taking the mobile application and the Web development paths. Schoen has had success using Microsoft app development tools and he has an interest in sharing ideas with the IBM i community.
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