Customer Reviews

IBM i5/iSeries Primer: Concepts and Techniques for Programmers, Administrators, and System Operators

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I am a veteran *nix and windows software programmer. I like GUIs, but I think the command line is your friend, not the enemy. Due to a new assignment, I needed to ramp up my i5 skills in a short window of time.

Before purchasing, I had high hopes for the content and quality of the information, especially since there are a limited number of introductory books on iSeries. Based upon reviews of the previous edition of this book and the table of contents, it looked like this would be an excellent solution to my needs. Despite the low rating I gave, there are many worthy gems tucked away inside this tome. However, they are scattered about in a haphazard manner making them difficult to find afterwards.

As a relative novice in the i5 realm, I found the organization of the material to be very poor. The book is a collection of five different sets of crib notes that are all jammed together. The reulting structure provides a very poor learning experience due to the lack of order in introducing material.

Many of the examples have typographic errors, and in several places the explanatory text does not match the example. Never mind that the provided examples don't follow the advice given in prior chapters. In addition, important details are left out of the examples but are hinted at later in the chapter. This leaves you to wonder what else you need to know in order to make the example work. Details such as maximum file name length and other standard limits aren't mentioned until very late in the book and many other details like this are simply assumed to be known.

An intermeidate or advanced level system administrator will find many useful tidbits of information in this book. The authors are certainly well experienced on the i5. It is debatable whether or not you would find enough to justify the price of the book and the time to read it. If you are a programmer or a novice to iSeries, then save your time and look elsewhere. Use the IBM Redbooks and other resources available.

My end impression is that this is one of the most poorly edited technical books I have ever read. It is put together like a murder mystery where you have to assemble all the facts instead of being an instructional primer.

IBM's i5 seies of mid range servers is the replacement for and the logical extension of the AS 400 series.The i5 consists of a family of compatible systems suitable for use by small to fairly good sized corporations. They are bases on the IBM manufactured Power PC family.

This book is an excellent introduction to the i5, beginning with unpacking the equipment and going on to administering a system with adequate security to keep the system up. The book is organized with a series of more or less self sufficient chapters. For instance chapter 25 is an introduction to the SQL language. It has enough information for you to program a database at a fairly fundamental level. It's a good introduction, but if you're going to spend your whole day programming SQL, you probably want another book where the whole book is on SQL.

The book is rated as being suitable for Novices to Intermediates. I don't think I'd argue that, provided that the novice has at least some basic computer knowledge.

This is a fairly well-rounded PRIMER for newcomers and moderately experienced AS/400 / iSeries / System i operator/administrators.

Every chapter has a nice amount of depth for a primer and serves really well to introduce the different areas and show some functional examples.

It's not geared towards very advanced users, but newcomers and even most experienced operators and administrators will probably find useful information in it.

The book, like everything else System i related is rather pricey. I'd still suggest any decent sized shop keep one for their operators/admins.

This book provides a good overview of the standard functions and features of the i5 series