History of the TAA Tools

The TAA Productivity tools were announced in April of 1995, but the TAA Tools have had a long history.

Jim Sloan was a Software Planner for IBM. He began working on what was to become System/38 in the early 1970s. System/38 was announced in October of 1978 and began major deliveries in 1980.

In the early days of System/38, Jim did a variety of presentations at COMMON and was on the 'Requirements' committee. There were many good requirements that the IBM developers were not able to implement because of more critical needs. These requirements were mostly responded to by IBM as 'Future Objectives'.

Many of the 'Future Objectives' could have been implemented by using small CL and RPG programs.

To provide timely solutions for users, Jim began a series of presentations at COMMON starting about 1983 which were called 'S/38 Tips and Techniques'. These presentations showed the CL and RPG code for how to solve a variety of typical user requests. Some of the examples appeared in IBM manuals.

There were 10 presentations in all with each presentation showing a unique set of tools. The presentations were also shown at the System/38 Technical Conferences and a variety of user group meetings. The tools were originally shown only in paper format.

Beginning about 1986, the 'S/38 Tips and Techniques' were placed on diskette and shipped informally from IBM in the 'TIPSTECH library'.

When IBM went into development of the AS/400, Jim became a Software Planner on that product.

The QUSRTOOL library was started in Release V1R1.1 of AS/400. QUSRTOOL was intended as a library where IBM could place function that was created outside of the normal development process. QUSRTOOL was designed as 'source code' only and came with a disclaimer from IBM stating that any code was 'as is' (there was no warranty or support solution).

While QUSRTOOL was not designed as a solution for the 'S/38 Tips and Techniques', it was a good fit for the types of tools being provided.

Jim reworked many of the System/38 tools for AS/400 and included them in the first release of QUSRTOOL. A naming convention was needed for the tools and the letters 'TAA' were assigned to those provided by Jim. The letters were never an abbreviation for anything, but rather just a unique naming convention.

Over the next several AS/400 releases, Jim continued to add to the tools and improve them as a part time function of his Software Planning responsibilities. He continued to make presentations at COMMON to describe the new tools and at the AS/400 Technical Conferences and other user meetings.

While other tools were placed in QUSRTOOL, the TAA Tools represented the vast majority of the tools.

Although the TAA tools were being shipped with OS/400, there were several problems with this approach. See the later section on QUSRTOOL Problems.

In mid 1991, Jim Sloan retired from IBM. Later that year, he returned as a part time employee and worked predominantly on enhancing the TAA tools until the end of 1992.

At the beginning of 1993, Jim Sloan, Inc. was formed and later that year, Jim Sloan, Inc. was given a contract by IBM to continue work on the tools. This work lasted until the Spring of 1994.

Along with many other areas of its business, IBM wanted to put the TAA Tools on a 'profit center' basis.

In 1994, IBM and Jim Sloan, Inc. agreed on a contract where Jim Sloan, Inc. would license the tools from IBM and produce a product for customers. This resulted in the TAA Productivity Tools product.

As part of the contract, IBM agreed to withdraw the TAA Tools from QUSRTOOL. This was announced by IBM at the V3R6 announcement of June 21, 1995. V3R1 was the last release to contain TAA Tools in QUSRTOOL. Since the tools were no longer receiving any support, this would avoid the confusion of shipping code where many of the tools would not operate.

Note that the QUSRTOOL library was not removed from the system. It still exists, but all of the TAA functions were removed.

Several years ago at COMMON, Jim Sloan met Al Barsa and established a friendship. Al and Jim formed a team to help develop and distribute the TAA Productivity Tools product. Jim Sloan, Inc. does the development work and the Barsa Consulting Group does the distribution.

The TAA Productivity Tools product includes all of the former TAA Tools of QUSRTOOL as of V3R1M0. The TAA Productivity Tools product also includes many new tools, enhancements, and 'ease of use' functions. These functions are property of Jim Sloan, Inc. and will not appear in any future release of QUSRTOOL.

The TAA Productivity Tools product has been able to solve several problems that were associated with the OS/400 QUSRTOOL TAA Tools and enhance the offering. See the later section on Enhancements over QUSRTOOL.

When the QUSRTOOL library was started on AS/400, there were over 100 TAA Tools. As of the V3R1 release, there were over 300. With the TAA Productivity Tools, there are now over 1250 tools and an even larger increase in percentage of the amount of code which makes up new tools (new tools are averaging more lines of code). See the discussion on the HELPTAA menu about 'Growth of the tools'.

Thus, the TAA Productivity Tools have moved from the simple beginning of solutions being shown in presentations to a full scale product with warranty and support.

Problems with QUSRTOOL

• The internal IBM cutoff date for QUSRTOOL occurred early in the release cycle. In some cases, the system changed after QUSRTOOL was frozen and caused some tools to fail.
• The QUSRTOOL tools were never PTFed during the release. The cumulative PTF packages did not change QUSRTOOL.
• Both the PTF and early cutoff problem were partially solved by the development of an update tape (the TAAUPD library) which was shipped by IBM on an informal basis. This allowed for fixes, enhancements, and new tools to be provided to users during a release. The update was only shipped when an IBMer requested it and only a single media type was provided (1/4 inch cartridge). There was no formal announcement of a new version of the TAAUPD library and no guarantee that another version would ever exist.
• IBM did not officially support the tools. This was partially solved by the informal QUSRTOOL node in Rochester where IBMers (not customers) could ask questions, discuss problems, and receive responses.
• While the process worked when it was followed, there were probably many questions/problems that were lost along the way due to the number of people that had to be contacted and follow through.

Because the shipped source code was intended for a specific release, every conceivable error and confusion occurred when customers attempted to use the tools. This included such things as:

• Users trying to operate without compiling the source.
• Users trying to create the tools without the RPG compiler.
• Users not aware that prerequisite tools must be created first.
• Users running a new version of a tool and relying on an old version of a prerequisite tool.
• Users attempting to install an update intended for a specific release on a different release.
• Users not aware of the update.

Enhancements over QUSRTOOL

• Shipping both object and source code. This avoids the cumbersome step of creating the tools and all the problems of customers not running code at a consistent release level.
• This also avoids the requirement that the RPG compiler exists on the users system to create the tools (a few tools require RPG for user created objects).
• Testing later in the release cycle. The tools are not tested until just shortly before IBM ships a new release and thus avoids most of the problems of late system changes.
• Supporting the product with a support line and a warranty. Customers can call directly rather than having to go through their IBM representative.
• Providing a supported 'fix' method. A variety of solutions will be provided such as shipping source code as an E mail attachment.
• Requiring less space. This occurs because the source required considerable storage in QUSRTOOL, but the TAA Productivity Tools use an archive which compresses the source significantly. The RMVQUSRTAA tool is provided to assist in removing the TAA members from QUSRTOOL (RMVQUSRTAA should not be needed after V3R2 unless you have restored the TAA source from QUSRTOOL).
• Providing better ease of use for the tools. This includes help text for the commands, the HELPTAA command, a better display of the tools by category, better access to the tool documentation, etc.
• Adding a significant number of new tools and enhancements.