Misys Partner Launches IBM i Client for Subversion 1.75

June 26, 2012 Alex Woodie

A Russian partner of IBM i banking software developer Misys last week announced that it has completed work on a new IBM i client for the popular open source Apache Subversion version control system. A developer at Banking Technologies & Consulting says the IBM i client, called iSVN, enables RPG and CL programmers to access external SVN repositories and utilize SVN features, such as code checkout and update commands, from the comfort of the 5250 green screen.

Moscow-based Banking Technologies & Consulting (BTC) provides support and localization for the EQUATION core banking system from Misys for financial service companies in Russia and other former states of the USSR. BTC does a lot of consulting work for EQUATION users, which requires writing new RPG programs and integrating them into its customers’ existing RPG programs.

With so much RPG code in the mix, BTC at some point realized it needed a way to manage the source code for its customers, BTC developer Alexei Baranov tells IT Jungle. The company looked at change management products of some well-known vendors, but found that they were too expensive for a company of about 40 people, or too proprietary and difficult to use to be widely adopted by the company’s developers, he says.

Instead, BTC looked to SVN, an open source version control system that has gained a lot of market share since it was initially released in 2000. SVN brings numerous advantages to the RPG programmer, Baranov says, the primary ones being that SVN is simple and widely used around the world. “But until this moment, RPG programmers have been deprived of these elegant tools.”

BTC is not the only organization that has embarked upon a plan to bring SVN’s riches to the IBM i populace. Several years back, the folks at SoftLanding Systems (now owned by UNICOM Systems) ported SVN to run natively under i5/OS. Today, UNICOM sells the software as TurnOver for SVN v100. However, the product is based on SVN version 1.4, which is six years old. As a result, the BTC crew decided to put together their own IBM i binary of SVN with the latest SVN code.

The porting work was completed in March, and BTC started to put its new iSVN client into production in the middle of May. But then Apache released version 1.75 of SVN. In the interest of having the latest and greatest release of SVN to work with, the company decided to hold off the release, and did the additional work required to port SVN version 1.75 to IBM i.

iSVN is a native implementation of the Subversion client for the IBM i platform. It works with all supported versions of IBM i, from i5/OS V5R4 through IBM i 7.1. The software works by storing working copies of RPG and CL source code on the IFS drive, where they can be accessed by the green-screen iSVN client or by any external SVN client.

By synchronizing the source physical file members with the working copy on the IFS, developers gain access to all the SVN features, including versioning (code update and checkout commands), branching, merging, and two- and three-way source comparison. “The RPG developer receives full access to all the long-awaited source version control features directly from the green-screen session,” Baranov says.

BTC also added an IBM i-specific feature that enables the output of standard streams stdout and stderr to be sent to the joblog. It also generates *STATUS messages in addition to the standard output, “a small but very handy feature when working in a green screen,” Baranov says.

iSVN is just one of several ports that Baranov and his team have completed at BTC as part of its “i5PortAll” initiative. In addition to iSVN, the company has ported SQLite, OpenSSL, Zlib, gSOAP, and Libconfig to IBM i. Several of these are typically used in conjunction with a SVN implementation, but BTC is not providing separate access to these IBM i binaries at this time.

“In our projects, we are actively using the tools and libraries [that] are . . . the gold standards for software development,” Baranov says. “These tools are not new, but the [IBM i developers] usually miss this functionality. In scope of i5PortAll initiative, our company has completed porting of some libraries and developer tools to the IBM i platform.”

BTC is making iSVN available for 30-day trials. Beyond that, a license key must be purchased from BTC to continue using the product. The tier-based licensing chart starts at €1,000 for a P05 box for the first year, with a €500 annual maintenance fee in subsequent years. A P10 license costs €2,000, with a €1000 annual maintenance fee. Maintenance includes technical support, bug fixes, and enhancements.

For more information and trial downloads of iSVN, see www.btc.info/en/products/233/.

SoftLanding Goes Open Source with TurnOverSVN

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Do the Math When Looking at IBM i Hosting for Cost Savings

COVID-19 has accelerated certain business trends that were already gaining strength prior to the start of the pandemic. E-commerce, telehealth, and video conferencing are some of the most obvious examples. One example that may not be as obvious to the general public but has a profound impact on business is the shift in strategy of IBM i infrastructure from traditional, on-premises environments to some form of remote configuration. These remote configurations and all of their variations are broadly referred to in the community as IBM i hosting.

“Hosting” in this context can mean different things to different people, and in general, hosting refers to one of two scenarios. In the first scenario, hosting can refer to a client owned machine that is housed in a co-location facility (commonly called a co-lo for short) where the data center provides traditional system administrator services, relieving the client of administrative and operational responsibilities. In the second scenario, hosting can refer to an MSP owned machine in which partition resources are provided to the client in an on-demand capacity. This scenario allows the client to completely outsource all aspects of Power Systems hardware and the IBM i operating system and database.

The scenario that is best for each business depends on a number of factors and is largely up for debate. In most cases, pursuing hosting purely as a cost saving strategy is a dead end. Furthermore, when you consider all of the costs associated with maintaining and IBM i environment, it is typically not a cost-effective option for the small to midsize market. The most cost-effective approach for these organizations is often a combination of a client owned and maintained system (either on-prem or in a co-lo) with cloud backup and disaster-recovery-as-a-service. Only in some cases of larger enterprise companies can a hosting strategy start to become a potentially cost-effective option.

However, cost savings is just one part of the story. As IBM i expertise becomes scarce and IT resources run tight, the only option for some firms may be to pursue hosting in some capacity. Whatever the driving force for pursing hosting may be, the key point is that it is not just simply an option for running your workload in a different location. There are many details to consider and it is to the best interest of the client to work with an experienced MSP in weighing the benefits and drawbacks of each option. As COVID-19 rolls on, time will tell if IBM i hosting strategies will follow the other strong business trends of the pandemic.

When we say do the math in the title above, it literally means that you need to do the math for your particular scenario. It is not about us doing the math for you, making a case for either staying on premises or for moving to the cloud. There is not one answer, but just different levels of cost to be reckoned which yield different answers. Most IBM i shops have fairly static workloads, at least measured against the larger mix of stuff on the public clouds of the world. How do you measure the value of controlling your own IT fate? That will only be fully recognized at the moment when it is sorely missed the most.

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