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  • Busy Signals Coming From PowerRuby

    August 11, 2014 Dan Burger

    It has been almost a year since we found out about a company called PowerRuby, a coming together of the open source Ruby on Rails development environment and the IBM Power Systems user community. “There’s something special going on with Ruby and Rails,” we were told by one of the brightest young minds in the IBM i community, Aaron Bartell. Notable IBM i evangelists Steve Will, Alison Butterill, Jon Paris, and others eagerly encouraged IBM i developers to try it.

    A lot has happened for PowerRuby, although you might shake your head after reading the beta test site on www.powerruby.com has attracted the attention of approximately 60 IBM i enthusiasts willing to explore Ruby and Rails. That may not sound like business is booming, but read on before you jump to conclusions.

    The port of the Ruby language and the Ruby on Rails framework to IBM i 7.2 was just completed on June 7. Bartell and Don Denoncourt, a veteran IBM i developer, consultant, author, and educator, led the porting efforts. The tire kicking has just begun.

    Most of the early feedback from beta users related to difficulties setting up development environments and that was often pegged to the unfamiliar PASE/QSH command line. Some feedback exposed bugs in the install routines, which resulted in frequent updates. That kept things busy. Meanwhile, Bartell, in particular, has been on a mission to introduce Ruby and Rails to the IBM i community through articles in trade publications and sessions at local user group meetings and conferences such as COMMON and the RPG & DB2 Summit.

    As with any technology that takes people into new territory, the uncertainty creates a nervousness that can digress into paralysis. Solving the how-to-get-started question can be the great inhibitor, according to Anthony Avison, CEO of PowerRuby, who is one of the co-founders along with Bartell. Avison’s company, Dancerace, has funded PowerRuby and owns and controls the interests and intellectual property of the project. Dancerace is based in the UK.

    Research and development of the IBM i Ruby/Rails materials has been expanded and is now centered in the UK.

    “This raises the status and solidarity of the PowerRuby project very considerably, with a full-time team working to support the commercial versions of the language and framework,” Avison says. “The most technically senior person from the PowerRuby team, Andrea Ribuoli, is working now full-time with the UK team.

    A development ‘sandbox’ available to IBM i users shares the PowerRuby UK facilities with a Power8-based server farm, which is expected to go live in the fall.

    “We understand IBM has no immediate intention to put the IBM i OS onto their Power servers in SoftLayer, so it falls to private enterprises such as us to pioneer this,” Avison says. “IBM is committed to open source for the future, and has provided resources to us as they did to Zend for PHP on IBM i.”

    Avison expects IBM’s support going forward and says his company is seeking partnerships to enhance this cooperation.

    “Some optimization work on DB2 adapters and drivers remains,” Avison says, “but it is possible with no material restrictions to run Ruby programs and Rails Web applications on the IBM i extremely well. There is nothing ‘magical’ going on in terms of performance, and I’d say if performance was the sole thing someone was looking at, then there’s not much difference between a Rails application running on IBM i and the same application running on a similarly configured IBM PowerLinux server.”

    The IBM i advantage comes from the system’s resiliency, the integrated DB2 database, the object security model, and the scalability. There are also the operating simplicities associated with work management and single level storage. Early adopters, Avison predicts, are most likely to be “IBM i users who fully appreciate the platform/OS and want to redevelop applications that are currently ‘legacy’ RPG or COBOL. That is not our only market, but it’s an obvious one.”

    RELATED STORIES

    Oh, Ruby! What You Do To Me (On Rails)

    Application Modernization: Destination Success

    What’s Happening In IBM i App Dev?



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    Sponsored by
    Krengeltech

    When it comes to consuming web APIs on your IBM i, your options often boil down to one of two things:

    First, you end up having to rely on a variety of open source and non-RPG solutions. This adds developer complexity, taking away time that could have been better spent invested in other projects. Of course, open source software is free, but generally comes at the cost of no professional support, which adds an element of risk in your production environment. RXS is completely professionally supported, and is complemented by a staff of trained IBM i developers who can address your nuanced development challenges, head on.

    Second, if you choose not to pursue an open-source solution, you’re often left having to shake up your current program architecture with proprietary software, external dependencies, and partial RPG implementations – many of which are sub-par compared to RPG-XML Suite’s wide range of features. RXS aims to simplify the efforts of developers with tools like code generators, useful commands, and subprocedures written in 100% RPG – no Java. Because they are entirely RPG, the RXS subprocedures are easy to add to new or existing ILE programs and architecture, helping to cut your development time. RPG-XML Suite offers powerful capabilities in an accessible, easy-to-implement format.

    With RPG-XML Suite, you can accomplish a variety of complex tasks, such as:

    • Calling REST and SOAP web services from your IBM i
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    To try RXS for yourself, we recommend a free proof of concept, which not only gives you access to all of RPG-XML Suite’s subprocedures and utilities but also includes a tailor-made software demonstration that can be used as a starting point for your future API implementations.

    For a free proof of concept, contact us at sales@krengeltech.com, or visit our website for more information.

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    When IBM i RGZPFM Doesn’t Want To Rebuild Access Paths The Geezer’s Guide to Free-Form RPG, Part 5: File Definitions

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Volume 24, Number 26 -- August 11, 2014
THIS ISSUE SPONSORED BY:

SEQUEL Software
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Table of Contents

  • OpenVMS Spinout A Possible Prelude To An IBM i Future?
  • IBM i Job Market: Not All Doom and Gloom
  • There’s Something Happening Here
  • As I See It: The Final Escape
  • Busy Signals Coming From PowerRuby
  • IBM Builds Brain-Like Chip With 1 Million Neurons
  • IDC Says IT Spending Will Come In A Bit Higher In 2014
  • IBM Tweaks Power8 CPU And Memory Prices Up
  • Avnet Financials Illustrate IT Industry Volatility
  • IBM Cooks Up Online Consultant Shopping

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