Alex Woodie
Alex Woodie is Senior Editor at IT Jungle. He was previously editor of two of IT Jungle's main newsletters, Four Hundred Stuff and The Windows Observer. Prior to joining Midrange Server (as Guild Companies was formerly called) in October 2001, Alex was a products editor at now defunct publisher Midrange Computing, where he was first introduced to the AS/400 and covered hardware, software, and services for Midrange Technology SHOWCASE magazine. Before joining Midrange Computing, Alex was a staff writer for The Insurance Journal and a reporter and columnist with The Paradise Post newspaper. Woodie obtained his Bachelors of Arts degree in journalism from Humboldt State University in 1997. Upon graduation, Alex intended to make his way onto a major daily newspaper, but in 1999 he found himself drawn to the high-technology industry, where his background in science and engineering has suited him well. He lives in Northern San Diego County. When he is not writing next week's newsletters, Alex can be found in his favorite chair reading the day's paper, in the kitchen, or at the beach.
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COVID-19 Tracking Comes to iSeries Central
August 31, 2020 Alex Woodie
Companies that use IBM i time and attendance software from UKG (formerly known as Kronos) got a nice surprise from the vendor earlier this year: A free reporting template that helps them perform contact tracing in the event that a worker comes down with COVID-19.
As a developer of time and attendance software, UKG (which stands for Ultimate Kronos Group following Kronos’ merger with Ultimate Software earlier this year) is to build tools that track when and where an employee has worked. As it turns out, that’s just the sort of data that public health officials need when conducting …
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Is It Time To Rename RPG?
August 24, 2020 Alex Woodie
Should IBM rename RPG, and if so, what should the new name be? It’s an interesting idea, and one that was recently floated by a member of the IBM i community, who submitted an official request for enhancement (RFE) on the matter. The crux of the argument is that full free-format RPG is such a dramatic departure from fixed-format RPG that it deserves a new name. But will IBM, which owns the language, go along with the change?
Report Program Generator, or RPG, debuted way back in 1959, at the dawn of the computer age, as a way to replicate …
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i2Rest Offers Native API Alternative to IWS
August 19, 2020 Alex Woodie
IBM i shops that want to expose their RPG applications as industry standard Web services have a few options to choose from. One solution they should keep on their list is i2Rest, which is a native ILE application that exposes RPG using modern OAuth2 and OpenAPI standards.
We first came across Alexei Baranov’s work back in 2012, when he was involved in the port of the SVN client to IBM i while working at a Moscow, Russia-based consulting firm. Soon thereafter, Baranov started working on developing Web services tools for IBM i.
The first version of his new Web …
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New Option Emerges for Refactoring IBM i Apps
August 19, 2020 Alex Woodie
IBM i shops that want to refactor their RPG and COBOL applications into different languages have a new option available to them. In late June, Astadia and Blu Age announced they’re working together on a new service that automates the conversion of customers’ older apps into Java and .NET code that can run on X86 systems in your basement or the cloud.
Based in Boston, Massachusetts, Astadia claims to have completed more than 200 mainframe migrations and more than 100 mainframe modernization projects over about two-and-a-half decades. The company has modernized millions of lines of COBOL code running on mainframes …
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ARCAD Hooks Cross-Reference Tool into LPEX Editor
August 19, 2020 Alex Woodie
IBM i developers won’t have to leave the comfort of RDi and the LPEX editor to engage in application cross-referencing tasks, thanks to the recent integration between the ARCAD Observer cross-referencing software with LPEX.
According to ARCAD Software, the new LPEX integration will bring “massive productivity benefits” to IBM i developers in the form of context-sensitive “where used” impact analysis, as well as dependency information, all delivered directly from within the LPEX editor.
LPEX integration is a new feature delivered in late June in ARCAD Observer version 12.1. The company, which has offices in France, New Hampshire and Chicago …
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Digitally Transform Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It
August 17, 2020 Alex Woodie
The coronavirus pandemic and economic lockdown has laid bare, with ruthless efficiency, the differences between digital natives and brick-and-mortars. In short, companies that are either entirely online or have figured out a way to emulate them are winning and gaining share, while those dependent on physically being present in buildings are losing. That’s leading experts to recommend that businesses hit the gas pedal on their digital transformation plans, or risk permanent dislocation.
It’s tough to overestimate the impact that COVID-19 is having on the American way of life, for both work and play. Entire industries, such as travel and hospitality, …
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Raz-Lee Simulates Ransomware Attack on IBM i
August 12, 2020 Alex Woodie
How would your IBM i server react to a ransomware attack? Would it successfully repel the invaders, or would it give the bad guys what they’re after: chaos and bitcoin? Simulating a ransomware attack is the gist of a new feature in Anti-Ransomware from Raz-Lee Security, which recently shipped a new release of the software.
Raz-Lee Security debuted Anti-Ransomware back in 2018, a year after a pair of widespread ransomware attacks (WannaCry and Petya) made the computing world sit up and take notice of the new security threat blossoming on the Internet.
Anti-Ransomware uses a rules-based approach to detect …
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IBM Rolls Out ACS 1.1.8.5
August 12, 2020 Alex Woodie
IBM last week introduced a new release of Access Client Solutions (ACS), the popular IBM i client that’s used by administrators, programmers, and engineers alike. There are enhancements to Run SQL Scripts, new 5250 viewing options, and a performance boost for viewing selected files on the IFS with version 1.1.8.5, among other mostly minor updates.
According to the release notes associated with the new iteration of ACS, IBM made a handful of changes with version 1.1.8.5.
Let’s start with the improvements to Run SQL Scripts, which is an increasingly popular utility in ACS that leverages the power of SQL and …
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Man-DB Brings Documentation to IBM i
August 12, 2020 Alex Woodie
IBM i developers who have a question about how a particular command or feature works in open source packages now have an easy way to look up documentations, thanks to the addition of support for the Man-DB utility in IBM i, which IBM unveiled in late July.
Man-DB is an open source implementation of the standard Unix documentation system. It provides a mechanism for easily accessing the documentation that exists for open source packages, such as the Node.js language, or even for commands, like Curl.
The software, which can be installed via YUM, only works with open source software on …
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New IBM CEO’s First Hundred Days: A Mixed Bag
August 10, 2020 Alex Woodie
How did Arvind Krishna do during the first 100 days of his new job as the CEO of IBM? Krishna took the helm during a remarkable stretch in early April, when COVID-19 was clamping down on businesses of all sizes, so he will be forgiven for not completing the wholesale transformation of the 109-year-old company into the hybrid cloud leader during that time. Just the same, some people expected more from him.
The selection of Krishna by IBM’s board of directors is important because he was the architect of the $34 billion Red Hat acquisition, which was announced in October …
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