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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An Investment In APIs For IBM i From Remain Software
June 24, 2020 Alex Woodie
Application programming interfaces (APIs) are not new. But API creation and consumption has surged in recent years as developers adopt more modular and extensible architectures for new and modernized applications. IBM i developers are getting into the act, too, which is leading vendors like Remain Software to cater to them with new tools, like its recently announced API Studio.
A recent survey by API marketplace provider RapidAPI concluded that almost 67 percent of developers expect their API use to increase in 2020 compared to 2019. The company’s CEO, Iddo Gino, said the survey results confirm what the company has seen …
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Security Gaining Attention On IBM i, But More Progress Needed
June 22, 2020 Alex Woodie
First, the good news: IBM i shops are paying more attention to security and are making it a priority, according to the 2020 State of IBM i Security Study. But that isn’t necessarily translating into better security, as too much data remains vulnerable, the new report concludes.
“A deeper understanding of the risks and the security controls built into the OS is currently driving a wave of interest in prioritizing cybersecurity issues on IBM i,” Robin Tatum, director of security technologies at HelpSystems, wrote in the 2020 State of IBM i Security Study, now in its 17th …
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Abacus Cloud Customers Enjoy Wider Ecosystem
June 22, 2020 Alex Woodie
For many years, Abacus Solutions ran its private IBM i cloud business out of a commercial datacenter close to its headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. A few years back, Abacus decided to move its clients’ machines to a new datacenter, and in addition to getting better disaster preparedness, the move opened up a whole new ecosystem of services for its IBM i customers.
The move from Abacus’ old datacenters into new datacenters was completed in 2019, but only recently did Abacus Solutions announce it. To get the low down on the big move, IT Jungle recently caught up with Patrick Schutz, …
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More Open Source Databases Coming To IBM i
June 15, 2020 Alex Woodie
IBM is in the process of bringing several new open source databases to the IBM i platform, including schema-less NoSQL databases as well traditional relational systems. Among the databases that Rochester is targeting are MongoDB, arguably the most popular NoSQL database and a favorite among Web and mobile developers, as well as PostgreSQL, one of the industry’s oldest and most widely used relational databases.
Databases today almost are like programming languages, with developers mixing and matching databases to handle different functions, often within the same application. DB-Engines.com tracks more than 330 distinct databases, while there are somewhere around 700 programming …
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Unit Testing Gets A Boost With ARCAD
June 8, 2020 Alex Woodie
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” The famous management consultant Peter Drucker said those words to relate his philosophy on achieving business success. He didn’t know it at the time, but they would also apply to software development, including the testing of software, which is an area that ARCAD Software knows a thing or two about.
ARCAD Software has been a leader in IBM i testing for many years. It started with Verifier, the company’s flagship regression testing tool, which forms a part of its suite of DevOps tools for IBM i. Verifier helps developers ensure that …
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What’s Behind Syncsort’s Rebranding As Precisely?
June 1, 2020 Alex Woodie
Syncsort, the company that merged with Vision Solutions three years ago and acquired several IBM i security firms, has changed its name to Precisely. According to chief executive officer Josh Rogers, the new name is a better reflection of what the company has become following its acquisition of Pitney Bowes’ data and software business: laser-focused on data integrity.
The name change has been a long time in coming, according to Rogers, who took the helm at Syncsort in 2016. While the Syncsort brand has been around for 50 years, the company’s focus has shifted considerably from the early …
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Seiden Group Offers PHP Migration Service
May 27, 2020 Alex Woodie
Change is in the air when it comes to PHP on IBM i. The free Zend distribution of PHP that has been adopted by thousands of IBM i shops over the years is going away, and it’s being replaced by a new community distribution that’s installed via RPM. But how can you move existing PHP apps to the new environment? Seiden Group has a potential solution.
As we told you last week, the Zend Server Basic environment will stop being offered by Perforce (the company that now owns Zend Technology) or distributed with the IBM i operating system on …
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The End is Near for Zend Server Basic PHP
May 20, 2020 Alex Woodie
Zend Server Basic, the free PHP runtime used by thousands of IBM i shops, will cease being offered starting in July 2021. That’s the word from Perforce, the company that now owns Zend and its lineup of PHP tools and technologies. The replacement, of course, is the new community edition of PHP that became available via RPM in late 2019.
Starting in 2006, Zend Technology began to develop a special version of its PHP runtime for IBM i, which was then called i5/OS. This offering, dubbed Zend Core for i5/OS, provided a familiar way for users of the iSeries server …
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A Simple Web Service Framework from Core-I Solutions
May 20, 2020 Alex Woodie
It can sometimes be difficult for IBM i shops to communicate with the outside world. RPG developers can get lost in the weeds of trying to figure out how to move data off IBM i to another platform. One potential solution is a new REST/Web services framework called Corei RSt that its creator says will simplify APIs.
According to Core-I Solutions principal Jefferson Vaughn, a senior software engineer based in South Carolina, the Corei RSt framework streamlines the process of exposing IBM i data to business partners, customers, and outside developers who aren’t inside the company’s intranet.
The framework leverages …
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Raz-Lee Launches Web Interface for iSecurity Suite
May 20, 2020 Alex Woodie
Green screen interfaces were just fine in the old days of the AS/400. But today, many IBM i administrators would prefer a little more color with their screens. For IBM i shops that use software from Raz-Lee Security to police their system, they now have the option of using a Web-based graphical user interface (GUI) to interact with the company’s entire suite of tools.
Raz-Lee has included GUIs in its offerings for many years. In the 2000s, it developed a Java-based interface for certain components of its iSecurity Suite. More recently, it developed an Eclipse-based product called the iSecurity GUI …
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