Dan Burger
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Modernization and Mobile Lead BCD Development Efforts
May 15, 2012 Dan Burger
… Read moreWhether working from ground zero or building on existing investments, BCD‘s application development products have long been used by IBM midrange shops. One of the reasons is BCD’s continual investment in developing its product lineup, which handles everything from quick green-screen Web-enablement to multi-platform Web development. And for companies unfamiliar with BCD, here’s a surprise–the company has a newly enhanced business intelligence tool as well.
Most IBM i shops are talking about application modernization projects. And each year there are more of these projects deployed. The majority are quick and simple transformations of green-screen apps to Web apps. And
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New RPG Open Access Standard Depends On XML
May 14, 2012 Dan Burger
… Read moreA group of RPG heavyweights, including IBM, have come together in support of the first standard pertaining to RPG Open Access. But to understand RPG Open Access, start with the importance of RPG interfacing with other technologies. That’s not all that common. RPG has a reputation for its proprietary chains. Mistakenly this stops with the topic of green screens and graphical user interfaces. In reality, it is about the separation of the user interface from the business logic.
This newly created standard, which was announced May 8, attempts to get below the surface. It is targeted at extending the
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Do The Twin Cities Two Stop With Help/Systems And RJS Software
May 14, 2012 Dan Burger
… Read moreTwo IBM i software vendors in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area–with the IBM i homestead in Rochester just down the road–have user conferences planned for mid-September. You couldn’t pick a better time, weather-wise, to explore the upper Midwest, so why not pick up some technical knowledge at the same time?
Help/Systems, an automation software vendor, will set up in downtown Minneapolis September 17 to 20. RJS Software, the document management and business process company, will host its event at the company headquarters in Burnsville September 18 through 20.
The agenda for Help/Systems will include topics on IBM i operations,
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Profound Declares Platform Independence Day
May 8, 2012 Dan Burger
… Read moreHow do you transform application modernization from something that appeals to techno geeks who love the challenge of coding magic into something that gets the attention of the C-level executives with the big picture business plans? Make it simple and make it platform independent. And let them know the in-house IT skills can handle the job. That pretty much sums up what Profound Logic has done with its latest release of Profound UI.
Credit the product development team at Profound with its continual efforts in adding enhancements to its tools for building Web and mobile applications as well as modernizing
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looksoftware Talks Implementation and Invigoration
May 8, 2012 Dan Burger
… Read moreIf there were flags for RPG and IBM i, looksoftware would be waving them. At its annual user conference, which is cleverly named “lookahead,” there was plenty of “can do” for the IBM midrange advocates in attendance. CEO Brendan Kay was noticeably energized during his closing session Thursday and it carried over to our conversation afterward as he spoke in glowing terms about the IBM i platform, RPG programmers, and the projects completed and under way at looksoftware customer sites.
Accomplishments rather than a new product focus dominated at the conference. Kay was obviously pleased that with the last major
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Apps And IBM i Evangelism
May 7, 2012 Dan Burger
… Read more“You’re only as old as your apps feel.” I can’t get that thought out of my head. Thank you, Trevor Perry. Of all the things that were said Friday by Preacher Perry and the other ordained evangelists at the iBelieve revival meeting, those few words summed it up best for me. If the IBM i is going to escape eternal damnation in some IT closet in Hades, application developers are going to be responsible for saving its soul. Old applications, dependent on and limited by the 5250 data stream and green type on a black background must go.
I can
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Software Change Management Migrations Are Not Impossible
May 7, 2012 Dan Burger
… Read moreTossing out enterprise grade software–even if it is inadequate or too damn expensive–is never a decision to be taken lightly. Good decision making depends on good information gathering and solid planning. In IBM i shops where application development has been a vital function for many years, change management software has been essential to the creation of quality industrial-strength code. But like any other software, software change management tools are not always a good fit or automatically conducive to a pleasant vendor/customer relationship.
A term you don’t hear a lot about outside of personal conversations is company lockdown or sometimes called
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Infinite’s Migration Plan Targets IBM i ISVs
May 7, 2012 Dan Burger
… Read moreInfinite Corporation, a company that specializes in migrating OS/400 and IBM i applications to Windows, Unix, and Linux platforms, has targeted IBM i ISVs with a migration plan that the company says has proved to be successful in Argentina.
The migration plan provides the tools to move RPG or COBOL applications written for the AS/400 or System/36 environment to Microsoft Windows Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Oracle Enterprise Linux (its RHEL clone) and Solaris (its Unix), and IBM AIX. Infinite’s CEO Bruce Acacio says approximately 60 ISVs in Argentina have gone through the migration process and that success led
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IBM Finds Signs Of Talented Youth At AITP
April 30, 2012 Dan Burger
… Read moreThere was something happening here. Aaron Bartell has presented dozens, maybe hundreds, of technical sessions on the local user group circuit and at the notable IBM i conferences like COMMON, DevCon, and the RPG & DB2 Summit. His audiences are diverse, but one thing they aren’t is young. As he looked out at the attendees of his most recent session, he was struck by the change in landscape. Everyone was young.
Bartell was presenting a session called “Introduction to Android Development for RPG Programmers” in a classroom of about 40 interested college students at the AITP National
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Fax Incentive Program Offered By Quadrant Software
April 30, 2012 Dan Burger
… Read moreBacking up its launch of fax over IP (FoIP) software earlier this month, Quadrant Software has introduced a Quadrant FastFax customer trade-up program that provides a path for companies to migrate from its existing hardware/software combination to QuadraDocV virtual FoIP software. Companies that are staying with the traditional fax hardware setup will find a trade-in discount program as well.
The benefit of moving from hardware-based fax is the elimination of hardware management and maintenance and the canceling of subscriptions for analog phone lines. FoIP software runs within a VMware virtual machine. It provides the same fax capabilities as Quadrant’s hardware-based