• Dropping Soon: IBM’s Big Application Modernization Redbook

  February 4, 2014 Alex Woodie

  Last year in Rochester, before the Polar Vortex swooped down and turned vast stretches of the Upper Midwest into arctic tundra, IBM convened a meeting of the minds like no other. Big Blue flew in dozens of IBM i modernization experts from all over the world to work on a forthcoming Redbook, with the idea of putting down on paper a complete guide for how to remake existing IBM i apps into sleek and powerful programs that will run businesses for decades to come. That Redbook is almost complete. According to sources in the IBM i community, we’ll soon get

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• IBM Adds Latest Sametime Chat Feature to Notes and Domino

  February 4, 2014 Alex Woodie

  Organizations that use the latest release of Notes and Domino can now get a complimentary copy of the Sametime instant messaging software, IBM announced last week. As part of the IBM Sametime Limited Use Entitlement for Notes and Domino version 9.0.1, Notes and Domino users can get access to the chat and presence awareness capabilities delivered with the full copy of Sametime. Customers don’t get access to all of Sametime’s capabilities, which also include voice over IP (VoIP) telephony and audio and video conferencing software. The complimentary copy of Sametime announced last week works across Notes clients, including the full

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• CNX Begins Beta for Valence 4.0

  February 4, 2014 Alex Woodie

  CNX is beginning beta tests for the next major release of Valence, its suite of products for building compelling new Web and mobile applications that run natively on the IBM i server. The company is eyeing mid-March for a GA launch of the new product. Valence is a collection of software for developing modern Web 2.0 and mobile applications that run on the IBM i platform and its Apache-powered Web server. The product includes a version of the Ext JS JavaScript library from Sencha, a set of RPG procedures for accessing existing IBM i business logic, and a Web

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• Gumbo Spices Up IBM i Spool Tools

  February 4, 2014 Alex Woodie

  When it comes to manipulating the spooled file output of IBM i applications, few ISVs have the breadth of coverage of Gumbo Software. Over the past year, the Seattle, Washington, company has bolstered several of its products, including Dicer, SpoolMail, Spool-a-Matic, Excel-erator, and Report Manager. In January, Gumbo unveiled the V1R9 release of Dicer, a utility for merging, sorting, dicing, and duplicating the content of IBM i spooled files. The main new feature in this release is the addition of three new parameters to the Merge Spool File (MRGSPLF) command that enable the IBM i user to specify the

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• Insurer Enjoys ‘Profound’ Transition of 5250 App

  February 4, 2014 Alex Woodie

  In the 1990s, the large Caribbean insurance company Guardian General Insurance Limited started running an insurance administration application on its AS/400. Since then, the application has run admirably, and the company grew. However, in recent years, the system’s 5250 green-screen interface had become a major obstacle to productivity. Thanks to a pair of modernization solutions from Profound Logic, employees now access the system from a Web-based interface. Profound recently posted a case study on the success that Guardian General had with its Genie and Profound UI products. But success was not a guaranteed outcome. Not only was it hard

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• Help/Systems Reduces Annoyances of Multi-OS Job Scheduling

  February 4, 2014 Alex Woodie

  Help/Systems has been in the multi-platform job scheduling business since the launch of Robot/SCHEDULE Enterprise in 2009. With the January launch of version 1.27 of that product, the Robot is delivering more centralized and IBM i-based control over the user profiles that Linux, Unix, and Windows jobs run under. This will simplify life for administrators and reduce the annoyance of repeatedly entering security codes, the company says. The new feature in Robot/SCHEDULE Enterprise version 1.27 will allow administrators to define authorized users on a per-agent basis. That means jobs that are designed in the Robot/SCHEDULE Enterprise environment can now run

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• BCD Flushes More Green from Modernized IBM i Screens

  February 4, 2014 Alex Woodie

  There is only so much you can do when giving an IBM i green screen a GUI makeover. While today’s JavaScript-powered modernization tools are exceptionally more capable than the “screen scrapers” of yesteryear, the underlying 5250 data stream inevitably rears its ugly green head. But with the latest release of its Presto tool, Business Computer Design Int’l. is helping to flush as much of the green as possible from the modernized screen. Presto is an on-the-fly GUI generator for 5250 green screens that BCD unveiled in 2008. The software works by intercepting the 5250 data stream and then converting it

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• Krengel Soothes RPG to XML Integration Needs

  February 4, 2014 Alex Woodie

  When RPG was first created more than 50 years ago, XML was not even a twinkle in a Web developer’s eye. A lot has changed since then, including the emergence of XML as the lingua franca for commerce on the Web. Despite the difference in age, you can, in fact, use XML with your RPG applications. And with the latest release of Krengel Technology‘s RPG-XML Suite version 3.0, the connection between RPG and XML gets stronger than ever. RPG-XML Suite is a collection of RPG service programs and APIs that enable IBM i apps to compose, transmit, and parse

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• Software Change Management Designed For Small IBM i Shops

  February 4, 2014 Dan Burger

  Through years of experience, small IBM i development shops that need software change management tools for their RPG, RPG ILE, and/or Java development have learned they have two options to consider: slim and none. Make that three options now that Remain Software has introduced an affordable version of its enterprise change management product known as TD/OMS Compact, which adds reliability and productivity to the application development process with an overview of software components and configuration. Like any software change management system, TD/OMS is designed to improve software development, testing, and deployment efficiencies, streamline processes, reduce software defects, and ultimately enhance

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• IBM Goes Graphical with PowerVP Performance Tool

  February 4, 2014 Alex Woodie

  Are you getting the most out of your Power Systems server? IBM in December rolled out a new product called Power Virtualization Performance (or PowerVP) that aims to provide a graphical view of the performance of IBM i, AIX, and Linux LPARs in a Power Systems environment. The idea is that, by showing administrators how virtualized workloads are running, they can more effectively detect bottlenecks and other barriers to achieving ultimate Power Systems productivity. PowerVP pulls data directly from the PowerVM hypervisor, and has the capability to show users exactly which virtual workloads are using specific physical resources on an

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