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  • As I See It: Disruption

    December 11, 2017 Victor Rozek

    Thirty years ago I read something that stayed with me all these years because it delivered the slap of sobering truth. I read it in an environmental journal, and I regret the lack of attribution, but the quote went something like this: “A time will come when environmental degradation will simply continue, with or without our participation.”

    That prospect had never occurred to me. I had assumed there would always be time to turn things around. That sooner or later people would come to understand the severity of the damage being done to the Earth, and would chart a more …

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  • VAI Covers All the Bases With Modernization

    December 6, 2017 Alex Woodie

    There are a lot of ways to “modernize” your IBM i application. You could create Web and mobile user interfaces. You could adopt free form RPG and migrate the database to modern SQL. You could host it all on the cloud. You could integrate analytic capabilities into it. Or, if you’re the IBM i ERP software vendor VAI, you could do all those things.

    VAI has, in fact, done all those things leading up to this year’s release of S2K Enterprise 6.0, and according to CEO and founder Bob Vormittag, the company is reaping big rewards as a result.

    “We’re …

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  • BCD’s Nexus Portal Shows Mobile and API Capabilities

    December 6, 2017 Dan Burger

    Development in IBM i focused organizations — transitions from green-screen to browser-based applications and from monolithic to modular code — cannot ignore the portal piece of the puzzle. It’s the portal that provides secure, organized access to enterprise information for employees, vendors and customers using all types of devices connected to the Web.

    Because so many BCD Software customers are interested in mobile access to data and real-time interactions, the development team got to work on making its Nexus portal more useful and convenient for the tablet and smartphone contingents that crave enhancements to their remote gateways.

    “Our development efforts …

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  • A Profound Replacement For My VisualAge For RPG Applications

    December 6, 2017 Dan Devoe

    In January 2016, I wrote an IT Jungle article outlining how my company, Boston Warehouse Trading Corporation, prolonged the life of our VisualAge for RPG (VaRPG) applications by getting them to work on 64-bit versions of Windows. And I’m pleased to say, that as of Windows 10 Creator’s Edition, they still work. However, the applications are on life support, and we needed to act sooner rather than later to begin the process of replacing the apps whose SDK and support died a premature and painful death.

    We have researched a few application modernization solutions. But it seemed that, when all …

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  • Four Hundred Monitor, December 6

    December 6, 2017 Dan Burger

    Where there is smoke there is probably fire. The odds are not nearly as good that where you find reports there will be data analytics. What tools and capabilities are available to provide deeper insight into the data you have on hand and what difference will it make to the people using the data?

    You can find the answer in Monitor this week. Read a bit farther and you’ll also find informative articles about IBM’s Bluemix and building apps on the internet, what happens when IT loses control of analytics projects, and how to avoid mistakes that lead to preventable …

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  • IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 48

    December 6, 2017 Doug Bidwell

    This week, in Number 48, we have HIPERs (again!), Security, and MQ Groups, as well as some great information on WebSphere to share with all. The HIPERs are about new GA markers, and fixing flight recorder formatting. The Security fixes are about patching SSH for the latest CVE notifications. The MQ message queuing middleware group is about delivering the MQM400 Cumulative fix pack #80008.

    There are also new Recommended Fixes for Telnet, pertaining to memory leaks, and better tracing.

    Here’s the breakdown by release:

    V7R3

    • SI65503
    • MF62915

    V7R2

    • SI65502
    • MF63206

    V7R1

    • SI65496
    • MF62916

    One last thing: IBM published an Official …

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  • Service Extension Outlined For IBM i 7.1 And PowerHA 7.1

    December 4, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

    Operating system suppliers do not like to support too many releases of their code at the same time. It stands to reason because software support costs have people as a foundation, and people only get more expensive, not less so. And the companies that make operating systems have newer code with more features and better security and reliability that they want their customers to move to.

    IBM i 7.1 has been a well-regarded instance of Big Blue’s proprietary midrange operating systems, a line that arguably stretches all the way back to the first release of Control Program Facility (CPF) for …

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  • Is The ‘Golden Age’ of Computing Leaving IBM i Behind?

    December 4, 2017 Alex Woodie

    About 50,000 people descended upon Las Vegas last week for AWS re:Invent, the biggest cloud computing conference in the industry. And AWS didn’t disappoint, rolling out dozens of new services, including automated machine learning, a multi-master NoSQL database, and even a graph database for finding hidden connections among billions of data points. With all the innovation going on at AWS, it’s worth wondering whether cloud innovation is leaving IBM i customers behind.

    AWS CEO Andy Jassy didn’t mince words in describing what he views as the current computing revolution. “We are going through the biggest transformation of technology in our …

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  • Guru: A Handy Function for Unit Testing

    December 4, 2017 Paul Tuohy

    I would like to share a technique I use for dealing with lists in an RPG unit test program. According to Wikipedia, “. . . unit testing is a software testing method by which individual units of source code, sets of one or more computer program modules together with associated control data, usage procedures, and operating procedures, are tested to determine whether they are fit for use.”

    In the world of modern RPG, this translates to writing “test” programs to test a specific piece of code. For example, when I write a subprocedure, I will write a test program that …

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  • Fresche Plan: Guidance Leads To Growth

    December 4, 2017 Dan Burger

    Without wings, an airplane has no chance to fly. A legacy-based IBM i shop is like an airplane without wings. During the past few years, more companies have recognized that IT modernization is necessary. It’s a complex problem with many moving parts and deserves a strategic approach for best results. At the same time, the transition has become an easier problem to solve.

    Tools have evolved and much of the manual labor that was once required has been automated. And service providers have stepped up to handle work that companies are ill-equipped to take on themselves. Companies that are quick …

    Read more

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