• Situation Wanted: DBCS Conversion Expert For Apps Sold Into Japan

  June 10, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Daniel Pirani is a programmer at Columbus Consulting International, based in that capital city in the state of Ohio, and he has recently done a double byte character set (DBCS) conversion of an RPG application so it can be sold into the market in Japan in the indigenous language. We heard of two vendors at the recent POWERUp 2019 conference in Anaheim who had done a similar DBCS conversion, and Pirani coincidentally reached out to us to see if there was demand for such services. We think there could be, and there is only one way to find out: Ask …

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• Profound Marks 20 Years With A Free Dev Site For Node.js

  June 5, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Profound Logic turns 20 years old this year, a remarkable achievement for CEO Alex Roytman and his crew. But instead of receiving presents, the Dayton, Ohio, company gave the IBM i community a gift in NodeRun, a website where developers can create and deploy full-stack Node.js applications that can run in the cloud or on-premise IBM i servers. Best of all, NodeRun is free.

  Profound Logic started way back in 1999 by developing utilities for RPG programmers. As the World Wide Web continued to grow, Profound CEO Alex Roytman and company created new tools to help RPG programmers make the …

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• Fresche Bullish On ‘Factory’ Approach As IBM i Market Improves

  June 5, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Factories offer a level of repeatability, predictability, and efficiency that make the manufacture of goods simpler, less risky, and more profitable than it would otherwise be. Now the folks at Fresche Solutions are taking a factory-based approach to a markedly different endeavor: the modernization of IBM i applications. The early returns from Fresche indicate some optimism may be in order.

  Last week at the POWERUp conference in Anaheim, California, Fresche Solutions CEO Andy Kulakowski and his team spoke at length with IT Jungle about its new factory approach to selling modernization software and services, as well as the recent successes …

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• These ISVs Are Moving To Support IBM i 7.4

  June 5, 2019 Alex Woodie

  We’re just over halfway between the announcement of IBM i 7.4 and general availability. That means that IBM i 7.4 and all of its features – including the much-anticipated Db2 Mirror – are actually still in beta. IBM is hustling to take care of last-minute changes to the release before shipping the software, which is planned for June 21. Many of the independent software vendors sailing the IBM i waters are also gearing up for GA.

  CNX will support IBM i 7.4 with Valence, its framework for developing modern IBM i applications, on June 21. “CNX will support it on …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, June 5

  June 5, 2019 Jenny Thomas

  Four Hundred Monitor is intended to be a quick roundup of news and a resource for happenings in and around our IBM i ecosystem and the IT world in general. Our community may be just a small part of the big picture, but we are mighty when we come together. Take the recent POWERUp19 conference that just happened in Anaheim, California. The IT Jungle team was there mingling with exhibitors, presenters, and attendees, and it was a wonderful reminder of the energy surrounding our platform. Keep an eye on IT Jungle in the coming weeks for more news from the …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 21, Number 22

  June 5, 2019 Doug Bidwell

  Welcome back, and we are back on track after the holiday hiatus with the IBM i PTF Guide. In this edition, you will find that there is Fix Pack 6 available for the Rational Developer for i developer environment. And that’s about it because summer is here – even though the summer solstice doesn’t start until June 21, which is also when IBM i 7.4 ships and when the AS/400 turns 31 years old – it is still summer after Memorial Day here in the United States and people have other things to do.

  Which is good.

  As for …

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• POWERUp Delivers Shot In The Arm To IBM i

  June 3, 2019 Alex Woodie

  The IBM i platform has shown some growth in recent quarters, but it nonetheless faces a plethora of headwinds when it comes to surviving, much less growing, in the coming years. It’s not X86-based, and you can’t find it in the public cloud (at least not yet). It’s definitely not new, and it’s certainly not sexy. (Maybe no server really is at this point.) But coming on the heels of the IBM i 7.4 unveiling in April, the recent POWERUp conference delivered another greatly needed boost to the IBM i community.

  You can be forgiven for thinking the worst of …

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• Speaking The SQL Lingua Franca On IBM i

  June 3, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  No matter what the job is, we all start out somewhere that is pretty far from being an expert and we depend on our elders and mentors to help us learn all the tricks and get good at the work.

  So it is with the nearly ubiquitous database query language, Structured Query Language, or SQL for short. It started out in the head of IBMer Ted Codd back in 1969, which was coincidentally when the System/3 minicomputer launched and its successor many generations later, the System/38 in 1978, was the first IBM system and the first system in the world …

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• Guru: 7.4 Brings New RPG Goodies

  June 3, 2019 Jon Paris

  As I’m sure you know by now, IBM recently announced version 7.4 of IBM i. Along with major enhancements such as Db2 Mirror, we also got a number of new RPG features. In this tip I’ll cover those that are already available in 7.3 via PTF. The 7.4-only enhancements will be covered in a subsequent tip.

  Before we get into the details of the 7.3 features, just a hint of what is to come . . . 7.4 brings the long-awaited arrival of dynamic arrays known to IBM as varying dimension arrays. No more do you have to compromise between …

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• As I See It: In The Face Of Bad Behavior

  June 3, 2019 Victor Rozek

  I can’t remember precisely what was worrying my manager that day. But as we walked down a long hallway, she expounded on some issue having to do with one of the employees under my supervision. Whatever the specific problem, she seemed more troubled than was common, and in an attempt to reassure her, I put my arm around her shoulders and said: “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.”

  That was it. The whole incident took no more than three seconds and I thought no more about it. But months later, over a quiet cup of coffee, she shared the …

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