• Remain Puts Itself Back On The Map In The United States

  July 16, 2018 Alex Woodie

  Remain Software is based in The Netherlands, which is in Europe. That may be news to some of the company’s American customers, which is why the provider of software change management (SCM) solutions for IBM i is opening up a new office in the United States.

  It may be difficult to find The Netherlands (sometimes called Holland) on a map. It’s a relatively small country, a little bigger than the state of Maryland, tucked into the northwest corner of the continent, right next to two other low countries – Belgium and Luxemborg – that geographically challenged Americans may also find …

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• VACAVA’s Low-Code Approach To Modernization

  July 9, 2018 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops have lots of options when it comes to application modernization. At one end of the spectrum are screen-scraper tools, which can provide a quick fix for shops tired with the 5250 interface. IBM i shops with more time, money, and inspiration may choose to completely rewrite their application on a new platform. Somewhere in between lies RapidBIZ, a low-code modernization affair from VACAVA.

  The folks at VACAVA knows a thing or two about the IBM i platform. For starters, the company is based in Rochester, Minnesota, home of the world-famous IBM lab where the AS/400 was created …

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• CNX Opens Up Valence to Non-IBM i Platforms

  June 20, 2018 Alex Woodie

  CNX has removed several key technological limitations in its Valence application development framework, ranging from what JavaScript libraries the software works with, all the way to what server operating systems the generated applications run on.

  Despite its numerical designation, the launch of Valence version 5.2 at the COMMON POWERUp18 conference in San Antonio, Texas, last month was hailed by CNX as a major announcement. According to Richard Milone, CNX’s co-founder and managing partner, the company was able to complete several major development projects in time for the delivery of version 5.2.

  Four major changes accompany the release, according to Milone. …

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• Raz-Lee Debuts Anti-Ransomware For IBM i

  June 18, 2018 Alex Woodie

  Despite its reputation as a secure digital fortress for back office automation, the IBM i server is subject to all manner of modern security threats. That includes ransomware, which can work its way onto mapped IFS drives and render business documents stored on the IBM i server useless. Raz-Lee Security recently launched a new solution aimed at combatting the spread of ransomware on IBM i.

  Today’s business environment rewards companies that embrace openness. Companies are encouraged to open up their mainframes and IBM i servers and leverage the data and business processes they contain using APIs, microservices, and modern user …

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• What Cloud Providers Must Do To Attract IBM i

  June 13, 2018 Lief Morin

  The cloud is a compelling platform for almost every business. It’s real, and it’s here to stay. There are many reasons cloud consumption models are attractive, starting with the big four: predictable payments and cost savings, consistency of service, almost unlimited elasticity and access to advanced services and personnel. These are the benefits that cloud service providers have emphasized most as clients try to understand how cloud services might work best in their enterprise.

  The real benefits of the cloud, however, go far beyond these three things. As the cloud matures and service providers’ offerings blur into each other, they …

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• Keep Your IBM i Baby, Not The Bathwater

  May 7, 2018 Alex Woodie

  In the quest to modernize computer systems, some IBM i shops cease being IBM i shops. Wholesale migrations or complete rewrites of applications on different operating systems are sometimes necessary and beneficial, and sometimes they do more harm than good. When King III Solutions set out to enhance its advanced replenishment system, it managed to create a modern Web front-end that resonates with millennials without giving up its rock-solid IBM i back-end.

  Based in Marietta, Georgia, King III Solutions, or K3S, develops software that helps wholesale distributors and retailers better manage their inventory, in part through a collection of …

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• A Closer Look At Enhancements To Integrated Web Services

  March 21, 2018 Dan Burger

  Technology Refresh 8 for IBM i 7.2 and TR4 for IBM i 7.3 became available last week. One of the enhancements in this TR pertains to the Integrated Web Services (IWS), which Business Architect for IBM i Application Development Tim Rowe calls IWS “one of our most widely used pieces of software from an integrated perspective.”

  Web services provide the capability to expose the database to outside developers via APIs and Web services. Although that thought brings a shiver down the spine of many developers who learned the proprietary ways of the AS/400, multi-platform integration is the modern development path. …

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• Guru: Searching Teraspace

  March 5, 2018 Jon Paris

  In my previous tip, Sorting In Teraspace, I looked at how the qsort API can be used to sequence data in ways that SortA can’t begin to approach. Now that the data is sorted, one of the things I may want to do with it is to search it. In this tip I will look at how that can be achieved using the bsearch API. The approach I will be discussing allows for partial key searches and handling the fact that such a search may result in multiple hits.

  As you will see when we work through the code, …

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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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• HATS Finds A RESTful ‘Swagger’

  November 13, 2017 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops will gain access to new API tooling on Thursday, when IBM ships a new release of its Rational Host Access Transformation Services (HATS) software that supports Swagger, a popular open-source specification for designing, generating, documenting, and consuming REST-based APIs.

  APIs built using the Representational State Transfer (REST) protocol have become the primary way that companies expose their applications and data in a programmatic way. By defining one’s application program interfaces (APIs) in the RESTful style – as opposed to, say, the older, XML-heavy Simple Object Application Protocol (SOAP) style – companies can join in, and partake of, …

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