• Db2 And SQL Services Get Upgrades With TRs

  October 12, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Among the biggest enhancements that IBM is bringing to IBM i with the latest batch of Technology Refreshes are new capabilities added to the integrated Db2 database and, specifically, the slew of SQL-based services that retrieve all types of data from the platform for IBM i professionals.

  As we previously told you, IBM has decided to rename SQL Services, which were the collection of pre-defined SQL queries that recreate traditional IBM i commands and sometimes bring something entirely new. The growing gaggle of services (or perhaps it’s a herd?) are now being officially referred to as IBM i services, …

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• Now You Can Transform RPG Code Into PHP

  September 21, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Assuming an average of 5 million lines of code at IBM i shops – a number I heard recently thrown around – in their homegrown or heavily customized third party applications, IBM i shops are collectively sitting on something like 750 billion lines of code. Just ponder that for a minute.

  This code, which is predominantly written in RPG but with a fair proportion of Java and COBOL plus a smattering of more modern languages, is going to have to be maintained and tweaked in the coming years. Just like it had to be updated and debugged time and again …

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• Is It Time To Rename RPG?

  August 24, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Should IBM rename RPG, and if so, what should the new name be? It’s an interesting idea, and one that was recently floated by a member of the IBM i community, who submitted an official request for enhancement (RFE) on the matter. The crux of the argument is that full free-format RPG is such a dramatic departure from fixed-format RPG that it deserves a new name. But will IBM, which owns the language, go along with the change?

  Report Program Generator, or RPG, debuted way back in 1959, at the dawn of the computer age, as a way to replicate …

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• New Option Emerges for Refactoring IBM i Apps

  August 19, 2020 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that want to refactor their RPG and COBOL applications into different languages have a new option available to them. In late June, Astadia and Blu Age announced they’re working together on a new service that automates the conversion of customers’ older apps into Java and .NET code that can run on X86 systems in your basement or the cloud.

  Based in Boston, Massachusetts, Astadia claims to have completed more than 200 mainframe migrations and more than 100 mainframe modernization projects over about two-and-a-half decades. The company has modernized millions of lines of COBOL code running on mainframes …

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• The Battle Of The Single-Core IBM i Machines

  July 20, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Last week, IBM announced a revamped lineup of entry Power9 systems, including a new single-core variant of the Power S922 server aimed at IBM i shops that will replace the long-running Power S812 and the Power S914 for IBM i customers with modest compute performance and storage requirements. The announcement of the single-core Power S922 comes just as the stay of execution for the Power S812 will be running out on August 31.

  In the issue last week, we told you that we didn’t have a lot of the details on the pricing of the new single-core Power …

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• The Power S812 Gets Yet Another Stay Of Execution

  July 6, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The Power S812 entry server, which is based on the Power8 processor and which has no analog in the Power9-based Power Systems lineup, has received yet another reprieve from being removed from the Big Blue product catalog. It is a wonder why IBM doesn’t just say it will sell this Lazarus machine indefinitely and get it over with, to be honest.

  The Power S812, particularly the “Mini” variant that IBM announced on Valentine’s Day in 2017, are the skinniest – in terms of processing and memory capacity – of the Power Systems line that supports the IBM i operating …

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• IBM Wheels And Deals With Solution Edition Booster Pack

  June 8, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  A few weeks ago, we told you about the double memory and double I/O request for price quote (RPQ) special deals that IBM quietly rolled out in April without putting out any announcement letters and that are still in effect until June 30. So consider this a reminder that these deals are still out there and now is a good time to invest in new Power9 iron if you want to pay less for it than you otherwise might.

  But that is not all you can get. As it turns out, Big Blue is revamping its IBM i Solution Edition …

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• ILEditor 2 Gives IBM i Shops A New Development Option

  May 6, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Liam Allan recently unveiled ILEditor 2, a new integrated development environment (IDE) for IBM i. The new IDE sports a fresher look and better performance compared to the first version of ILEditor, as well as an extensible plug-in system, which should also deliver better code coverage.

  For many years, members of the IBM i community have expressed frustration by the high price, size, and performance of Rational Developer for i (RDi), which is IBM’s flagship development tool for the IBM i community. While the IDE’s performance has improved in recent years, members of the community still bemoan the …

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• Guru: Copy From Stream File FMTOPT(*NOCHK)

  April 13, 2020 Bob Cozzi

  Using SQL frequently, as I do, I tend to look for solutions to problems that can be resolved using the database language (i.e., SQL). Sometimes I have to invent a missing piece of the puzzle. Often that entails writing a User-Defined Function (UDF) for use in SQL, but sometimes a CL command is the better choice.

  Recently I had a situation where what the client calls an “EDI File” was being downloaded using sftp on the IBM server running i. This file is created at a vendor that runs IBM mainframes (an actual mainframe by the way) and the file …

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• Guru Classic: Overlaid Packed Data In Data Structures

  March 4, 2020 Jon Paris

  When I re-read this tip while looking for a “Classic” candidate, I was reminded that the underlying issue it addresses, namely how data is actually stored in an RPG program, is one that many RPG programmers don’t really have a firm grip on. That alone made it a good candidate. But perhaps even more important is demonstrating this topic to the many new programmers coming onto the platform. Unlike those of us who started off with assembly languages, C, RPG, or COBOL, modern programmers trained in C#, Python, or PHP have never had any need to understand the mechanics of …

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