• Thoroughly Modern: Why Now Is The Time To Transform Your RPG/COBOL To Modern Languages

  October 7, 2024 Chris Koppe

  RPG and COBOL run some of the most important systems in business. But while your competitors release new products and features in weeks, you wait for months. That lag time is a silent threat – one that slowly erodes your competitive edge.

  Every hour spent waiting for an update, every feature delayed, is a lost opportunity. Your systems – once considered state-of-the-art – are now rigid, slow to evolve, and difficult to integrate with new technologies. While RPG/COBOL still power critical operations, they no longer support the speed and flexibility required for today’s business. The world moves faster now, and …

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• The Many Faces Of IT Modernization

  October 7, 2024 Alex Woodie

  The clarion call of modernization has been heard loud and clear among IBM i and System z shops for decades. Old IT is hampering your competitiveness, they’re told, and something must be done about it. In reality, there’s no single path to modernization, which is a multi-faceted phenomenon that can have wide ranging impacts on the business, Rocket Software says in a new report.

  Business transformation is separate from IT transformation, but the two are linked, according to Rocket Software’s new study, titled IT Modernization Without Disruption, which is based on a survey of 309 decision-maker at System …

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• Remain Bolsters Development Options with TD/OMS

  September 18, 2024 Alex Woodie

  Remain Software recently rolled out a major upgrade to its change management software for IBM i. The big enhancements with TD/OMS 16.1 include the availability of Remain’s Web-based development framework, dubbed Octo, as well as support for the popular Web-based IDE, VS Code.

  Remain Software introduced Octo more than two years ago as a lightweight Web-based framework to unite its various IBM i offerings. Short for Open Core for Technology Orchestration, Octo was initially put forward as a way to integrate and display information from other Remain Software applications, such as TD/OMS, Gravity, API Studio, and MiWorkplace, its lightweight, Web-based …

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• Could a CrowdStrike-Type Outage Hit IBM i?

  August 21, 2024 Alex Woodie

  It’s been a month since CrowdStrike caused a massive IT outage that took down large swaths of the Internet, causing billions of dollars in damage. The CrowdStrike outage was a Windows-only affair, but it’s worth asking: Could a similar incident impact IBM i?

  The largest IT outage in history began the morning of July 19, when a poorly configured update to CrowdStrike’s endpoint security software, called Falcon, caused 8.5 million Windows computers to crash, resulting in the dreaded blue screen of death (BSOD).

  For computer users of a certain vintage, the BSOD is – or at least was – …

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• How Polverini Enables End-to-End Testing on IBM i

  August 5, 2024 Alex Woodie

  Testing is one of the most time-consuming and least glamorous parts of software development. But doing it well is important, as the July 19 CrowdStrike outage so potently reminded us. When it comes to ensuring that IBM i programs are thoroughly tested, a relatively new end-to-end testing solution from Polverini & Partners can potentially take some of the drudgery and error out of the process.

  Polverini & Partners recently announced ReplicTest, a new product aimed at automating all aspects of the software testing process on IBM i, including unit testing, acceptance testing, regressing testing, security testing, integration testing, and stress …

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• IBM Begins the Purge of Old Greenscreen Utilities

  July 10, 2024 Alex Woodie

  IBM is prepping the IBM i community to prepare to adapt to some substantial changes that are coming with the next release of IBM i, including the end of support for a large swath of the Application Development ToolSet (ADTS) that ships with Rational Development Studio (RDS). Source Entry Utility (SEU) and Programming Development Manager (PDM) are not among the ADTS tools getting the boot, but that’s not stopping midrange professionals from speculating that their time in IBM i is limited, too.

  As part of its May 7 Technology Refresh for IBM i 7.4 and 7.5, IBM issued a “software …

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• Where Do RPG Programmers Come From? And Other IBM i Questions

  July 10, 2024 Alex Woodie

  The IBM i community has faced a skills crunch off and on for the past decade or longer, as Baby Boomers retire and IBM i shops struggle to find replacements. One big reason for the hiring gap is that the old ways of finding new RPG programmers and other IBM i professionals no longer work like they used to, according to IBM i educator Jim Buck.

  “What they did for years was they just stole from the guys down the road,” said Buck, who is the president and CEO of IBM i training company imPower Technologies. ‘“I’ll go to …

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• IBM Banking on Merlin 2.0 to Goose Modern Development on IBM i

  June 19, 2024 Alex Woodie

  IBM last week shipped most of the new stuff unveiled in the Spring Technology Refreshes, which includes Merlin 2.0, the Web-based application development and modernization environment for IBM i. Big Blue is betting that the new and improved offering will encourage IBM i shops to (finally) begin their journey toward truly modern coding techniques.

  Friday, June 14 marked the start of general availability for the majority of the features IBM is including in IBM i 7.5 TR4 and IBM i 7.4 TR10, which it announced on May 8. The version 2.0 release of Merlin – whose official IBM name …

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• MDNA Launches Unit Testing Tool for IBM i

  June 19, 2024 Alex Woodie

  Midrange Dynamics North America (MDNA) recently launched a new unit testing tool that’s designed to make it easier for IBM i developers to test their code. The software, called MDTest, is works with RDi and VS Code and integrates with MDNA’s change management software for IBM i.

  MDNA created MDTest to provide for a simple way for developers to unit test their ILE code. The software automates the process of executing test scripts, recording results, and determining whether the software can be pushed into the next stage of the DevOps processes.

  The product includes about 30 pre-built software quality tests …

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• ARCAD Breaks Up Monolithic Code With New Transformer Tool

  June 3, 2024 Alex Woodie

  There are many different aspects to application modernization: moving from 5250 greenscreens to Web interfaces, adopting the SQL database engine, and using DevOps techniques. Another part of modernization is breaking up monolithic codebases into smaller, more manageable chunks that can be more readily integrated using APIs and Web services, and that’s the goal of a new version of its Transformer product line launched recently by ARCAD Software.

  ARCAD Software already offers several capabilities under its Transformer brand, including Transformer RPG for converting fixed-format RPG to free-format RPG; Transformer DB for converting DDS files to modern DDL tables; Transformer Field for …

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