• Taking A Camel-First Approach to Integration

  August 11, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Unicorns and Chupacabras may not exist on this planet, but camels certainly do. And according to midrange open source guru Jesse Gorzinski, IBM i shops would do well to take a camel-first approach to integration challenges.

  The camel, of course, is Apache Camel, the Java-based integration framework that’s designed to connect two or more systems. During the recent OCEAN TechCon21 conference, Gorzinski, IBM’s business development manager for open source on IBM i, presented a compelling overview of Camel and how it can benefit administrators and developers in an IBM i environment.

  “Apache Camel can make it pretty easy to …

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• RDi On Mac Users Are In For A Big Sur-prise

  August 2, 2021 Alex Woodie

  IBM i developers who run Rational Developer for IBM i (RDi) on macOS are running into trouble getting the IDE to run on the latest release of macOS Big Sur, version 11.5. However, with patience and perseverance, IBM i developers are finding ways to get it to run. An official fix from IBM has yet to be made.

  Reports of problems getting RDi 9.6 to run on Big Sur emerged in June, when users began to post reports on IBM i chat boards, including the new IBM Community site. Users reported problems installing RDi on Big Sur, as well as …

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• Open Source Technology Stands On The Shoulders Of Legacy Applications

  May 3, 2021 Michael Killian

  From microservices to the cloud, executives often want to follow all the latest IT trends. Application developers are no different, except that they want to preserve all of the hard work they and their colleagues have done, while still meeting the new demands of the business. How can this be done? The answer could lie in employing open-source technologies, but in a manner that acknowledges that these technologies would never have been able to flourish without business-oriented languages such as RPG and the applications that millions of programmers have created and supported over more than four decades.

  RPG Gave Us

  …

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• ILEditor2: Satisfying The Need For Development Speed

  April 28, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Liam Allan doesn’t like anything to slow him down. “I’m impatient,” says the young IBM i phenom. So when he’s writing RPG or COBOL, the code editor had best keep up with him. That’s a problem using something like Rational Developer for IBM i (RDi), which Allan doesn’t particularly care for. And that is one of the primary reasons why Allan developed ILEditor, which is now in its second incarnation as ILEditor 2.

  Just over a year ago, Allan and his business partner, Connor Holyday, shipped the first release of ILEditor 2. The pair had just completed an extensive …

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• Remain Buys MiWorkplace, Integrates It Into TD/OMS

  March 10, 2021 Alex Woodie

  In 2020, Remain Software quietly acquired MiWorkplace, a lightweight integrated development environment (IDE) for IBM i. Last month, the company announced that it has completed the integration of MiWorkplace into TD/OMS, its change management system for IBM i. It also rolled out new releases of TD/OMS, Remain API Studio, and Gravity.

  MiWorkplace is a Java-based IDE out of Germany that’s been building a user base among the IBM i customer base for a few years. The software, which runs on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux, was developed primarily to provide a better coding experience for SEU users, not as a …

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• mrc Refreshes IBM i Low-Code Dev Tool

  March 3, 2021 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that use the latest release of mrc’s m-Power Web app development tool will find the tool easier to use and that applications can be developed faster than before, the company says.

  mrc markets m-Power as a low-code development platform that supports IBM i and other Java platforms. The software is not a full-blown integrated development environment (IDE), the Chicago-based vendor says. But if the user is looking to quickly generate Web interfaces, dashboards, reports, portals, or mobile apps for existing IBM i applications, then it is a good fit.

  The vendor says it built the new release …

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• VS Code Provides Another Coding Option for IBM i

  December 9, 2020 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that are looking for an alternative to IBM’s Rational Developer for IBM i (RDi) may want to check out a lightweight code editor from Microsoft called Visual Studio Code (VS Code). Thanks to extensions for IBM i languages developed by the opensource community, VS Code can support native development in RPG, CL, and SQL.

  First released by Microsoft in 2015, VS Code provides a basic environment for writing and editing code. It features debugging, syntax highlighting, intelligent code completion, snippets, and code refactoring, as well as embedded Git. It runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac, and while …

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• New Release Of ACS Now Available

  December 9, 2020 Alex Woodie

  IBM delivered a new release of Access Client Solutions (ACS) last week, right on schedule. With ACS version 1.1.8.6, users will find a host of new features designed to accelerate their productivity across a range of uses.

  ACS is the Java-based utility that has become one of the most used (and useful) ways that administrators, programmers, and engineers can interact with the IBM i server. The software, which is free to IBM i customers on maintenance, features a 5250 emulator, 5250 printer emulation, data transfer capabilities, IFS file viewing, spool file management, and a virtual console for LAN and HMC …

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• Visual LANSA Customers Can Now ‘Portalize’ Their Apps

  September 2, 2020 Alex Woodie

  LANSA is well known to IBM i shops for its low-code developer tools. But the company also has its share of shrink-wrapped applications. With the recent launch of pre-build Web portal called Portalize, it’s added another to its collection.

  Portalize is a portal framework that Visual LANSA customers can use to get a secure Web portal up and running with a minimal amount of effort. The product, which LANSA introduced in June, supplies the core components that an organization would need to get a portal off the ground, such as security, account creation, authentication, and logging capabilities.

  The software, which …

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• Idera Bolsters Visual LANSA 15

  May 13, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Idera last month issued the first major announcement for its LANSA product lineup since it bought the application development toolmaker last year. With Visual LANSA 15, the company has delivered more than 500 enhancements, including a new API creation experience, native chart controls for Web apps, and a host of sample apps, among many other new features.

  Before LANSA sold itself to Idera in January 2019, Visual LANSA was the company’s flagship integrated development environment (IDE) for creating modern graphical applications that run on IBM i, Windows, and cloud platforms.

  While Visual LANSA users can get down and dirty …

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