• IBM Rolls Out ACS 1.1.8.5

  August 12, 2020 Alex Woodie

  IBM last week introduced a new release of Access Client Solutions (ACS), the popular IBM i client that’s used by administrators, programmers, and engineers alike. There are enhancements to Run SQL Scripts, new 5250 viewing options, and a performance boost for viewing selected files on the IFS with version 1.1.8.5, among other mostly minor updates.

  According to the release notes associated with the new iteration of ACS, IBM made a handful of changes with version 1.1.8.5.

  Let’s start with the improvements to Run SQL Scripts, which is an increasingly popular utility in ACS that leverages the power of SQL and …

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• Getting Out Of The Catch-22 Of Application Transformation

  August 3, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  If starting up a business is hard, maintaining that business can be even more difficult. Conditions and tastes change over time, and applications that drive the business can feel the strain.

  Upper management and IT organizations might have the skills to keep business applications going and make modest changes here and there, or perhaps add a new product line or two. But they usually do not have the time or people to do anything too radical, such as modernizing and transforming those applications to work in completely new ways. This is where bringing in a product and services partner comes …

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• More Open Source Databases Coming To IBM i

  June 15, 2020 Alex Woodie

  IBM is in the process of bringing several new open source databases to the IBM i platform, including schema-less NoSQL databases as well traditional relational systems. Among the databases that Rochester is targeting are MongoDB, arguably the most popular NoSQL database and a favorite among Web and mobile developers, as well as PostgreSQL, one of the industry’s oldest and most widely used relational databases.

  Databases today almost are like programming languages, with developers mixing and matching databases to handle different functions, often within the same application. DB-Engines.com tracks more than 330 distinct databases, while there are somewhere around 700 programming …

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• Guru: Graphical Debugging Through ACS

  June 8, 2020 Ted Holt

  ACS (IBM i Access Client Solutions) keeps getting better and better. I can’t stay up-to-date with the latest releases of all the software I use, but I do everything I can to keep up-to-date with ACS. One of the handiest of the relatively most recent releases is the ability to access IBM i Debugger through Run SQL Scripts. If you haven’t tried IBM i Debugger, you’re missing out.

  IBM i Debugger (a.k.a. System Debugger) is part of the IBM Toolkit for Java. It’s graphical, and it makes the green-screen debugger (STRDBG) look like something built by cavemen. To show you …

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• COBOL Is Not The Problem; The Data Is

  June 1, 2020 Brad Thomas

  The COVID-19 pandemic has put a spotlight on COBOL, with multiple news stories about COBOL systems struggling as unprecedented demands have been placed on them. And then there are the urgent requests for COBOL developers to help ensure these mission-critical systems do their jobs.

  Eventually, the dust will settle, but some tough decisions will loom for organizations that rely on COBOL. The reality, though, is these decisions were already on the horizon because of the constant evolvement of other data management technologies, surging data production and the rapidly increasing average age of COBOL developers. When the dust does settle, it …

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• Raz-Lee Launches Web Interface for iSecurity Suite

  May 20, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Green screen interfaces were just fine in the old days of the AS/400. But today, many IBM i administrators would prefer a little more color with their screens. For IBM i shops that use software from Raz-Lee Security to police their system, they now have the option of using a Web-based graphical user interface (GUI) to interact with the company’s entire suite of tools.

  Raz-Lee has included GUIs in its offerings for many years. In the 2000s, it developed a Java-based interface for certain components of its iSecurity Suite. More recently, it developed an Eclipse-based product called the iSecurity GUI …

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• How GraphQL Can Improve IBM i APIs

  March 9, 2020 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops are embracing APIs as a method for accessing data and programs, just like the wider IT world. As RESTful Web services overtook SOAP-based ones in popularity, IBM i shops moved with them. Now a new approach to Web services, dubbed GraphQL, is gaining traction in the wider IT world, and leading IBM i developers are right there again.

  GraphQL, if you’re not familiar, is a relatively new language and runtime for exposing and consuming APIs. The software, which was originally developed in 2015 by Facebook to streamline delivery of content in complex environments, essentially provides an abstraction …

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• Guru Classic: More iSphere Goodies

  March 4, 2020 Susan Gantner

  This Guru Classic tip is my third in a series exploring the iSphere RDi plug-in. In this tip I’ll cover two additional ways in which iSphere expands the RDi toolset. There are a few details that I’ve updated in this new version of the tip due to updates in either RDi or the iSphere tool itself. Plus I have added an additional tip based on how I’ve seen one of these features utilized.

  Binding Directory Editor

  I’ve long been baffled at the lack of support in RDi for binding directories; it seems like something modern developers certainly use. In the …

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• Guru Classic: Tuning SQL Environments On i

  March 4, 2020 Paul Tuohy

  Author’s Note: This article was originally published in November 2015. This was one of the first DB2 for i Services that I used in anger. I have used a lot since.

  One of the frustrating things about being a speaker at conferences is that when you want to attend another session with a topic that piques your interest, it invariably clashes with when you are speaking. But every now and again, the scheduling gods work in your favor. Such was the case when I spoke at the excellent International i-Power 2015 conference at Wyboston Lakes Executive Centre in the UK. …

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• Why Koch Is Buying the Rest of Infor

  February 12, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Koch Equity Development last week announced that it has bought the remaining shares of Infor that it didn’t previously own. The move puts Koch Industries in charge of the world’s third largest ERP software company, and the IBM i market’s biggest vendor. But what, exactly, drove the $110-billion industrial conglomerate into making such an investment is the subject of some speculation.

  Infor, which has been flirting with an IPO for years, appeared to be on the fast-track for a Wall Street listing in January 2019, when it raised $1.5 billion in what, ostensibly, would be the last private equity …

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