• Scaling Up For Cyber Monday With IBM i

  November 26, 2018 Alex Woodie

  A fulfillment company that’s expected to process millions of transactions on an IBM i server today will lean heavily on a slim layer of RPG-based Web services technology to keep the commerce flowing for its large clients. But there’s nothing stopping the middleware, dubbed iWebSrv, from simplifying data integration for clients in other industries.

  Retailers work all year to ensure they’re ready for the massive surge of traffic that springs up after Thanksgiving. For bricks-and-mortar types, Black Friday is their make-or-break day, while those with an omni-channel bent have Cyber Monday prominently circled on their calendars.

  Consumers are expected to …

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• Break Out Of Your RPG Comfort Zone

  October 29, 2018 Amanda Blackburn

  (Sponsored Content) IBM i developers, like all developers, can get stuck in a rut sometimes. The well-worn path that RPG provides is familiar and reassuring, but it doesn’t necessarily lead your company where it needs to go. That’s why exploring newer IBM i language alternatives, like Node.js, can provide a fresh path towards the goal of business innovation.

  The rapid ascent of the Node.js programming language over the past five years has been well-documented. While Java remains a popular business language, Node.js is now the world’s most popular development framework in all of computing, according to the 2018 …

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• PASE Versus ILE: Which Is Best For Open Source?

  October 22, 2018 Alex Woodie

  Open source has emerged as a driver of innovation in the past 20 years, and has greatly accelerated technological innovation. The proprietary IBM i platform has also benefited from this trend, thanks in large part to the capability to run Linux applications in the PASE runtime. But some members of the IBM i community are concerned that the fruits of the open source innovation have not tasted quite as sweet as they do on other platforms.

  Linux was the original breakout star in open source software, and so it should be no surprise that the vast majority of software developed …

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• New Open Source ERP Suite Written In ILE RPG

  October 15, 2018 Alex Woodie

  There’s something quite novel being introduced today at the Fall COMMON conference in Pittsburgh: An open source ERP package written in free-form RPG. Dubbed intERPprise, the software project is intended to harness core IBM i strengths – its integrated database and ILE environment – but above all, provide an example for what modern and native open source software can look like on IBM i.

  The intERPrise project (www.i-nterprise.org) was spearheaded by a group of IBM i advocates, including Chris Hird and Marinus van Sandwyk, who wanted to demonstrate what a modern business application would look like – and …

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• Infor Elaborates on Coleman, IBM i Strategy

  October 10, 2018 Alex Woodie

  When Infor held its annual Inforum conference two weeks ago, the new AI bot Coleman played a big part, but nary an IBM i word was muttered publically. But that shouldn’t come as a concern to the thousands of companies that rely on the company’s IBM i software to run their businesses, Infor’s IBM i strategy Ross Freeman leader says.

  “We heard the same from Syteline customers. They didn’t hear much about Syteline,” says Freeman, who heads up IBM i strategy for the LX, XA, and System 21 ERP product lines. “We have 235 products and we’re all following the …

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• Guru: A Bevy of BIFs – %Dec to the Rescue

  August 1, 2018 Susan Gantner

  Author’s Note: This tip was first published back in 2009. I’ve updated the code examples here to use free format declarations. In addition I’ve added the potential use of %ScanRpl, which didn’t exist at the original publication date.

  More and more in RPG applications these days, it seems we need to process data that comes from “the dark side.” Translation: from a non-i system. This data could be coming from a browser screen via an RPG CGI program, from a CSV (comma-separated values) flat file, from an XML or JSON document, or myriad other ways. One thing these dark sources …

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• Db2 For i Innovation: Expect The Unexpected

  July 23, 2018 Alex Woodie

  When it comes to planning the future of the database at the heart of the IBM i platform, there’s a lot to be said for taking a conservative approach. Why mess with success? But that’s not necessarily the route taken by IBM’s architect for Db2 for i, Scott Forstie, and the IBM i community is the better for it.

  As the business architect in charge of Db2 for i, it is Forstie’s job to ensure the database meets the needs of IBM i shops around the world. IBM has a duty to protect the investment that its clients have made …

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• Guru: RPG’s New DATA-INTO

  June 18, 2018 Jon Paris

  In this tip I’m going to give a brief introduction to the latest addition to the RPG language. The new DATA-INTO op-code. DATA-INTO is IBM’s response to the oft-asked question: “When is IBM going to introduce JSON-INTO so we can process JSON as easily as XML?”

  DATA-INTO provides this capability, but IBM has very cleverly given it functionality that goes way beyond what a simple JSON-INTO op-code could ever have done. DATA-INTO is effectively a cross between XML-INTO and Open Access. Like XML-INTO it uses the names of items and their hierarchy to unpack the document into RPG variables. Like …

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• Rest4i Eyes Digital Transformation Via API

  March 21, 2018 Alex Woodie

  A new company headed by IBM i software veterans is beginning to turn some heads with a new product aimed at helping IBM i shops with digital transformation strategies. Rest4i, as the outfit is called, says its LXR framework turns IBM i into a lean, mean REST API-serving machine.

  Stuart Milligan, who headed the UK software firm Databorough before it was sold to Fresche Legacy (now Fresche Solutions) way back in 2013, says LXR (pronounced “Lexer”) is the result of four years of investment and development in a “pure IBM i REST API solution.”

  Milligan describes LXR as …

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• New IBM i Technology Refreshes Announced; Available Mid-March

  February 14, 2018 Dan Burger

  IBM yesterday announced that Technology Refresh 8 (TR8) for IBM i 7.2 and TR4 for IBM i 7.3 will provide support for Power9 hardware, enhancements for RPG, security enhancements, and a variety of new capabilities for licensed products. The support for Power9 will be covered elsewhere in this issue of The Four Hundred. Here, we’ll provide an overview of the IBM i operating system, licensed programs, and software.

  When TR enhancements include RPG, I like to begin there. Application developers using Rational Development Studio should take note of the new operation code referred to as DATA-INTO, which adds the …

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