• 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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• A Simple Web Service Framework from Core-I Solutions

  May 20, 2020 Alex Woodie

  It can sometimes be difficult for IBM i shops to communicate with the outside world. RPG developers can get lost in the weeds of trying to figure out how to move data off IBM i to another platform. One potential solution is a new REST/Web services framework called Corei RSt that its creator says will simplify APIs.

  According to Core-I Solutions principal Jefferson Vaughn, a senior software engineer based in South Carolina, the Corei RSt framework streamlines the process of exposing IBM i data to business partners, customers, and outside developers who aren’t inside the company’s intranet.

  The framework leverages …

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• What’s New In Open Source With The Latest TRs

  April 27, 2020 Alex Woodie

  New technology is exciting. And when it can help you run your business more profitably or efficiently, well, it becomes very exciting. With IBM i, the open source community is arguably the biggest contributor of new technology to the platform. IT Jungle recently checked in Jesse Gorzinski, the IBM i open source architect, to hear how the open source story has improved with the recent technology refreshes.

  Arguably the biggest open source-related enhancement with IBM i 7.4 TR2 and 7.3 TR8 revolves around a change in RPM, the new delivery method that IBM adopted two years ago to distribute new …

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• Guru: Calling RPG Programs From Python, Part 2

  April 27, 2020 Mike Larsen

  In Calling RPG Programs From Python, Part 1, I showed how to call an RPG program from a Python script passing single string parameters as input and output. In the second part of this series, I’ll make the process a little more robust by passing a data structure to the RPG program.

  The first part of the Python script (shown in the first piece of code below) imports the itoolkit modules and assigns them to local names. Next, I set up the first command that adds a library list entry to where the RPG object resides.

  from itoolkit import 

  …

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• Guru: Calling RPG Programs From Python, Part 1

  March 30, 2020 Mike Larsen

  In a prior article, I showed how to pass parameters to a Python script and execute the script from an RPG program. Based on feedback and my own curiosity, I wanted to see how I could pass parameters to an RPG program and call it from Python. After a bit of research, I found the Python interface itoolkit.

  itoolkit is an open source project provided by IBM as an interface to the XMLSERVICE toolkit, which allows us to call RPG programs, service programs, CL programs, and PASE Shell commands. itoolkit can be installed using an SSH terminal with …

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• Guru Classic: A Bevy Of BIFs — Updates

  February 5, 2020 Jon Paris

  In my previous tip I returned to the “Bevy” series to tell you about the latest addition to the family: %ScanRpl. Shortly after completing that tip I realized that there have been a number of more recent BIFs such as %SubArr and some enhancements to existing BIFs like %Trimx that seem to have escaped people’s notice. In this tip I attempt to fill those omissions.

  %Trim: Specify Characters to Trim

  Let’s start with a BIF that hopefully you are all familiar with: %Trim. Before going any further I should point out that when I say %Trim, I am referring to …

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• Guru: End Of Year Feedback

  December 2, 2019 Ted Holt

  The year has flown by. Before we know it, it will be 2020. The century is flying by, too. We’ve almost consumed a fifth of it. That seems like a good excuse to see what we might glean from some of your feedback. It’s been a while. More to come next week!

  Several readers wrote regarding the need to remove hard-coded values from programs. Jim brought up the problem of compile-time tables and arrays.

  I find cases where data is hard coded (state names, product categories are a few examples) for tables or arrays in dozens of programs.

  I wish …

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• How Infor’s Coleman Strategy Is Evolving, and How IBM i Fits In

  November 20, 2019 Alex Woodie

  It’s been more than two years since Infor unveiled Coleman, the company’s AI platform which became generally available earlier this year. It’s not on the roadmap for IBM i just yet, according to Infor. That may not sound ideal for Infor’s IBM i customers, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing.

  Coleman was unveiled by ERP software giant Infor in 2017 primarily as a digital assistant, which is a fancy way of saying a chatbot. Just as Siri and Alexa can answer questions about the weather or sports, Coleman could answer basic questions about the business, and even handle some …

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• Latest TRs For IBM i Now Available

  November 20, 2019 Alex Woodie

  IBM last week delivered the latest IBM i operating system Technology Refreshes, giving good IBM i boys and girls around the world early Christmas presents in areas like programing, operations, database, and security. Here’s a quick recap of the new stuff in IBM i 7.4 TR1 and 7.3 TR7.

  There were several general enhancements with IBM i 7.4 TR1 and 7.3 TR7. For starters, administrators gained more control over resources available to the Integrated Web Server (the one powered by Apache) with the new capability to install it the Web server in a user-specified sub-system. Admins also get new functions …

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• Digging Into the Latest IBM i TRs

  October 23, 2019 Alex Woodie

  The fall batch of Technology Refreshes (TRs) have been revealed, and as expected, there’s a bit of new functionality available for customers who use IBM i 7.3 and 7.4. In this story, we’ll tackle enhancements in open source, systems management and monitoring, and development, which means we’ll dive deeper into other areas, like database and HA/DR, in a future story.

  Let’s start with the fun stuff: open source. With IBM i 7.3 TR7 and 7.4 TR1, IBM has brought support for two prominent open source projects, including ZeroMQ and Redis.

  ZeroMQ is a universal messaging library that allows users to …

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