• Welcome To The ‘Riehl’ World: Live, Hands-On IBM i Training

  May 18, 2020 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops don’t have a ton of options available when it comes to online IBM i education these days. If you’re in the market to improve your skills, one of the outfits that should be on your shortlist is The 400 School, which is one of the few places left that offers hands-on IBM i education, according to the company’s founder and president, Dan Riehl.

  Riehl has had the kind of IBM midrange career that younger folks arriving on the platform today can only dream of. He has founded companies, written books, worked as a security consultant and …

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• Guru: RDi V9.6, Part 8 – Better Ways To Copy Members, Manage LIBLs, and Find Preferences

  May 18, 2020 Susan Gantner

  If my crystal ball had told me just how many RDi V9.6 fix packs there would be and, more importantly, how many great new features would be added, I might have thought differently about starting a numbered series! Looks like I may well make it into double digits. But I’m not complaining. RDi has always been a great tool, and the pace of significant new functionality added since late 2017, when V9.6 first appeared, has reached new heights.

  This tip covers some of the features added in V9.6.0.7. Yes, I still have some catching up to do since 9.6.0.8 recently …

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• Guru: RDi V9.6 Part 7 – Zoom in, Know Where You Are, Refactor Constants and More

  May 11, 2020 Susan Gantner

  RDi enhancements just keep coming. Since my last installment in this series on V9.6 there have been more fix packs and quite a few new features. Here in part 7 I’ll cover refactoring character constants, two ways for RDi to indicate “you are here”, and a small but really useful way to zoom in on your code. Plus a small bonus item for those who do their compiles in batch.

  You Are Here!

  Two new features were added in 9.6.0.6 that act a bit like those “you are here” indications on maps. When editing RPG code, it tells you if …

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• ILEditor 2 Gives IBM i Shops A New Development Option

  May 6, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Liam Allan recently unveiled ILEditor 2, a new integrated development environment (IDE) for IBM i. The new IDE sports a fresher look and better performance compared to the first version of ILEditor, as well as an extensible plug-in system, which should also deliver better code coverage.

  For many years, members of the IBM i community have expressed frustration by the high price, size, and performance of Rational Developer for i (RDi), which is IBM’s flagship development tool for the IBM i community. While the IDE’s performance has improved in recent years, members of the community still bemoan the …

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• What’s New with RDi Version 9.6.0.7

  March 11, 2020 Alex Woodie

  IBM last month unveiled Rational Developer for i (RDi) version 9.6.0.7, the first release of the popular IBM i development environment in about a year. With this release, IBM is giving developers a handful of new capabilities, including the ability to create procedures out of pieces of code, as well as the ability to test incoming parameters.

  RDi is IBM’s flagship integrated development environment (IDE) for the IBM i platform. The product isn’t universally used across the IBM i community, and it’s not free. But many IBM i professionals swear by the graphical and modern IDE, particularly compared to older …

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• Guru: RDi V9.6, Part 6 – The New Object Table Gets Even Better

  January 20, 2020 Susan Gantner

  RDi V9.6 seems to be the gift that keeps on giving. I started this series about this release of RDi almost two years ago. You may have thought my last (fifth) tip in the series was the last on this subject, but it turns out there’s still more!

  I wrote an entire tip earlier on the new and greatly improved Object Table view. In a related tip, when discussing the PDM perspective, I said that I thought there were a few enhancements still needed to make the perspective a good tool for easing the transition from PDM for RDi …

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• Guru Classic: iSphere Plug-in Expands RSE/RDi Toolset

  January 8, 2020 Susan Gantner

  My series of three Guru tips on the free iSphere plug-in first appeared in 2015. Since I still find that most RDi users haven’t heard of it, I’ve decided to repeat the series as Guru Classics. I’ve made a few updates to this first one in the series due to enhancements made to both RDi and iSphere in the intervening years.

  Followers of my Guru tips know that I’m a big RDi fan. These days I would be lost trying to write or maintain RPG code without things like RDi’s Outline, Error feedback, editor filtering, and Undo. But you know …

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• IBM i Startup Tackles “Awkward” Git Integration

  September 30, 2019 Alex Woodie

  If you have ever felt that working with Git on the IBM i platform was a little awkward and could be refined to fit your native IBM i development experience on RDi or SEU just a bit better, then you might be interested in learning about a new utility called iForGit that was recently released by IBM midrange veteran Richard Schoen and his new startup, MobiGoGo.

  Git came to the IBM i three years ago, and there’s no denying that it has been a hit. Since Linux developer Linus Torvalds released it nearly a decade-and-a-half ago, the open source …

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• ARCAD Brings Traditional 5250 Development Into DevOps Fold

  June 24, 2019 Alex Woodie

  IBM i developers who embrace modern DevOps techniques typically also use modern development tools, like RDi. Much of the IBM i world uses IBM’s latest development environment, but many have resisted. Now, thanks to new software from ARCAD Software, IBM i developers who work with older tools like PDM can also partake of the benefits of DevOps.

  Getting older IBM i developers on board with the latest tools and techniques is a big priority for ARCAD Software, according to Alexandre Codinach, vice president of Americas for ARCAD Software, which included the new 5250 development capabilities with the launch of …

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• Guru: Ready Or Not! Part 5 Of Big Changes In RDi V9.6, Edit/Browse Toggle, PDM Perspective, More

  October 22, 2018 Susan Gantner

  In this tip I’m going to cover a few of the “smaller” features implemented in V9.6.0.3 and …0.4 that I think you should know about. I’ll cover my favorite — the Edit/Browse toggle feature — as well as some enhancements to Block Nesting. I’ll also follow-on to my last tip about the PDM affinity features in the Object Table — the PDM perspective — plus a few more little goodies.

  A quick hint for you on the subject of exactly what new features became available within RDi and when: If you ever want to see a complete list of new …

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