• Seiden Group Helps Bring Community PHP To The Japanese Market

  October 5, 2020 Alex Woodie

  The new community edition of PHP is gaining interest from IBM i shops around the world. Now one of the biggest IBM i service providers in Japan, Chubu Systems Corp., is working with Seiden Group to ensure that Japanese IBM i shops have the latest, greatest distribution of PHP to work with.

  As you may have heard, there is a new open source PHP runtime for IBM i that is being distributed via RPM, which is IBM’s preferred method for sharing open source software on IBM i. The new community edition of PHP is free, and essentially replaces …

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• MAGiC to Host In-Person User Conference

  September 28, 2020 Alex Woodie

  If you are itching to get out of the house and complete some in-person IBM i education, then the upcoming MAGiC Conference might be for you. In early November, the group is planning to host a small get-together of no more than 40 socially distanced attendees in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

  The Annual MAGiC Conference, slated for November 9-11 at the Hilton Virginia Beach Oceanfront hotel, will be the first in-person IBM i conference since COVID-19 shelved the usual midrange happenings, says Laura Hamway, the leader of the Mid-Atlantic Group of IBM i Collaborators, also known as MAGiC.

  That’s a …

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• Now You Can Transform RPG Code Into PHP

  September 21, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Assuming an average of 5 million lines of code at IBM i shops – a number I heard recently thrown around – in their homegrown or heavily customized third party applications, IBM i shops are collectively sitting on something like 750 billion lines of code. Just ponder that for a minute.

  This code, which is predominantly written in RPG but with a fair proportion of Java and COBOL plus a smattering of more modern languages, is going to have to be maintained and tweaked in the coming years. Just like it had to be updated and debugged time and again …

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• Creating Web Services APIs Can Be Easy On IBM i

  September 16, 2020 Andrew Ireland

  (Sponsored Content) Many IBM i customers are taking a hard look at how they can bring their heritage applications, along with all the significant business value they contain, into a modern world. There are a number of different approaches to do that, and in reality, these methods work together and complement each other. There is no one single route, but rather a combination of approaches that leads to the best results at the lowest cost and the least grief.

  The average IBM i customer has something in the order of five million lines of code that embody their …

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• Is It Time To Rename RPG?

  August 24, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Should IBM rename RPG, and if so, what should the new name be? It’s an interesting idea, and one that was recently floated by a member of the IBM i community, who submitted an official request for enhancement (RFE) on the matter. The crux of the argument is that full free-format RPG is such a dramatic departure from fixed-format RPG that it deserves a new name. But will IBM, which owns the language, go along with the change?

  Report Program Generator, or RPG, debuted way back in 1959, at the dawn of the computer age, as a way to replicate …

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• Thoroughly Modern: Strategic Things to Consider With APIs and IBM i

  August 10, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  (Sponsored Content) The great thing about application programming interfaces is that many of the ways that programmers need to interact with system and application software are predefined and allow for consistent access to features and functions as well as data. To a certain extent, the APIs are what make such software useful. The API describes how the interface works, and libraries (in the sense of the software market at large, not the OS/400 and IBM i definition of that word) are developed to implement the functionality of the interface.

  The fun bit is that not only system software …

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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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• Thoroughly Modern: Why You Need An IT Strategy And Roadmap

  July 14, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  (Sponsored Content) What makes a modernization project successful? Is it the right software and tools? Having the right people on the job? Completing the project on time and on budget? Some might argue that all of the above contribute to the overall success of these initiatives. But the experts at Fresche will tell you that building a comprehensive strategy and roadmap is the most important part. It’s the secret sauce that ensures that the project provides business value and that requirements are mapped out before you start. After all, failing to plan is planning to fail.

  Businesses today …

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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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• 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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