• SoftLanding Adds Support for Source Stream Files

  February 3, 2021 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops developing in a mix of open source and native languages can now manage all of their development projects together in a new release of SoftLanding Systems’ TURNOVER software. The big change that enables that open source support is how SoftLanding adapted its change management software to support stream files on the IFS. The company also took the opportunity to add a new Web interface and rebrand its entire TURNOVER suite of products.

  First, let’s clear up the name changes. TURNOVER Lifecycle Manager is the new name of the change management software that used to go by TURNOVER …

  Read more

• 2021 Predictions for IBM i: Part Two

  January 20, 2021 Alex Woodie

  The response from the first batch of IBM i prediction we ran last week was superb. Here’s hoping that the community finds the second batch of predictions equally as worthwhile.

  Chris Wey, the president of the Power Business Unit at Rocket Software, wonders if crystal balls have any power left following the events of last year. “After an unpredictable 2020, the very notion of predictions is called into question,” Wey says. “Still, as an optimist, I believe we will see some incredibly positive outcomes of the past year’s turmoil in the coming year in our space.

  “First, Power systems …

  Read more

• ARCAD Plugs IBM i DevOps Suite Into Microsoft Azure

  January 18, 2021 Alex Woodie

  IBM i developers can now leverage a collection of DevOps tools on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform, courtesy of a new integration announced in December 2020 by ARCAD Software.

  Azure DevOps is an end-to-end DevOps environment that provides a range of project management services for developers who are building software to deploy on Azure or other platforms.

  Microsoft ostensibly introduced the software as a service (SaaS) offering back in October 2018. But in reality, Azure DevOps is the latest name of a product that can trace its lineage back to 2006, when Microsoft launched Visual Studio Team System.

  Through its …

  Read more

• VS Code Provides Another Coding Option for IBM i

  December 9, 2020 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that are looking for an alternative to IBM’s Rational Developer for IBM i (RDi) may want to check out a lightweight code editor from Microsoft called Visual Studio Code (VS Code). Thanks to extensions for IBM i languages developed by the opensource community, VS Code can support native development in RPG, CL, and SQL.

  First released by Microsoft in 2015, VS Code provides a basic environment for writing and editing code. It features debugging, syntax highlighting, intelligent code completion, snippets, and code refactoring, as well as embedded Git. It runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac, and while …

  Read more

• The Rest Of October’s Power Systems Software Announcements

  October 19, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The software stack in the Cognitive Systems division, which most of us still call the Power Systems division, is a lot wider and deeper than the IBM i stack, even though IBM i does represent a lot of the software functionality and generates a lot of the revenue stream for Power Systems machinery.

  In addition to the Technology Refresh updates for IBM i 7.4 and IBM i 7.3, which were announced on October 6 and which will be available on November 13, Big Blue also updated a bunch of other pieces of systems software that run on Power Systems, which …

  Read more

• 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 …

  Read more

• 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 …

  Read more

• 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 …

  Read more

• Red Hat’s Ansible Automation Comes To IBM i

  August 3, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Big Blue is now supporting IBM i with Ansible, the open source configuration management software developed by Red Hat. By including IBM i and AIX as a supported target in Ansible, companies that run IBM i will be able to remotely configure and manage IBM i and AIX servers using the same Ansible tools and techniques that they use to manage mainstream X86 and cloud server environments.

  Ansible was created back in 2012 by Michael DeHaan, the author of the Cobbler provisioning server and co-author of the Fedora Unified Network Controller (Func) framework for remote administration. It’s been widely adopted …

  Read more

• Guru: Creating PDF Documents With Python

  July 27, 2020 Mike Larsen

  I’m often asked to create reports for my business partners. The format of the report depends on who made the request. If the financial team made the request, I may produce an Excel file. The CEO may want to report quarterly sales to their shareholders. In that case, I may produce a PDF using the company letterhead.

  In a prior article, I showed how to create Excel files using Db2 tables. Now I’m going to show how to create PDF documents using Db2 tables.

  This story contains code, which you can download here.

  I always start by making …

  Read more

Previous Articles Next Articles