• Rocket DevOps Now Supports VS Code

  September 25, 2023 Alex Woodie

  IBM i developers who prefer to code within VS Code can now get all the goodness of automated change management and CI/CD with Rocket Software’s DevOps offering, which now supports the popular browser-based development environment, among other new features.

  VS Code, which is short for Visual Studio Code, has rocketed to popularity in the IBM i community over the past couple of years. That popularity is due in large part to Code for IBM i, the Liam Allan-developed plug-in that brings ILE language support to Microsoft’s open source IDE.

  Allan, who is known to despise IBM’s full-fledged Java-based IDE, …

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• ARCAD’s Deal with IBM for DevOps In Merlin Is Exclusive

  September 20, 2023 Alex Woodie

  When IBM launched Merlin in 2022, it touted the browser-based environment as a new way to deliver functionality to the IBM i installed base and potentially to distribute third-party solutions. But right now, the only third-party vendor IBM is working with when it comes to Merlin is ARCAD Software, which has exclusive rights to supply the DevOps components within Merlin, according to executives with both companies.

  IBM introduced Merlin with great fanfare in May 2022 as a potentially transformative technology. Not only was Merlin the first browser-based integrated development environment (IDE) from IBM, providing an alternative to the powerful but …

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• The Subscription Pricing For The IBM i Stack So Far

  September 18, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We have been following the transformation of the pricing and packaging of the IBM i operating system, its integrated database, and the suite of Licensed Program Products, or LPPs, that are commonly installed alongside of the operating system to create a mostly complete system software suite. Last week, we talked about how the machines in the P05 and P10 software tiers would be moving to all-subscription pricing, and this week we are following up with the pricing information we have been able to gather to date as well as talking to Big Blue about the changes.

  IBM has been clear …

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• IBM i Fall 2023 Event Calendar Shaping Up

  September 11, 2023 Alex Woodie

  The next variant of the coronavirus might try to stage a viral comeback, but that’s not stopping IBM i professionals from packing their bags and gearing up for a busy fall conference season, which starts this week with the IBM TechXchange in Vegas.

  IBM TechXchange is a major conference that offers hundreds of sessions for developers, data scientists, IT architects, operations professionals, and infrastructure architects, among other personas. The event, which takes place September 11 -14 at the MGM Grand resort in Las Vegas, Nevada, is expected to draw more than 5,000 attendees for educational and training sessions on AI, …

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• To Kill SEU Or Not Kill SEU – That Is The Question

  July 12, 2023 Alex Woodie

  It was a simple question posed by Liam Allan on Ryver: Should IBM stop shipping SEU? The dozens of answers it generated exposed a stark divide when it comes to the use of legacy technology in the IBM i ecosystem and to what extent it’s okay for IBM to force its customers to adopt new technology.

  There is no denying that IBM’s Source Entry Utility (SEU) is still in widespread use in the IBM i world. Statistics are tough to come by, but evidence suggests a majority of IBM i developers still use the greenscreen development tool for at least …

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• Making Git Part of Your Modernization Strategy

  June 26, 2023 Daniel Magid

  Maybe the most important part of your IBM i modernization strategy should be modernizing the tools you are using to develop and maintain your applications. Most of the application development world has moved to tools centered around using Git for version control. There is no reason IBM i developers cannot do the same thing. IBM is solidly behind this strategy with their new Merlin product and most of the change management vendors have some kind of Git integration.

  By adopting Git for version control, IBM i applications can be managed with the same tools that are being used for development …

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• Guru: Watch Out For This Pitfall When Working With Integer Columns

  May 22, 2023 Gregory Simmons

  Remember that awesome jungle game where you had to guide the hero through a series of increasingly hard obstacles to gather treasure? Jumping over snakes, scorpions, and rolling logs, swinging on vines over alligators –your timing had to be just right. Pitfall Harry survived in a world of 255 screens, each of which were 160 x 192 pixels and a dazzling 128 colors! Well today, I want to make you aware of a pitfall which caught me off guard a while back. I hope this article will help you avoid my pitfall.

  There I was, writing my code, happy as …

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• Remain Launches AI Chatbot to Assist with Development on RDi

  May 17, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Developers who code in Eclipse-based environments such as Rational Developer for i (RDi) now have access to Ai Chat, a free ChatGPT-based chatbot launched last month by Remain Software. According to Remain CTO Wim Jongman, the coding copilot displays the programming chops of a seasoned RPG developer.

  The AI revolution continues to unfold at an unprecedented clip, driven in large part by large language models (LLMs) such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, and Facebook’s LLaMA, among others. Trained on massive corpuses of data culled from the Internet, these LLMs “learn” what words are likely to go with one another, …

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• Midrange Dynamics Hooks CM Into VSCode

  May 10, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Developers using VSCode to create native IBM i applications can now use Midrange Dynamics’s change management (CM) software to properly track their work. Midrange Dynamics North America (MDNA) announced at the recent POWERUp conference in Denver, Colorado. MDNA says Midrange Dynamics will also support Merlin in the future.

  Demand for VSCode is currently booming among the IBM i installed base, who have been clamoring for a speedier alternative to IBM’s sluggish fat client, Rational Developer for i (RDi), for a long time. Thanks to Liam Allan and his Code for IBM i extensions, which enables ILE languages in the lightweight, …

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• How IBM Improved Application Development with the Spring 2023 TRs

  April 19, 2023 Alex Woodie

  IBM i developers have a few exciting new features to look forward to with the latest Technology Refreshes for IBM i 7.5 and 7.4, including a new release of RDi and new RPG and COBOL functions in the compilers.

  As part of the Spring 2023 announcement for IBM i 7.5 TR2 and 7.4 TR8, IBM last week unveiled a new release of Rational Developer for i (RDi), version 9.8, that brings new functionality to the Eclipse-based integrated development environment (IDE).

  According to IBM’s announcement letter, RDi RPG and COBOL Tools Edition runs on

  One of the new features with …

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