• New Release Of ACS Now Available

  December 9, 2020 Alex Woodie

  IBM delivered a new release of Access Client Solutions (ACS) last week, right on schedule. With ACS version 1.1.8.6, users will find a host of new features designed to accelerate their productivity across a range of uses.

  ACS is the Java-based utility that has become one of the most used (and useful) ways that administrators, programmers, and engineers can interact with the IBM i server. The software, which is free to IBM i customers on maintenance, features a 5250 emulator, 5250 printer emulation, data transfer capabilities, IFS file viewing, spool file management, and a virtual console for LAN and HMC …

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• COMMON Launches Focus, A Live Educational Series

  December 9, 2020 Alex Woodie

  COMMON yesterday kicked off the latest virtual event during this social distanced year of COVID-19. Focus is a series of half-day workshops on IBM i topics that is taking place through December 17. It’s a live event, which is good, but best of all, it’s free — as long as you are a current COMMON member.

  Focus consists of 18 half-day sessions across eight topic areas that are taking place this week (Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday) and the same days next week. The sessions, which kick off each day at 1 p.m. CT, are presented live by real live IBM …

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• Guru: RDi V9.6, Part 10 – Debugger Enhancements

  November 16, 2020 Susan Gantner

  Here I go again – more enhancements to talk about that have come about in RDi V9.6. This time, it’s the debugger that has been enhanced. The 9.6.0.7 fix pack included some new goodies for the debugger.

  Both of the enhanced features were popular Requests for Enhancement (RFEs) — the ability to display very large variable values and the addition of a condition to Service Entry Points (SEPs). These are further proof that the RFE process works. If you haven’t visited the RFE site to vote for your favorite suggested features for RDi, do it now. . . or maybe …

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• IBM Delivered An RDi Update, Too

  November 4, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Next week, IBM is planning to deliver the PTFs that include the functionality contained in the Technology Refreshes it just unveiled for IBM i 7.3 and 7.4 last month. You will want to stay on the lookout for those updates. But some of the capabilities that IBM “announced” in the TRs shipped months ago, including those for Rational Developer for i (RDi).

  The latest release of RDi, or version 9.6.0.8, was included as a feature for IBM i 7.3 TR9 and IBM i 7.4 TR4. IBM, of course, announced those TRs on October 6 and says it plans to …

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• Tech Refresh Brings New RPG Features

  October 26, 2020 Alex Woodie

  There’s no denying that IBM has a soft spot for open source these days, but that doesn’t mean it’s given up on the ILE environment. In fact, IBM gave RPG programmers something to cheer about by including several new features in the language in the latest batch of Technology Refreshes.

  IBM introduced over a dozen new open source capabilities with the IBM i 7.3 TR9 and 7.4 TR3, which IBM unveiled earlier this month and which will ship in a few weeks. That new tech will definitely help IBM i shops tackle their business challenges, says Steve Will, the chief …

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• How The Latest TRs Bolster The Core IBM i OS

  October 7, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Yesterday was Technology Refresh (TR) day for IBM and its IBM i operating system, and Big Blue didn’t disappoint. The company unveiled new releases of IBM i 7.4 and 7.3 that bring a slew of new capabilities to the core operating system as well as surrounding offerings like Db2 Mirror, ACS, and RDi. In this article, we’ll look at enhancements to the core OS and related key features.

  During a COMMON webcast Tuesday, IBM i Chief Architect Steve Will touched broadly on a number of enhancements that soon will be available in the TRs. Most of the new capabilities will …

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• Jenkins Gets Closer IBM i Hooks, Courtesy Of ARCAD

  September 14, 2020 Alex Woodie

  For some time, IBM i shops have been behind the curve when it comes to using modern DevOps and continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) technologies and techniques. ARCAD Software has been working to close that gap through its work with Git and Jenkins, and thanks to its new integration with an enterprise version of Jenkins from CloudBees, the gap is pretty much closed — at least from a technology point of view.

  Jenkins, if you don’t know yet, is a popular open source project that allows DevOps professionals to build, test, and deploy their software as part of a CI/CD …

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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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• ARCAD Hooks Cross-Reference Tool into LPEX Editor

  August 19, 2020 Alex Woodie

  IBM i developers won’t have to leave the comfort of RDi and the LPEX editor to engage in application cross-referencing tasks, thanks to the recent integration between the ARCAD Observer cross-referencing software with LPEX.

  According to ARCAD Software, the new LPEX integration will bring “massive productivity benefits” to IBM i developers in the form of context-sensitive “where used” impact analysis, as well as dependency information, all delivered directly from within the LPEX editor.

  LPEX integration is a new feature delivered in late June in ARCAD Observer version 12.1. The company, which has offices in France, New Hampshire and Chicago …

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• Guru: RDi V9.6, Part 9 – RDi Helps with Refactoring Code into Procedures

  July 6, 2020 Susan Gantner

  I’m guessing that you have some RPG code in your shop that’s desperately in need of some refactoring. I have yet to visit an RPG one that wasn’t in that position. If by chance you don’t know what I mean by “refactoring” or why you may need it, I highly recommend that you read Ted Holt’s excellent series of Guru tips on refactoring RPG. I’ve included links to those tips in the Related Stories section below.

  I was inspired to go back and review the entire series after I attended Ted’s session Refactoring RPG: What, Why & How at an …

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