• 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 Classic: More iSphere Goodies

  March 4, 2020 Susan Gantner

  This Guru Classic tip is my third in a series exploring the iSphere RDi plug-in. In this tip I’ll cover two additional ways in which iSphere expands the RDi toolset. There are a few details that I’ve updated in this new version of the tip due to updates in either RDi or the iSphere tool itself. Plus I have added an additional tip based on how I’ve seen one of these features utilized.

  Binding Directory Editor

  I’ve long been baffled at the lack of support in RDi for binding directories; it seems like something modern developers certainly use. In the …

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• Guru Classic: Tuning SQL Environments On i

  March 4, 2020 Paul Tuohy

  Author’s Note: This article was originally published in November 2015. This was one of the first DB2 for i Services that I used in anger. I have used a lot since.

  One of the frustrating things about being a speaker at conferences is that when you want to attend another session with a topic that piques your interest, it invariably clashes with when you are speaking. But every now and again, the scheduling gods work in your favor. Such was the case when I spoke at the excellent International i-Power 2015 conference at Wyboston Lakes Executive Centre in the UK. …

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• Guru Classic: Looking For Stuff With iSphere

  February 5, 2020 Susan Gantner

  In my last Guru Classic tip I introduced you to the iSphere RDi plug-in. In this tip I’ll cover a few other features in iSphere that I find very useful. This time I’ll focus on a couple of options there that can help you search for things and subsequently edit them. The two things we’ll be searching are source members and message files.

  This tip contains a few updates to the original version of this article due to some iSphere enhancements made in the last few years. I’ve also included a few changes based on my experiences using these great …

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• Industry Speaks: IBM i Predictions for 2020, Part 1

  January 20, 2020 Alex Woodie

  We are three weeks into 2020, and that New Year smell hasn’t worn off yet. As time rolls on, the IBM i community will certainly get down to business. In the meantime, here are industry predictions from nine community members to read.

  For Alan Seiden, the CEO of Seiden Group and an IBM Champion for Power, risk management will be a common theme for how they approach IT staffing in 2020.

  “IBM i shops have traditionally operated in a lean manner, relying on key individuals who knew their systems intimately,” Seiden says. “Now, with IT staff managing more projects than …

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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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• Guru: End Of Year Feedback

  December 2, 2019 Ted Holt

  The year has flown by. Before we know it, it will be 2020. The century is flying by, too. We’ve almost consumed a fifth of it. That seems like a good excuse to see what we might glean from some of your feedback. It’s been a while. More to come next week!

  Several readers wrote regarding the need to remove hard-coded values from programs. Jim brought up the problem of compile-time tables and arrays.

  I find cases where data is hard coded (state names, product categories are a few examples) for tables or arrays in dozens of programs.

  I wish …

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• Guru: Code Coverage via CL Command

  November 25, 2019 Susan Gantner

  This is my third tip on using RDi’s Code Coverage support. In the first tip, we explored setting up a test run using Service Entry Points (a.k.a. SEPs). In the second one, I covered how to create a configuration for the test run. Here we’ll see how to use a CL command to run a Code Coverage test session without requiring interaction with RDi (except for reporting.)

  Before seeing how to do it, it may be good to discuss why you may prefer to use this approach. Simply put, it makes it easier to automate the testing process …

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• Remain Hooks Change Management System Into GitLab

  November 13, 2019 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that manage their code using Remain Software’s change management software just gained a slew of new ways to hook their system into GitLab, an independent Git-based provider of DevOps solutions. The new software, TD/OMS V12 Milestone 1, also brings better integration with unit testing and cross referencing, while a new release of Remain’s Gravity bolsters management of cross-platform development projects.

  With a steady cadence of quarterly updates and one big release per year, Remain Software is endearing itself to IBM i developers who like predictability and perseverance. IBM i technology may not be moving incredibly fast at …

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