• RDi and RPG Enhancements in the 2023 Fall TRs

  October 25, 2023 Alex Woodie

  RPG developers will see some compelling new features coming out of the recent Technology Refresh (TR) announcement from IBM, including enhancements to the RDi development environment as well as new capabilities in the RPG language itself.

  RPG is nearly 65 years old, but like old dogs, the programming language can learn new tricks. The enhancements that IBM has brought to its venerable language with IBM i 7.5 TR3 and 7.4 TR9 continue a strong run of improvements, according to IBM i Product Manager Alison Butterill.

  “Every one of the TRs since we announced 7.5 has had at least some RPG …

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• Fall 2023 IBM i Tech Refresh Brings Something For Everyone

  October 11, 2023 Alex Woodie

  As expected, IBM yesterday unveiled its fall Technology Refresh (TR) for IBM i, with updates starting to become available on November 17. IBM announced no new products as part of the fall 2023 TR cycle, but it did spread the love around by giving just about everybody something to cheer about in IBM i 7.5 TR3 and 7.4 TR9.

  Lots of different products that make up the IBM i environment will see some pretty meaningful enhancements with this release. If you spend a lot of time in Navigator for i or ACS, you will see new stuff. We haven’t had …

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• IBM Releases Db2 For i Extensions For VS Code

  October 9, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Interested in developing new ILE applications in VS Code that utilize the Db2 for i database? Then you’re in luck, because IBM recently created and released vscode-db2i, an open source database extension for Code for IBM i, the uber popular development environment that enables ILE programming in VS Code.

  It is tough to overstate the popularity of Code for IBM i, which Liam Allan created and released just over two years ago. The open source plug-in provides ILE functionality for Microsoft’s VS Code, enabling programmers to write and edit RPG, COBOL, C, and CL code in the lightweight, browser-based …

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• Eradani Debuts DevOps Suite for IBM i

  October 4, 2023 Alex Woodie

  It’s been five years since Dan Magid, the former CEO of Aldon and an executive with Rocket Software, has been involved in the IBM i change management and DevOps business. But with next week’s launch of Eradani DevOps at COMMON’s NAViGATE conference, the longtime change management expert is getting back into the game. This time, however, Magid is taking a decidedly different approach.

  What makes Eradani DevOps stand out from other change management tools on IBM i is its focus on open source tools. The folks at Eradani have realized that application developers in the mainstream IT world have pretty …

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• 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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