• Monoliths, Microservices, And IBM i Modernization: Part 1

  October 7, 2019 Alex Woodie

  What’s the best approach for application modernization: Maintain the monolithic architecture, or break it into individual microservices? This is an important question, especially for IBM i shops that are looking to take their considerable investment in encoded business logic to the next level.

  At first blush, the answer seems obvious: Monolithic architectures are bad, and microservices are good. Monolithic architectures, which are still quite prevalent in the IBM i world, proliferated from the 1970s well to the 2000s thanks in part to the popularity of packaged ERP suites that automated a multitude of processes and also to the programming inclinations …

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• Boutique Footwear Company Finds A Great Fit With Node.js

  August 19, 2019 Alex Woodie

  As one of the premier providers of winter footwear in North America and Europe, Kamik knows what it takes to run a successful manufacturing operation. But when its custom RPG-based ERP system started to show its age, the company turned to Node.js to help modernize production systems, and found that it improved application integration and developer productivity along the way.

  “Legacy” is a word that the folks at Kamik can take pride in. Founded in Quebec in 1898, Kamik remains a family owned business to this day, with factories located in Canada and the United States. Through its brand-name and …

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• Eradani Bridges The Gap Between Legacy And Open Source

  July 8, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In this publication, legacy is not a dirty word or even remotely pejorative. Rather, “legacy” is just a shorthand way of delineating between applications that encapsulate decades of the evolution of a business and the transactions it processes, and all of the other new stuff that this business is also doing and perhaps coding with newer tools and programming languages.

  A new company, called Eradani, has been founded by some experts in both the IBM i world and the open source world with the express purpose of building a technical bridge so these two different cultures can see a …

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• Yes, IBM i Shops Have AI Options, Too

  April 8, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Companies of all shapes and sizes are encouraged to adopt artificial intelligence these days. Most of today’s AI tech, however, was developed to run in open systems and X86 environments. But there are a growing number of AI options from IBM and its partners for customers that want to keep their data resident on the Power Systems platform.

  There’s no denying there’s a lot of hype around AI today. One can scarcely turn on the TV or open a magazine or Web page without being inundated with claims of how leading organizations are using AI to gain a competitive edge, …

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• A HATS For Many Occasions

  March 25, 2019 Alex Woodie

  IBM gives customers plenty of options when it comes to its Rational Host Access Transformation software, including several modes of operation, different runtime options, and support for different operating systems in screen modernization engagements. With last week’s launch of HATS version 9.7, the development and deployment options got even wider.

  Regardless of which downstream options a HATS customer ultimately chooses, it all starts out basically the same on the front side of the sausage machine: Customers come to HATS because they have a 5250 (or 3270 or VT100) application that they want to transform, but they don’t want to go …

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• Taking A Fresche Approach To IBM i-Watson Education

  February 4, 2019 Alex Woodie

  There is a big data analytics revolution taking place that threatens to separate the AI haves from the have-nots. Companies that run the IBM i server want to get in on the analytics action just like everybody else, but AI discussions often stray away from IBM i. Now Fresche Solutions is working to close that disconnect with a series of educational courses centered squarely on the intersection of IBM i and Watson.

  Last year, Fresche Solutions worked with IBM last year to put together a series of onsite training seminars aimed at giving IBM i professionals the educational tools they …

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• Break Out Of Your RPG Comfort Zone

  October 29, 2018 Amanda Blackburn

  (Sponsored Content) IBM i developers, like all developers, can get stuck in a rut sometimes. The well-worn path that RPG provides is familiar and reassuring, but it doesn’t necessarily lead your company where it needs to go. That’s why exploring newer IBM i language alternatives, like Node.js, can provide a fresh path towards the goal of business innovation.

  The rapid ascent of the Node.js programming language over the past five years has been well-documented. While Java remains a popular business language, Node.js is now the world’s most popular development framework in all of computing, according to the 2018 …

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• Visual LANSA Goes Low-Code With High Tech Update

  August 15, 2018 Alex Woodie

  As one of the original advocates of fourth-generation language (4GLs), LANSA knows a thing or two about the value of abstraction layers. While the hype around 4GLs has long since passed, LANSA continues to build on its foundation with new features aimed at keeping customers ahead of the technology curve. That work is on display with the recent update to its “low-code” environment, Visual LANSA version 14 SP2.

  Visual LANSA is LANSA‘s flagship integrated development environment (IDE) for creating modern graphical applications. The IDE employs numerous techniques to minimize the amount of Rapid Development and Maintenance Language (RDML, its …

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• VACAVA’s Low-Code Approach To Modernization

  July 9, 2018 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops have lots of options when it comes to application modernization. At one end of the spectrum are screen-scraper tools, which can provide a quick fix for shops tired with the 5250 interface. IBM i shops with more time, money, and inspiration may choose to completely rewrite their application on a new platform. Somewhere in between lies RapidBIZ, a low-code modernization affair from VACAVA.

  The folks at VACAVA knows a thing or two about the IBM i platform. For starters, the company is based in Rochester, Minnesota, home of the world-famous IBM lab where the AS/400 was created …

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• A Closer Look At Enhancements To Integrated Web Services

  March 21, 2018 Dan Burger

  Technology Refresh 8 for IBM i 7.2 and TR4 for IBM i 7.3 became available last week. One of the enhancements in this TR pertains to the Integrated Web Services (IWS), which Business Architect for IBM i Application Development Tim Rowe calls IWS “one of our most widely used pieces of software from an integrated perspective.”

  Web services provide the capability to expose the database to outside developers via APIs and Web services. Although that thought brings a shiver down the spine of many developers who learned the proprietary ways of the AS/400, multi-platform integration is the modern development path. …

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