• Top 5 New IBM i Features to Check Out Now That Fall TRs Are GA

  December 7, 2022 Alex Woodie

  All of the new features that IBM unveiled earlier this fall with the Technology Refreshes for IBM i 7.4 and 7.5 (as well as another stealth “non-TR” TR for 7.3) are now generally available. Some of them shipped before December 2, but pretty much all of them are now GA. With so much enterprise computing goodness ready to download, what will you adopt first?

  We know it’s not Christmas yet. But with so many new features, it can be hard to figure out what to do first. While everybody has their own computing priorities, we have our own ideas for …

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• Thoroughly Modern: A Swiss Army Knife For IBM i Developers

  December 5, 2022 Robert Arce

  Our strength as developers and programmers lies not only in the code we write, but also in the tools we choose to surround ourselves with. The right tools are often the determining factor in how productive, efficient and accurate we can be – especially when working with large applications that we didn’t even write.

  Long gone are the days of just managing a handful of programs, technologies, languages or databases, and relying on tribal knowledge to make critical business decisions isn’t just risky, it’s irresponsible. Especially when more and more experienced IBM i (AS/400) developers are changing jobs or retiring …

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• Data Is Streaming Into The Cloud, Including From IBM i

  November 14, 2022 Alex Woodie

  We are in the midst of a vast migration of data into public clouds, as companies seek to leverage technological innovation occurring in the cloud for competitive advantage. While there are no IBM i runtimes in the public cloud yet, IBM i shops are still getting value by moving their valuable Db2 for i data into the cloud, often using streaming technologies and tools like Apache Kafka and Apache Camel, as well as an updated ETL offering from IBM.

  It is tough to understate the magnitude of the transition to the public cloud is having on the $4 trillion IT …

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• Momentum Builds For Code For IBM i

  November 7, 2022 Alex Woodie

  Energy and excitement are building in the IBM i development community thanks to Code for IBM i, the VS Code extension that enables users to write and edit RPG and COBOL code in a Web browser. Spearheaded by Liam Allan, who now works for IBM, the lightweight alternative to RDi is approaching critical mass among IBM i developers desperate for something new.

  For many years, IBM i shops had few options available to them when it comes to developing ILE applications for IBM i. IBM’s default recommendation was Rational Developer for i, the Java-based integrated development environment (IDE) that …

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• What’s The Best Web Language For IBM i?

  October 31, 2022 Alex Woodie

  What’s the best language for developing Web applications on IBM i – Python, PHP, or Node.js? That’s the loaded question recently posed by Mike Pavlak, who has been sailing IBM i’s open source waters for nearly two decades. As Pavlak’s presentation at the recent COMMON NAViGATE conference showed, the answer might surprise you.

  Initially, Pavlak aimed to fight for Python in his “Web Language Shootout” session at COMMON’s NAViGATE conference, which was held in St. Louis, Missouri, last month, while his Perforce Software, colleague, Guido Faecke, argued for PHP and Liam Allan, who recently joined IBM, backed …

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• Kafka, JSON, DevOps: Future Proof Your IBM i With Secure, High Performance APIs

  October 26, 2022 Daniel Magid

  It is an exciting time to be working with an IBM i! The Rochester lab and IBM partners are rapidly pushing out new technology options that allow you to do anything with the IBM i that you can do on any other platforms. The latest in web and mobile user interfaces, the most modern languages, comprehensive security, machine learning, data visualization, internet of things, APIs – are all available to IBM i users. When combining all that technology with the unmatched reliability, ease of management and low cost of ownership of IBM i, you can be confident that your company …

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• Finally, IBM i Cloud Dev Instances That Are Powerful And Cheap

  October 24, 2022 Chuck Paolillo

  Back in the old days, when IBM had relatively inexpensive entry AS/400 and iSeries machines and was willing to lease them at special low rates to developers, it was possible for software houses and independent code slingers to get their hands on machinery to create and modify applications. Those days are long gone, and it has been very difficult to replace that cheap and usable functionality in the marketplace.

  With Windows Server and Linux platforms, things are a lot easier because developers can create a variant of their X86 server environment right on their desktops or laptops, and if need …

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• Guru: String Manipulation Using SQL

  October 24, 2022 Mike Larsen

  Recently, I was working with an employee file where first and last name were concatenated with a comma separator. A requirement of the project was to parse the name and populate a different table where first and last name are separate columns. I won’t address the design of the employee file, but I will show how I completed the request.

  In Figure 1, I use the position string function via SQL to extract the first name.

  

   

   

  Figure 1. Extract first name

   

  In this example, I use the trim, substring, and posstr functions to position to the first …

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• On the Spectrum of Application Modernization

  October 19, 2022 Alex Woodie

  What is application modernization? If you ask 10 people in the IT world, you’re likely to get 10 different answers. For organizations looking to keep their IBM i assets relevant in an increasingly digital world, being aware of the spectrum of options available will help them make the best choice for their particular situation.

  Every organization is unique when it comes to its IT journey. Some may have large in-house development teams and would never think of running packaged business applications, while others have no developers and lean on their vendors and partners to keep things running. Some organizations may …

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• How The Latest TRs Bolster App Dev For IBM i

  October 17, 2022 Alex Woodie

  From Merlin and VSCode to RDi and RPG, good IBM i boys and girls who do their own development will get new toys to play with before Christmas, thanks to a range of new features and functions unveiled by IBM last week as part of its latest Tech Refresh for IBM i.

  The introduction of the IBM i Modernization Engine for Lifecycle Integration, or Merlin, was the big attraction this spring with the launch of IBM i version 7.5 and 7.4 TR6 (it was later made available for IBM i 7.3). The offering, which combines a lightweight VSCode development environment …

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