• Remain Launches AI Chatbot to Assist with Development on RDi

  May 17, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Developers who code in Eclipse-based environments such as Rational Developer for i (RDi) now have access to Ai Chat, a free ChatGPT-based chatbot launched last month by Remain Software. According to Remain CTO Wim Jongman, the coding copilot displays the programming chops of a seasoned RPG developer.

  The AI revolution continues to unfold at an unprecedented clip, driven in large part by large language models (LLMs) such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, and Facebook’s LLaMA, among others. Trained on massive corpuses of data culled from the Internet, these LLMs “learn” what words are likely to go with one another, …

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• Inside IBM’s Efforts To Modernize The ISV Army

  May 15, 2023 Alex Woodie

  “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.” IBM executives must feel a bit like the eminently quotable Don Rumsfeld, former Secretary of the Department of Defense, as they marshal their assets in the battle for application supremacy. While some of Big Blue’s partners have honed their IBM i applications into modern weapons, others are fielding old equipment more suitable for a previous war.

  It’s no state secret that Big Blue has a legacy problem on its hands in the IBM i world. When the …

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• Thoroughly Modern: Unlocking the Full Potential Of Your IBM i Applications

  May 15, 2023 Greg Patterson

  IBM i is the backbone of mission critical applications for over 120,000 customers worldwide in every conceivable industry and company size, particularly with companies ranging from $50 million to $1 billion in annual revenues and specializing in manufacturing, distribution, financial services, and healthcare. In other words, IBM i supports a significant share of the global economy.

  Although the IBM i platform is very productive, there are many things we can do to modernize our applications and provide more value to the business. But this is easier said than done. Some of the biggest challenges that that we face relate to …

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• IBM i Pros Available for Hire from Programmers.io

  May 10, 2023 Alex Woodie

  If you’re looking for someone with IBM i and RPG skills to help modernize your applications or just to keep the lights on, you might want to consider Programmers.io. You might never have heard of it, but the Texas-based company has been in the IBM i consulting business for over a decade and has built up a considerable force composed of hundreds of IBM i experts.

  Programmers.io is an IT services and software development firm that employs over 600 engineers in the U.S. and India, about 280 of which are skilled in IBM i or RPG. The company got its …

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• Guru: Speeding Up RPG By Reducing I/O Operations, Part 1

  May 8, 2023 Gregory Simmons

  Perhaps one of the easiest ways to speed up an RPG program is to reduce the number of I/O operations it needs to perform. In this article let’s explore one simple method for moving toward dataset processing.

  Here I have a simple RPG program. Okay, admittedly, we don’t often get to write “simple” RPG programs, but for this example, I have stripped the RPG program down to just the read loop so I can demonstrate the conversion.

  1     Dcl-f AcctMstr Usage(*Input) Keyed;
  2     Dcl-pr entry ExtPgm('RPGRPT1');
  3       n Packed(3:0);
  4     End-Pr;
  
  5     Dcl-pi entry;
  6       inBranch Packed(3:0);
  7     End-pi;
  
  8     

  …

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• The IT Balancing Act

  May 1, 2023 Bill Langston

  Medical research suggests that how well you can maintain your balance is a powerful predictor of your longevity. Balance is also a good indicator of longevity for your IBM i environment. The challenge is striking the right balance between “vertical” technology that helps your company work efficiently and accurately, and “horizontal” technology that reduces risk.

  Over the past few years, unprecedented forces shifted IT priorities and may have knocked your company’s IBM i environment off balance.

  Enabling IT Balance

  IBM i exists because of how well it runs complex business applications and manages data. We take for granted that the …

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• IBM i at 35: A Walk Down Memory Lane

  April 26, 2023 Alex Woodie

  You may have heard that the IBM midrange platform is turning 35 this year. IBM has a number of events planned in honor of that milestone, culminating with a big birthday bash on June 21. IBM execs gave us a sneak peak of the festivities to come at this week’s POWERUp show in Denver, as well as a technical look back at exactly how we got here.

  The day the AS/400 launched in 1988 was notable for several reasons. IBM i CTO Steve Will, who was just starting his distinguished engineering career at IBM, recalls lots of excitement in the …

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• COMMON POWERUp 2023 – Reporter’s Notebook

  April 26, 2023 Alex Woodie

  The international IBM i community descended upon Denver this week for COMMON’s annual POWERUp conference, which continues through tomorrow. By all accounts, the show was a success among attendees, educators, exhibitors, and IBM. Here are a few observations on the show.

  COMMON’s top-notch education was the big draw in the High Plains of Colorado, with more than 300 sessions planned over the four-day event. Sessions containing information about the latest Technology Refreshes (TRs) of IBM i, including 7.5 TR2 and 7.4 TR8, were well attended, including those from IBM i CTO Steve Will and his business architects, including Scott …

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• IBM i Education Goes a Mile High at COMMON’s POWERUp 2023

  April 19, 2023 Alex Woodie

  The IBM i community is gearing up for POWERUp 2023, the annual conference and expo held by COMMON that is taking place next week in Denver, Colorado. While information on the recent IBM i Technology Refreshes will be in demand, the event in the Mile High City will showcase just about everything going on with the ever-popular midrange server.

  The fun starts bright and early Monday morning at 8:30 MT, with the COMMON POWERUp Opening Session. COMMON President Dawn May will give the community an update on the state of the user group, present awards to the top speakers from …

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• How IBM Improved Application Development with the Spring 2023 TRs

  April 19, 2023 Alex Woodie

  IBM i developers have a few exciting new features to look forward to with the latest Technology Refreshes for IBM i 7.5 and 7.4, including a new release of RDi and new RPG and COBOL functions in the compilers.

  As part of the Spring 2023 announcement for IBM i 7.5 TR2 and 7.4 TR8, IBM last week unveiled a new release of Rational Developer for i (RDi), version 9.8, that brings new functionality to the Eclipse-based integrated development environment (IDE).

  According to IBM’s announcement letter, RDi RPG and COBOL Tools Edition runs on

  One of the new features with …

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