• Why Modernize Applications? The Reasons Might Surprise You

  April 3, 2023 Alex Woodie

  A wave of interest in application modernization seems to be cresting over IBM i and mainframe shops in the United States and Europe, and it’s having some unanticipated impacts. We’re also getting a better understanding of what’s motivating companies to jump into these potentially risky projects, which is a topic that EvolveWare touched on in its latest report.

  EvolveWare, which develops modernization tools for mainframe and IBM i applications, discussed several aspects of modernization in its report on modernization released last month. Our first take on the report, which is titled The State of Application Modernization 2023, focused …

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• The Disconnect In Modernization Planning And Execution

  March 27, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Feeling confident in your IBM i or mainframe application modernization plans? That could be due to your lack of understanding of what is about to transpire once you begin the project, according to a new survey from EvolveWare.

  EvolveWare, the Santa Clara, California, provider of modernization tools, last week released a study called The State of Application Modernization 2023. The 18-page report is based on a fourth-quarter survey conducted by Global Surveyz (that is not a typo) of 200 large American companies in financial services, insurance, and healthcare that are either in the midst of an application modernization …

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• IBM i Has a Future “If Kept Up To Date,”‘ IDC Says

  March 22, 2023 Alex Woodie

  The slow demise and death of IBM i has been greatly exaggerated, at least in the eyes of IDC. In a white paper for Rocket Software, an analyst for the storied firm says that IBM i does indeed have a future in customers’ digital strategies, provided it’s “kept up to date.” That’s good news for the community, but there’s still a lot of work to be done.

  Application modernization has been an important topic for IBM i shops for decades, particularly when it comes to organizations that believe they’re still living in the early 1990s. While you technically can run …

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• VS Code Is The Full Stack IDE For IBM i

  March 15, 2023 Jeff Tickner

  Back in January, we talked a bit about the rise of the VS Code integrated development environment that was open sourced by Microsoft back in 2015 and that has been increasingly adopted by developers on all kinds of platforms, not just Windows Server. This week, we want to talk about the new features we are exposing in VS Code for users of the application development tooling available from ARCAD Software.

  First of all, we have brought the cross reference information in our ARCAD Observer tool into VS Code in a way that developers can access the object-level and field-level …

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• Spring Brings Events To IBM i Community, And More

  March 13, 2023 Alex Woodie

  As the calendar flips over from winter to spring, the IBM i community begins to stir in anticipation of in-person get-togethers. Many of the events continue to be virtual, but some, like COMMON’s POWERUp and WMCPA’s iCON, are expected to draw hundreds of people. And the calendar shows that IBM’s spring Tech Refresh can’t be too far away.

  The in-person fun kicks off tomorrow as members of the IBM i community descend on the Lake Lawn Resort in Delavan, Wisconsin, which is playing host to the Wisconsin Midrange Computer Professional Association (WMCPA) and its Spring Conference 2023.

   

  The three-day …

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• Rocket Rolls Out IBM i Modernization Bundle

  March 6, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Rocket Software last week unveiled a new collection of tools designed to help IBM i shops elevate their game across multiple IT disciplines. Dubbed the Rocket Modernization Suite for IBM i, the new bundle brings together existing Rocket offerings in the DevOps, APIs, test automation, HA/DR, terminal emulation, and Web-enablement spaces. It’s all about lowering the barrier to adopting Rocket tools and improving customer productivity when they do, the company says.

  Like other software vendors in the space, Rocket Software has accumulated somewhat of a disparate collection of tools for the IBM i server. The Massachusetts vendor started its IBM …

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• RPG Use “Skyrocketed” Says IBM i Marketplace Report

  February 20, 2023 Alex Woodie

  RPG has always been the number one development language on IBM i, the platform with which it is most closely linked. But as open source languages like PHP and Java spread on IBM i, some speculated that RPG’s popularity would begin to slip. That hasn’t happened, according to Fortra’s most recent IBM i Marketplace Survey Results report. In fact, usage of RPG has “skyrocketed,” it says.

  From 2015 to 2020, the percentage of Fortra (formerly HelpSystems) Marketplace Survey-takers who chose RPG as one of their development languages stayed steady, hovering around the 84 percent to 89 percent level. Structured Query …

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• IBM i Debugger Comes to VS Code

  February 15, 2023 Alex Woodie

  At long last, IBM i developers can now debug their code in a development environment other than Rational Developer for IBM i or Merlin. The news came last week, when Liam Allan announced that the ILE debugging feature is now available in Code for IBM i, his third-party, IBM i-centric plug-in for Visual Studio Code.

  “Debugging ILE COBOL and RPGLE inside @code like it’s any other day!” Allan tweeted from his @Notesofbarry Twitter account. “I’m pumped for this release #ibmi.”

  Indeed, this day has been a long time in coming. Allan, who has not been shy about sharing his dislike …

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• Infoview Systems Launches Lightweight CDC for IBM i

  February 13, 2023 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that have a need to extract the latest transactions hitting their Db2 for i database for downstream CRM, analytics, or fraud detection use cases may want to check out the new change data capture (CDC) offering unveiled recently by Infoview Systems. When coupled with a streaming data platform like Apache Kafka, CDC opens up new possibilities.

  Infoview Systems is a longtime IBM i product and services firm based in Michigan with a global customer base. The company has been active in the data and application integration space for years, first with the sale and implementation of message …

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• Fresche Nabs Silveredge for Application Services

  February 8, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Silveredge Consulting, the Chicago-based provider of application support services, has been acquired by Fresche Solutions, the Montreal-based IBM i software and services business. The deal nets Fresche a respected consulting shop with a long record of supporting IBM i-based ERP systems such as BPCS and PRMS and two-and-a-half dozen senior RPG programmers.

  Founded in 1987, Silveredge Consulting developed a solid reputation as a provider of application support services. The company started out supporting manufacturers in the Chicago region that ran on the BPCS and PRMS packages, which were also developed in the area. Over the ensuing 35 years, the company …

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