• Thoroughly Modern: Simplify IBM i Application Management and Extract Key Insights

  October 10, 2022 Ray Everhart

  IBM i developers and managers understand all too well that application documentation is often out of date – if it even exists. A study from the Singapore Management University says that developers only spend 5 percent of their time writing new code. They spend 20 percent of their time modifying legacy code, and they spend 60 percent of their time trying to understand the code before they modify it.

  As businesses adapt to compete in their industries, IT is pressured to innovate and improve agility while maintaining existing systems. It’s also critical that stakeholders can quickly access data from …

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• Are Code Freezes a Thing of the Past?

  October 5, 2022 Alex Woodie

  After months of work on your modernization project, the consultant helping you is almost done. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the consultant is now asking you to put a code freeze on changes to your old application. It’s not clear whether the code freeze will lasts two months or two years, but it’s absolutely necessary, you’re told.

  That’s the scenario that many enterprises have faced over the years. Whether it’s a monolithic RPG application running on IBM i or a distributed Node.js application running in the cloud, if there are tight dependencies in the components that …

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• Guru: Aliases — Underused and Unappreciated

  October 3, 2022 Ted Holt

  One of the first things I learned about programming in the RPG II language was that field and variable names had to be six characters or less and they did not have to be pronounceable. I accepted this without question, as I was new to computers and figured that everything that had to do with computers was arcane and other-worldly. It wasn’t until I began work toward my computer science degree and was privileged to learn Pascal that I came to appreciate the value of longer identifier names, and of clarity of source code in general.

  You don’t have to …

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• Smart Modernization Is The Answer To IBM i Talent Shortage

  September 28, 2022 Jose Caso Jacobs

  When we are at the COMMON POWERUp 2022 conference a few months ago, we were amazed by the number of IT managers that approached us because of a shortage of IBM i programming talent. The dearth of programmers that are experienced with the business as well as legacy and modern programming techniques has pushed a lot of businesses up against the wall, with lost agility and in some cases delayed projects.

  As bad as that is, the situation could be worse. We have all heard the horror stories, where the executive suite or upper IT management push to switch away …

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• Remain Hooks TD/OMS Into Azure DevOps

  September 28, 2022 Alex Woodie

  Remain Software’s change management suite for IBM i, TD/OMS, will soon gain support for Microsoft Azure DevOps, providing another code repository for IBM i shops. The Dutch company has a host of other enhancements for various DevOps products — including a new analytics dashboard for KPIs, enhancements to Octo, and new features for its API product — that it’s looking to deliver with next week’s release of Milestone 1. This company is also working on developing an alternative to IBM’s Merlin.

  Remain delivers updates to its various IBM i DevOps products on a regular cadence that starts in early summer, …

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• Debunking Modernization Myths

  September 14, 2022 Alex Woodie

  If you’re embarking upon an application modernization project, you’re not alone, as many organizations running older computer systems are looking for an upgrade. But that increased need for modernization has coincided with the rise of several myths on the topic, which is a cause for concern.

  The first modernization myth is that all you need for a modernization project is a code converter that takes your legacy source code and automatically converts it to a modern codebase. While code converters do have a role to play, there are many more important aspects to a successful modernization effort.

  “The spin being …

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• Guru: The SND-MSG Op Code And Message Subfiles

  September 12, 2022 Ted Holt

  If you’re one of the many IBM i programmers who still writes green-screen applications, think about how your programs communicate with the users. How do you tell a user that a value that he’s just entered is invalid, or that he needs to press a command key to proceed? I’ve seen several methods, but a common one — and my favorite — is to communicate through a message subfile.

  The nice thing about message subfiles is that I can report two or more messages at one time. I like the computer to find as many errors as possible and let …

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• IBM Rejiggers RPM Repos for Open Source Software

  September 12, 2022 Alex Woodie

  IBM has made a change to how it distributes open source software for the IBM i platform. Instead of using a single RPM repository to distribute the software for all release of the IBM i operating system, as has been the case for the past five years, IBM is now delivering software through operating system-specific releases. The change was made to address difficulties that have arisen in the use of a single repo for all releases of IBM i, the company says.

  IBM rolled out its new RPM (which stands for Red Hat Package Manager) back in 2018 as a …

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• The Cloud’s Future Is So Bright, So Why Are You So Glum?

  August 17, 2022 Alex Woodie

  It’s tough not to be excited about the cloud, that amalgamation of servers that Gartner says will account for half of enterprise IT spending by 2025. The cloud is where the action is; it’s where everyone is headed. So what’s holding you back? The cloud, it turns out, is not so rosy for those without a clear path to get there.

  We’re in the steep part of the public cloud’s growth phase at the moment, thanks in part to COVID-19, which turbo-charged digital transformation projects, Gartner declared in a report earlier this year. The cloud’s growth comes at the …

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• Thoroughly Modern: Latest IT Trends – Bring Security, Speed, And Consistency To IT With Automation

  August 8, 2022 Alan Hamm and Chris Koppe

  The irony of many IT departments is that they have spent many decades automating aspects of the business, literally encoding business processes and interactions with customers, partners, and suppliers to make those processes consistent and fast, but many of the processes used in the IT department itself are done manually and rely on the “tribal knowledge” of the system and application experts.

  This is not only not necessary in many cases today, thanks to a myriad of automation tools that can be brought to bear on IT operations, but it is also dangerous and extremely risky. The systems that run …

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