• Eradani Brings COBOL Into Its Microservices World

  January 19, 2022 Alex Woodie

  IBM i customers who need to connect their COBOL applications to Web services and APIs may want to check out Eradani, which is in the process of rolling out an update aimed at COBOL code. In the process of updating Eradani Connect, the company strengthened its entire platform, which will benefit RPG shops, too.

  Eradani Connect was designed to make it easy to connect IBM i applications to external APIs in a bi-directional manner. With its native wrap-around code for IBM i, the software allows customers to expose their existing applications using REST protocols and JSON data structures, thereby providing …

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• IBM i Community Predictions for 2022, Part 2

  January 12, 2022 Alex Woodie

  The new year is upon us, which means it’s time for predictions. We continue where we left off on Monday with our second installment of predictions from the IBM i community.

  The way Fresche Solutions Chief Product Officer Marcel Sarrasin sees it, 2022 will be a period of heightened competition in the business jungle.

  “Technology advancements and changing markets will drive new competitive threats in 2022, creating the urgent need for new digital solutions to help companies thrive, survive and grow,” Sarrasin says. “Focus will be on new IT products and applications that will deliver improved business processes, pave the …

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• The Pivotal Year Ahead For Big Blue And IBM i Shops

  January 10, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  When we look back on it many years from now, this year, 2022, will be a pivotal year in the history of the Power Systems platform from Big Blue, which was commercially significant starting in February 1990 when the RS/6000 was launched but which obviously traces its roots through the IBM i and OS/400 branches of the Power Systems family tree all the way back to the System/3 launched in July 1969 just 10 days after humans first landed on the moon.

  There are different kinds of pivot points in the history of the IBM midrange platforms, including the launch …

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• IBM i Community Predictions For 2022, Part 1

  January 10, 2022 Alex Woodie

  While the month and year ostensibly are just values in the date field, when the calendar flips over from December to January, things feel different. There’s a greater sense of hope and optimism for what the new year will bring. Coming off another calamitous year filled with COVID-19, perhaps it’s we need that even more so this year.

  It has become an IT Jungle tradition to ask members of the IBM i community at the start of the year for their predictions. This year is no different, and so we’ll kick off the first part of our (most likely) two-part …

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• 2021: An IBM i Year in Review, Part Two

  December 15, 2021 Alex Woodie

  We’re at the tail end of another busy year of tracking the goings-on in the IBM i community, which means it is time to sit back and ponder where we’ve been. Part one of this series covered the first six months of the year, and now it’s time for the second half, which started in…

  July

  Ransomware is often thought of as an X86 problem, that the IBM i is immune. Turns out, that’s not quite accurate. In July, we shared news of a close call that one IBM i shop had with ransomware.

  As IBM got ready to ship …

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• Guru: Global Variables in Modules

  December 13, 2021 Ted Holt

  When I first learned to program computers (RPG II, COBOL 74), the only kind of variables I knew of were global variables. Any statement within a program was able to use any variable.  It was not until I started my computer science degree that I found out about local variables, which are known to only part of a program. Since that time, it has been my practice to use local variables as much as possible and global variables only when necessary.

  Ideally an RPG program, service program, module, or subprocedure would have no global variables at all, but I don’t …

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• Want to Modernize? Great! Now Get to Work

  December 8, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Application modernization has been one of the more popular topics through the course of 2021. After the initial scare of COVID-19 wore off and the pandemic wore on, many companies came to the conclusion that older applications were hobbling their ability to compete in an increasingly digital world. While it’s clear the desire for modernization in the cloud is building, what’s unclear is the extent to which that will translate into action at IBM i shops.

  The COVID-19 pandemic and economic lockdowns rewarded two groups: companies that had largely digital business plans, and those who could run their applications in …

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• Security Threats, They Are a Changin’

  November 17, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Ransomware came into 2021 like a lion, but rather than going out like a lamb, it seemed to get bigger and meaner. Even IBM i shops, which so often are protected from the wider security storm, felt the panic and sense of helplessness of having their previous data held for ransom. But early indications are that the security threat we’re talking about this time next year may be entirely different.

  It’s tough to overestimate the impact that ransomware had on American businesses and other institutions through the course of the year. We had indications that something big was unfolding a …

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• Consider Modernizing Your Approach to IBM i Security, Too

  November 10, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Many IBM i users are facing the reality that they need to modernize their IBM i applications, especially those based on monolithic blocks of fixed-format RPG. But other aspects of the IBM i experience can use some renovating too, including how organizations manage their security settings. Luckily, in the last few Technology Refreshes to IBM i, IBM has provided a slew of new SQL-based services for doing just that.

  Traditionally on IBM i, administrators had two main approaches for viewing and changing security settings. They could view and control the settings directly using commands, often automated through CL programs. Or …

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• IBM i Developer Day This Week

  November 10, 2021 Alex Woodie

  IBM i developers of all stripes are welcome to IBM i Developer Day, a free virtual event that’s scheduled to take place next Friday, November 19, at 1 p.m. ET. Organized by Liam Allan, the event will feature a heavy dose of Visual Studio Code (Allan’s favorite IDE) plus discussions hosted by IBMers on the future of IBM i and its role in the cloud.

  The world of application development is moving fast, but many IBM i pros are still stuck in the past when it comes to the tools, technologies, and techniques they use. While RPG and COBOL development …

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