• Kubernetes Container Control Comes To Power Systems

  October 29, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The moment that Google created a clone of parts of its internal Borg cluster and container management system and open sourced it as the Kubernetes project, the jig was pretty much up.

  Google had done a lot of the fundamental work to bring containers to the Linux platform starting way back in 2005, and had shared its techniques with the open source community, leading directly to the Docker container format and the engine that runs it atop the Linux kernel. While Docker, the company, got a jump start with its Docker Swarm container orchestrator and then its fuller Docker Enterprise …

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• RPG, Java, And The Future Of Infor’s IBM i ERP Suites

  October 17, 2018 Alex Woodie

  Infor is in the midst of a multi-year overhaul of its three RPG-based ERP suites for manufacturers, which include LX, XA, and System 21. When the overhaul is complete, the products will still run on the time-tested IBM i server, but the code behind the products will look significantly different.

  In response to changing technology and customer expectations, Infor essentially is rewriting all three ERP suites using something called the Infor Development Framework. The IDF was originally developed to help transition the bulk of the Infor ERP XA product (MAPICS) from RPG to Java, and now it’s being used for …

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• CM First Removes IBM i Requirement From ALM

  October 17, 2018 Alex Woodie

  Companies that are adopting the application lifecycle management (ALM) software from CM First no longer need an IBM i server, the company announced recently. The move with CM MatchPoint is intended to widen the deployment options for CM First’s targeted customer base, which is CA Plex and 2E users.

  CM MatchPoint is used to automate the development of CA Plex and CA 2E environments, particularly among large development teams that are geographically dispersed. The software manages several aspects of Plex and 2E development, from user-submitted change requests and workflow to version control and deployment.

  With the delivery of CM MatchPoint …

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• New Open Source ERP Suite Written In ILE RPG

  October 15, 2018 Alex Woodie

  There’s something quite novel being introduced today at the Fall COMMON conference in Pittsburgh: An open source ERP package written in free-form RPG. Dubbed intERPprise, the software project is intended to harness core IBM i strengths – its integrated database and ILE environment – but above all, provide an example for what modern and native open source software can look like on IBM i.

  The intERPrise project (www.i-nterprise.org) was spearheaded by a group of IBM i advocates, including Chris Hird and Marinus van Sandwyk, who wanted to demonstrate what a modern business application would look like – and …

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• Guru: A More Efficient Way To Merge With SQL

  October 15, 2018 Mike Larsen

  Lately, I’ve been using the merge statement in my programs to insert or update rows in a table. I recently came across a situation where a program using merge was running every few minutes and performing updates to thousands of rows each time it ran. Since this table was journaled, it was obvious some re-design was necessary.

  For those unfamiliar with the merge statement, it is sometimes referred to as an “upsert.” That means it will either perform an update or an insert. In RPG terms, I like to compare it to a chain operation. With a chain, you check …

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• Modern Lessons From A Fresh IBM i Developer

  October 8, 2018 Alex Woodie

  Application modernization is a big nut to crack on IBM i. That is to say, there are many ways to tackle the problem, from the code and business logic to the databases and user interfaces. But when it comes to the type of developers you should look for and how they should spend their time, Kody Robinson has a few pointers that may be worth keeping in mind.

  Robinson was a member of the first batch of “Fresh Faces” that IBM put forward in 2017 to showcase the fact that young people are building careers on the platform, and that …

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• ARCAD Debuts RPG Code Checker

  October 3, 2018 Alex Woodie

  If you write RPG, or know somebody who does, then you realize that mistakes can and will happen. However, beyond the obvious syntax errors, which should be detected immediately by the code editor, are instances where the code is sloppy or just poorly written. Those are the instances where ARCAD Software hopes to help with its new CodeChecker offering.

  ARCAD-CodeChecker, as the product is officially called, does just that: Detect poor quality RPG code before it makes it into production. If you’ve coded a bug into the program, made a design error, or taken 1,000 lines to write something that …

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• Guru: The Binding Directory Is The Key

  October 1, 2018 Ted Holt

  Hey, Ted:

  We license a software package to handle email on our IBM i system. When I write an RPG program that uses those routines, I can’t compile with the usual Create Bound RPG Program (CRTBNDRPG) command. Instead I have to use a two-step process — Create RPG Module (CRTRPGMOD) followed by Create Program (CRTPGM). Can you explain why this is? Even better, can you tell me if there is a way that I’m not aware of to compile with CRTBNDRPG?

  — David

  David continued, “I use CRTBNDCL and CRTBNDRPG, as they get me what I need, otherwise I am …

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• Why Curbstone Picked iSam Blue for HA

  September 12, 2018 Alex Woodie

  When it comes to picking an IBM i high availability vendor, there are a lot of factors that come into play. Does the product do what I need it to do? Are the license and maintenance fees reasonable? Will the vendor give me the support I need? When the folks at Curbstone considered HA offerings for its IBM i-based credit card authorization portal, all signs pointed to iSam Blue.

  Founded in 2002, Curbstone has built a business around credit card authorization software, particularly on the IBM i platform. The company’s founder and CEO, Ira Chandler, wrote the first commercial credit …

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• Guru: Data-Centrism, Step Zero

  September 10, 2018 Ted Holt

  I hear a lot these days about the need for data-centric information systems. That is as it should be. The proper way to support an organization is to remove logic from application programs and put it into the database through such devices as constraints and triggers. However, before many shops can take the first step in that direction, they need to take what I call step zero.

  Step zero in data-centric computing is to remove hard-coded data values from programs and put them into the database. Just as the database manager should enforce business rules (e.g. we don’t ship to …

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