• What’s New with RDi Version 9.6.0.7

  March 11, 2020 Alex Woodie

  IBM last month unveiled Rational Developer for i (RDi) version 9.6.0.7, the first release of the popular IBM i development environment in about a year. With this release, IBM is giving developers a handful of new capabilities, including the ability to create procedures out of pieces of code, as well as the ability to test incoming parameters.

  RDi is IBM’s flagship integrated development environment (IDE) for the IBM i platform. The product isn’t universally used across the IBM i community, and it’s not free. But many IBM i professionals swear by the graphical and modern IDE, particularly compared to older …

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• Industry Speaks: IBM i Predictions for 2020, Part 1

  January 20, 2020 Alex Woodie

  We are three weeks into 2020, and that New Year smell hasn’t worn off yet. As time rolls on, the IBM i community will certainly get down to business. In the meantime, here are industry predictions from nine community members to read.

  For Alan Seiden, the CEO of Seiden Group and an IBM Champion for Power, risk management will be a common theme for how they approach IT staffing in 2020.

  “IBM i shops have traditionally operated in a lean manner, relying on key individuals who knew their systems intimately,” Seiden says. “Now, with IT staff managing more projects than …

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• IBM i Startup Tackles “Awkward” Git Integration

  September 30, 2019 Alex Woodie

  If you have ever felt that working with Git on the IBM i platform was a little awkward and could be refined to fit your native IBM i development experience on RDi or SEU just a bit better, then you might be interested in learning about a new utility called iForGit that was recently released by IBM midrange veteran Richard Schoen and his new startup, MobiGoGo.

  Git came to the IBM i three years ago, and there’s no denying that it has been a hit. Since Linux developer Linus Torvalds released it nearly a decade-and-a-half ago, the open source …

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• Guru Classic: My Favorite Keyboard Shortcuts for RSE/RDi

  July 17, 2019 Susan Gantner

  When using RDi for editing my CL, DDS, RPG, or COBOL code, I find that I can save a lot of time by using keyboard shortcuts for functions that would otherwise require that I take my hands off the keyboard to use the mouse. So I thought I would share a few of my favorites. Many of the shortcuts I use are standard for other applications that I also use for email, spreadsheets or text editing. It’s easy to forget that some of those same shortcuts can be used when we’re editing our RPG code.

  A lot has changed on …

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• ARCAD Brings Traditional 5250 Development Into DevOps Fold

  June 24, 2019 Alex Woodie

  IBM i developers who embrace modern DevOps techniques typically also use modern development tools, like RDi. Much of the IBM i world uses IBM’s latest development environment, but many have resisted. Now, thanks to new software from ARCAD Software, IBM i developers who work with older tools like PDM can also partake of the benefits of DevOps.

  Getting older IBM i developers on board with the latest tools and techniques is a big priority for ARCAD Software, according to Alexandre Codinach, vice president of Americas for ARCAD Software, which included the new 5250 development capabilities with the launch of …

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• Guru Classic: Giving RDi a Split Personality

  June 19, 2019 Susan Gantner

  A commonly asked question by RDi newbies is: “How do I view source in split screen like I can in SEU?” The answer is that you can’t do it exactly like SEU, but then why would you want to? The RDi editor offers far greater flexibility.

  The original version of my tip on this subject was published back in 2007. Back then, the toolset we know as RDi was called “WDSC”. Quite a lot of other changes have occurred within RDi as well. Originally, a specialized perspective was required to make this feature work well. Today’s RDi works well without …

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• One Repository To Rule The Source – And Object – Code

  February 4, 2019 Floyd Del Muro

  (Sponsored Content) The concept of a single repository for source is not necessarily a new one. When I interviewed with ARCAD back in 2011, I did so at the at the Rational conference called Innovate in Orlando. The research and development team and our chief technology officer were already in dialogue with IBM to resell ARCAD technology alongside its Rational development suite, adding power to Rational Team Concert that development organizations could effectively have a similar repository for IBM i and open source applications.

  At the time, RTC supported the open source world very well, just like Git …

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• All i Want For Christmas Is RDi Lite

  December 12, 2018 Alex Woodie

  All some IBM i community members wanted for the holidays was RDi Lite. Instead, they’re looking at IBM like the Grinch due to its decision not to offer a free, scaled-down version of the application development tool. What’s more, the community is expressing great displeasure at the manner in which IBM handled the matter through its Request for Enhancement (RFE) process.

  Hassan Farooqi kicked off the campaign for RDi Lite in August 2017, when he posted an RFE on the new IBM developerWorks website that’s designed to facilitate collaboration with its user communities by allowing them to submit ideas for …

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• iSphere Upgrade Bolsters RDi Even More

  November 7, 2018 Alex Woodie

  When it comes to IBM i programming tools from IBM, Rational Developer for IBM i (RDi) is the integrated development environment at the top of many professionals’ wish lists. However, the IDE’s functionality is lacking a few departments, which provides an opportunity for innovation in the community, as IBM originally envisioned. One of the projects that’s been running with the ball is the popular iSphere project, which recently unveiled a new release.

  iSphere is a free plug-in for RDi and WDSC that was first released by Frank Hildebrandt of Task Force IT-Consulting back in 2013. The original idea behind the …

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• Guru: Ready Or Not! Part 5 Of Big Changes In RDi V9.6, Edit/Browse Toggle, PDM Perspective, More

  October 22, 2018 Susan Gantner

  In this tip I’m going to cover a few of the “smaller” features implemented in V9.6.0.3 and …0.4 that I think you should know about. I’ll cover my favorite — the Edit/Browse toggle feature — as well as some enhancements to Block Nesting. I’ll also follow-on to my last tip about the PDM affinity features in the Object Table — the PDM perspective — plus a few more little goodies.

  A quick hint for you on the subject of exactly what new features became available within RDi and when: If you ever want to see a complete list of new …

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