• ARCAD Generates APIs From 5250 Screens

  July 22, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Many IBM i shops want to modernize their 5250 applications by developing REST-based Web services and API extensions, but they face difficulties getting started. These organizations may want to check out ARCAD Software’s latest offering, ARCAD API, which takes much of the pain and complexity out of the API generation process.

  REST-based APIs have become a standard method for exposing data and business logic to the outside world. There’s an abundance of ways that APIs can be used–pushing data to Web or mobile users, for example, or pulling data from a cloud-based CRM system. Just about any higher-level application function, …

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• IBMiUnit Moves RPG Unit Testing Forward

  June 24, 2020 Alex Woodie

  As IBM i shops break up their monolithic programs into more reusable chunks, it’s reasonable to assume that they would adopt unit testing to make sure those chunks are working properly before promoting them into production. Unit testing hasn’t been widely adopted on the IBM i platform, which is why RPG developers who are looking for a unit testing tool may be interested in a new framework called IBMiUnit.

  IBMiUnit is an open source project that helps programmers test any RPG-based program, subprocedure, or method, including RPG-based SQL. The software, which is modeled off the popular JUnit and xUnit frameworks, …

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• Why You Need To Implement Exit Point Security – Now

  June 15, 2020 Rich Loeber

  As everyone knows, the only truly secure computer is one that is not networked to any other system or any client, and that has no users doing anything at all on the system. And if you really want to be honest about it, you should probably turn its power off. Then, it would be perfectly secure – and perfectly useless as well.

  To make any system useful, it has to be opened up so it can be reached by the world, and it may be hard to remember this now, three decades after the client/server and Internet revolutions, but there …

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• Guru: SUBSET on EXECUTE and OPEN

  June 15, 2020 Paul Tuohy

  The DB2 for i Enhancements in IBM i 7.3 Technology Refresh 8 / IBM i 7.4 Technology Refresh 2 just made dynamic SQL, embedded in RPG, a lot easier to use. It includes an enhancement entitled USING SUBSET on EXECUTE and OPEN with Extended indicators. This enhancement provides a simple and effective solution to a problem that I first highlighted in an article I wrote back in September of 2015. (See A First Look At SQL Descriptors.)

  The “problem” we are dealing with is how to handle a variable number of host variables being used in a dynamic …

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• Guru: Graphical Debugging Through ACS

  June 8, 2020 Ted Holt

  ACS (IBM i Access Client Solutions) keeps getting better and better. I can’t stay up-to-date with the latest releases of all the software I use, but I do everything I can to keep up-to-date with ACS. One of the handiest of the relatively most recent releases is the ability to access IBM i Debugger through Run SQL Scripts. If you haven’t tried IBM i Debugger, you’re missing out.

  IBM i Debugger (a.k.a. System Debugger) is part of the IBM Toolkit for Java. It’s graphical, and it makes the green-screen debugger (STRDBG) look like something built by cavemen. To show you …

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• COBOL Is Not The Problem; The Data Is

  June 1, 2020 Brad Thomas

  The COVID-19 pandemic has put a spotlight on COBOL, with multiple news stories about COBOL systems struggling as unprecedented demands have been placed on them. And then there are the urgent requests for COBOL developers to help ensure these mission-critical systems do their jobs.

  Eventually, the dust will settle, but some tough decisions will loom for organizations that rely on COBOL. The reality, though, is these decisions were already on the horizon because of the constant evolvement of other data management technologies, surging data production and the rapidly increasing average age of COBOL developers. When the dust does settle, it …

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• Guru: Introduction to the Administration Runtime Expert

  June 1, 2020 Dawn May

  Business-critical applications must be up and running reliably without failure. When something unexpected occurs, you must identify the cause and correct it quickly. Whether you’re a developer launching a new application, enhancing an existing application, or maintaining a legacy application, or an administrator managing the infrastructure, we all want to find ways to make our jobs easier, and unexpected surprises are not fun. I expect the relentless push to do more with less is only going to intensify while the tolerance for failure keeps dropping. Yet identifying points of failure can be tricky as complexities scale.

  IBM i offers a …

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• What’s New With Db2 Web Query?

  May 11, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Db2 Web Query, which is IBM’s strategic business intelligence tool for IBM i, doesn’t follow the same release cycle as the operating system itself. But as part of activity surrounding the latest round of Technology Refreshes (TR) for IBM i 7.3 and 7.4, IBM discussed the recent updates that it’s made to Db2 Web Query, along with new features that are due very soon.

  To get the lowdown on the new Db2 Web Query features, we tuned into a recent presentation made by Doug Mack, IBM’s Db2 Web Query product manager. Mack presented a session with Db2 for i …

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• What’s New In Open Source With The Latest TRs

  April 27, 2020 Alex Woodie

  New technology is exciting. And when it can help you run your business more profitably or efficiently, well, it becomes very exciting. With IBM i, the open source community is arguably the biggest contributor of new technology to the platform. IT Jungle recently checked in Jesse Gorzinski, the IBM i open source architect, to hear how the open source story has improved with the recent technology refreshes.

  Arguably the biggest open source-related enhancement with IBM i 7.4 TR2 and 7.3 TR8 revolves around a change in RPM, the new delivery method that IBM adopted two years ago to distribute new …

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• Database Enhancements Galore In Technology Refresh

  April 20, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Db2 for i is the beating heart of the IBM i server. There’s no doubt about that. So when IBM delivers the next set of Technology Refreshes (TRs) for IBM i 7.3 and 7.4 next month, you can bet that they’ll be loaded with new and improved features to keep the database humming.

  To get up to speed with the database-related enhancements in IBM i 7.4 TR2 and IBM i 7.3 TR8, IT Jungle caught up to Scott Forstie, a senior technical staff member at IBM’s lab in Rochester, Minnesota, and the database architect for Db2 for i.

  There’s …

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