Four Hundred Monitor, September 6

September 6, 2017 Dan Burger

Two app dev strategies are fighting for supremacy. DevOps is a cultural and organizational shift that empowers enterprise software teams to deliver better software quicker – in particular, hand-coded software. Low-Code platforms, in contrast, provide a technology platform and visual tooling that deliver better software quicker – with little or no hand-coding required.

The continued success of RPG depends on several factors. Maintaining the status quo is not one of them. See what it takes to build an RPG future in this week’s Monitor. Also discover the latest move by Vision Solutions’ new owner, and why BI and analytics projects are falling short of expectations.

Top Stories From Outside The Jungle

(Intellyx) Two apparently distinct movements are in the process of disrupting the world of enterprise application development: DevOps and Low-Code. When these two disruptive approaches are compared, we find remarkably similar value propositions. We also find that one emphasizes hand-coding while the other replaces it.

(IBM Systems Magazine) RPG programmers are “future proofing” their code to make it more resilient and easier to maintain and enhance. To simply maintain the status quo puts applications at risk as decision makers target them as obsolete. Consequently, companies squander budget on nonessential migrations to other platforms. If you’re not future proofing, you’re putting your company at risk. Take these steps to better future.

(Silicon Angle) Syncsort, the company that recently acquired Vision Solutions, has acquired Metron Technology, a Taunton, U.K.-based provider of capacity management software that specializes in forecasting, modeling and planning complex systems. Metron software collects data from multiple platforms (including IBM i), both on-premises and in the cloud, and brings it into a single logical database.

(InformationWeek) Many enterprises have invested heavily in business intelligence and analytics solutions, but the benefits they had hoped to achieve are not aligning with the investments. That’s the tip of the iceberg according to findings of a new study titled “Accelerating the Path to Value with Business Intelligence and Analytics,” published by TDWI.

Redbooks, White Papers, and Other Resources

(IBM) DevOps is a strategy for responding rapidly to changing marketplace demands through the continuous delivery of applications. This eBook examines the myths surrounding DevOps and how to adopt DevOps in your organization and use it to solve new challenges.

(IBM developerWorks) The IBM Rational Developer for i Hub is a place for the RDi community to mingle and discuss all things RDi. It also provides a library of useful RDi information and resources.

(IBM) The IBM open source wiki page includes links to a boatload of information. Topics like speakers and their presentations, developer tools, requests for enhancements, and the licensed open source offerings are just a click away.

(IBM) The details of building cognitive applications with visual recognition are covered in volume three of a seven-piece collection of IBM Redbooks titled Building Cognitive Applications with IBM Watson Services. The series includes getting started, conversation services, visual recognition, natural languages classifier; language translators; speech-to-text and text-to-speech; and natural language understanding.

(IBM) The IBM Watson developer community lives here. Getting started tutorials, finding tools, resources, documentation, and a question and answer forum—it’s all here.

Chats, Webinars, Seminars, Shows, and Other Happenings

September 6 & 7 — Rochester, Minnesota – COMMON and IBM are hosting an educational event featuring Watson and IBM i as the cognitive platform for business. It includes the IBM Bluemix cloud platform and focuses on solving problems and driving business value with applications, infrastructure and services. Cognitive capabilities include language translation, text-to-voice, cognitive searching and Watson analytics. All can be added to existing RPG applications and DB2 for IBM i data. All sessions will be taught by IBM professionals. Registration fee is $299.

September 14 — Wauwatosa, Wisconsin – Open source subject matter expert Mike Pavlak will be presenting two sessions at the monthly meeting of the Wisconsin Midrange Computer Professional Association. The first session is an introduction to Python on IBM i and the second session explores PHP and MVC application architecture. The meeting will be held at Mo’s Irish Pub located at 10842 West Bluemound Road.

September 19 — Schaumburg, Illinois – The 2017 Omni Technical Conference and Expo features IBM i on Power Systems education on important topics such as advanced RPG, DB2, SQL, application development, Web development, application modernization, security, modern toolsets, and systems administration. IBM i experts on the speaker list include Tim Rowe, Scott Forstie, Barbara Morris, and Pete Massiello. The conference will be held at the IBM Schaumburg offices.

September 19 — Costa Mesa, California – The OCEAN User Group meeting will feature the annual State of the IT Job Market presentation by Bob Langieri, director of IT recruiting at Excel Technical Services. Langieri monitors the market for IBM i jobs, particularly in Southern California, where positions are limited compared to 10 to 15 years ago and are likely to be temporary and filled by contractors or freelancers. He provides advice for both job seekers and employers. The meeting location is National University located at 3390 Harbor Boulevard. It begins at 5:30 p.m.

September 20 — Markham, Ontario, Canada – Thibault Dambrine – an IT professional working out of Calgary, Alberta. His IBM i systems experience spans retail, ERP, telecom billing, data warehousing and data conversions. The presentations he will deliver are rooted in lived-in experience–is the guest speaker at the Toronto User Group meeting. We will present two sessions. At 5 p.m. he shares his knowledge on SQL joins and aggregate functions. At 7 p.m., he provides insights on data conversion methods. Between the two sessions is a buffet dinner and networking. The meeting location is the Monte Carlo Inn & Suites Downtown Markham.

September 21 — Burlington, Vermont – The Vermont Midrange User Group will host its 13th Annual Technical Conference from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. The list of speakers includes Alison Butterill, offering manager for IBM i; Doug Mack, DB2 for i consultant for IBM Lab Services; Aaron Bartell, director of IBM i innovation for Krengeltech; and Paul Tuohy, CEO of Comcon. A conference registration discount is available through August 28. The event will take place at the DoubleTree Burlington hotel.

September 25 — Webinar – Steve Will, Pete Massiello and Trevor Perry discuss the top concerns of IT executives running mission-critical applications on IBM i. Topics on the agenda include leveraging existing applications to meet evolving business needs, total cost of ownership of IBM i compared to other systems, the value of modernizing applications instead of replacing them, and overcoming development challenges that keep older applications and older versions of the operating system in place. This session begins at 1 p.m. Central Time. Bring someone who is unfamiliar with IBM i.

September 27-29 — Virginia Beach, Virginia -The Mid-Atlantic Group of IBM i Collaborators (MAGIC) IBM i User Conference is a three-day event with sessions and hands-on labs and is highlighted by three presentations by IBM i Chief Architect Steve Will. Topics for the lab sessions include PHP, .NET, RDi, Git, HTML, CSS and JavaScript. A complete list of all sessions, speakers and vendors is available online. MAGIC supports the IBM i users in the Mid-Atlantic area: Virginia, North Carolina, Delaware, Maryland, Washington, DC, and Eastern Pennsylvania. Registration is $320 for MAGIC members and $400 for non-members.

September 27 — Westbury, New York – Scott Forstie, the DB2 for i Business Architect, will be the guest speaker at the Long Island Systems Users Group monthly meeting. Forstie will present three sessions on SQL: SQL Views for Dummies at 3:30 p.m., SQL for the Security Officer at 5 p.m., and DB2 for i Tools at 8 p.m. In between sessions two and three, there will be time for networking, cocktails, and dinner. LISUG meetings are held at the Westbury Manor located at 1100 Jericho Turnpike.

October 2-4 — St. Louis, Missouri – The COMMON Fall Conference features technical sessions, workshops, certifications, networking opportunities, and a vendor expo. The session grid and speaker lineup has yet to be posted, but you can expect a mix of fundamental skills and new technologies. An early registration discount is available and hotel reservations can be made.

October 17-19 — Minneapolis, Minnesota – The twice-a-year, spring and fall, RPG & DB2 Summit returns to the upper Midwest for its next technical conference with an agenda that expands to cover new topics such as Python for RPGers, how to bring the power of Watson to RPG applications, and SQL aggregation. It also incorporates sessions that will introduce hidden gems in DB2 for i as well as anticipated Q4 2017 updates to the database. In addition to the three-day Summit, an optional fourth day of hands-on workshops October 16, provides intensive education into four technology areas – SQL, RSE/RDi, Service Programs or PHP. Workshop attendees choose one topic for the “deep dive.” An early registration discount is available through August 31.

October 23–26 — Las Vegas, Nevada – ZendCon offers authoritative sessions, in-depth technical tutorials, exhibit hall activities, and informal opportunities to spotlight the best in enterprise PHP and open source development, focusing on the latest for PHP 7, the evolution of frameworks and tools, API excellence, and innovations on many open source technologies related to the web. It includes a track specifically for IBM i development.