Dan Burger
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IBM i Knowledge Sharing: RSE Keyboard Shortcuts
October 7, 2015 Dan Burger
… Read moreA thing of beauty is a joy to behold. For programmers, that thing of beauty is called a shortcut. The more you have, the greater the joy. Most RPG programmers know some shortcuts. Some are hoarded, but more often they get passed around with an “it’s better to give than receive” attitude. Call it karma, if you will. If you can go along with that, let me introduce you to the Queen of Karma–Susan Gantner.
Gantner is famous in the IBM i community for coming up with programming shortcuts. They’re tacked to cubical walls, taped to computer monitors, laminated to
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Bootstrap Responsive To IBM i Mobile Development
September 28, 2015 Dan Burger
… Read moreDo you know a good mobile application when you see one? I’ll bet you do. Although the IBM midrange community lives in a predominately green-screen world and uses outdated terminology like AS/400, iSeries, and System i, we see what’s going on around us. It doesn’t matter if you are an application developer, an app dev manager, or the worried owner of a company with concerns about the current state of the business applications.
It’s not difficult to compare what you have application-wise with what is becoming the norm: Web applications that look better and work better on both desktop and
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IBM i, RPG, And Inaccurate Assumptions
September 28, 2015 Dan Burger
… Read moreAnyone who says RPG is a dead-end career is dead wrong. It’s the door to opportunity. People are walking through that door with an education that costs less than $1,000 and a time investment of about six months. They have a certificate in hand and more than half of them have an entry-level RPG programmer job at an IBM midrange shop. Some would say this is the beginning of the end, but is an old-fashioned Midwestern success story.
“Most of the students are hard-working adults who are feeding a family and have committed to making a career change,” says Gregory
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Stimulus Grants Are An IBM i Community Service
September 23, 2015 Dan Burger
… Read moreThe collaboration between the Maxava iFoundation and the IBM i community is expanding and showing some impressive results. The most recent round of grant funding benefited 34 organizations, according to according to information we received from Maxava, the disaster recovery and high availability vendor.
Now in its fifth year, the Maxava iFoundation offers grants to organizations focused on developing the IBM i community by promoting skills enhancement and the recruiting of business professionals to work with the IBM midrange platform. Each year, the grant awards have totaled in the neighborhood of $50,000. The majority of that amount winds up
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New RDi Ready For IBM i Developers
September 21, 2015 Dan Burger
… Read moreFriday was the first day of RDi 9.5 season. The general availability of the latest edition of IBM‘s modern RPG development environment was celebrated with fireworks, champagne, and raucous cheering at IBM i shops from Boston to Berlin to Beijing. If only it were that illustrious. The adoption rate of RDi is unquestionably on the rise, but the pace is closer to a rustle than a hustle. Maybe the new RDi enhancements will up the tempo.
Of all the new features added to RDi 9.5, there are three that may turn up the power of persuasion somewhat for shops
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BCD Adds Digital Signatures to Modernization Tool
September 16, 2015 Dan Burger
… Read moreFor many members of the mobile workforce, capturing digital signatures are all in a day’s work. It was just a matter of figuring out how to efficiently and securely collect signatures that identify and authenticate electronic documents. Mobile signature capture is one of the new features BCD Software has added to its green-screen to GUI application modernization tool called Presto. If mobile apps are part of your IT plans, signature capture probably fits in as well.
Mobile access to modernized green-screen applications is improving business processes and customer service, says Marcel Sarrasin , who has helped make that happen for
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IBM i Marketplace Survey: The Importance Of Being Earnest
September 14, 2015 Dan Burger
… Read moreDetermining the benefits, challenges, and costs associated with evolving IT environments leads to one of the most critical decisions businesses face. The IBM midrange environment is unique in many ways due to the system architecture and, some would say, the reluctance of its user base to make changes. The advocates geek out on the system’s vast capabilities, but surprisingly little is known about the actual developing trends and evolving IT roadmaps of the organizations that make up the community.
Jumping on and off technology bandwagons is rarely seen in the IBM i community, but then a lot goes unaccounted for
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RPG Certification And Coursework Nears Completion
September 14, 2015 Dan Burger
… Read moreA long overdue update to the RPG curriculum and course guide available through the IBM Power Systems Academic Initiative (PSAI) is nearing completion. The revision work puts several modern RPG enhancements into the education and certification processes, which have gone hand in hand because of a cooperative effort involving IBM and COMMON. Jim Buck, an instructor at Gateway Technical College was instrumental in the bringing forth the changes.
The revised curriculum is seen as a key piece in getting more schools to teach RPG and other IBM i topics. “The schools that are part of the Academic Initiative need
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Agilysys’ Tardy BI Tool Added To Lodging Management System
September 2, 2015 Dan Burger
… Read moreThe hospitality business is a technology mother lode. Agilysys is a major player in the hospitality business by virtue of its tight grip on the gaming industry, which is entwined with lodging, restaurants, and the resort experience. In this arena, the customer is king and knowing customers well delivers the keys to the kingdom. But beyond the customer experience, there’s all the operational data that’s fed into the property management system and elevates efficiencies.
It doesn’t seem like a proprietary, on-premise property management system (PMS) would stand a snowball’s chance in Vegas, but Agilysys is doing its best to keep
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What IBM Can Learn From Free-Form RPG
August 31, 2015 Dan Burger
… Read moreThree weeks ago, I wrote an article about free-form RPG, a runner-up in the IBM best kept secrets game and second only to magnificently camouflaged IBM i. Since then, I’ve collected the opinions of several more free-form observers. I’ve not talked with anyone who believes IBM is doing enough to encourage free-form conversion of old RPG code. But there is more to say about whether the benefits and the effort it takes to make the code conversion.
Technically, the conversion from fixed-format to free-form RPG is pretty simple. Tools from IBM i ISVs ARCAD and Linoma Software are capable and