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Big Blue Bolsters Navigator For i With New Stuff
October 14, 2024 Alex Woodie
Changes are afoot with Navigator for i, the Web-based administrative tool for the IBM i platform, which gains a range of new capabilities with the latest Technology Refresh. Some of the more visible additions to Navigator include complete support for the Advanced Job Scheduler and expanded support for new security journal data mart. But not to be overlooked are the retirement of the old Web Admin GUI (with replacements in Navigator), and enhancements to PDI.
Navigator for i is IBM’s strategic Web-based console for administrating the IBM i server. The product enables administrators to monitor and manage various components of …
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Surprise! It’s 2024 Fall TR Time for IBM i
October 9, 2024 Alex Woodie
IBM announced the Technology Refreshes (TRs) for IBM i version 7.5 and 7.4 yesterday, bringing a host of new capabilities to the proprietary operating system. As expected, the surprise update covers a range of IBM i facilities, including Db2, Navigator, ACS, PowerHA, and the development tools.
Navigator gets several more enhancements with the new TRs, including: a new dashboard with software licensing information; Web-based administration of network facilities; support for monitoring of Java 11 and Java 17 jobs; enhancements to the Performance Data Investigator (PDI); and new options for working with audit journals, among other capabilities.
IBM also includes the …
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Eradani Taps GenAI for IBM i Integration Boost
October 9, 2024 Alex Woodie
Eradani introduced a new product last month that uses the power of generative AI to simplify the development of code for integration projects involving IBM i. The company says the new product, dubbed Eradani Assist, will allow customers to use natural language to tell the product to build specific application and data integrations, and the product will leverage one or more large language models (LLMs) to generate the integration code.
Eradani calls its flagship product, Eradani Connect, an “integration hub” that manages communication into and out of the IBM i platform. The software supports application and data integration projects that …
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The Many Faces Of IT Modernization
October 7, 2024 Alex Woodie
The clarion call of modernization has been heard loud and clear among IBM i and System z shops for decades. Old IT is hampering your competitiveness, they’re told, and something must be done about it. In reality, there’s no single path to modernization, which is a multi-faceted phenomenon that can have wide ranging impacts on the business, Rocket Software says in a new report.
Business transformation is separate from IT transformation, but the two are linked, according to Rocket Software’s new study, titled IT Modernization Without Disruption, which is based on a survey of 309 decision-maker at System …
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Guru: RPG Select Operation Gets Some Sweet Upgrades
September 23, 2024 Gregory Simmons
I have always been a fan of RPG’s Select operation. Any time I’m coding an If statement and think there’s a chance that there could be a third situation other than the If-Else conditions, I will go ahead and code the Select operation instead of the If statement. The RPG language’s Select operation got a pretty sweet upgrade in V7R5 TR2 and V7R4 TR8. Now, the Select statement can be presented with a value and we have two new op-codes to use within the Select operation; When-is and When-in.
DISCLAIMER: The edibility of the mushrooms listed in my test …
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Remain Bolsters Development Options with TD/OMS
September 18, 2024 Alex Woodie
Remain Software recently rolled out a major upgrade to its change management software for IBM i. The big enhancements with TD/OMS 16.1 include the availability of Remain’s Web-based development framework, dubbed Octo, as well as support for the popular Web-based IDE, VS Code.
Remain Software introduced Octo more than two years ago as a lightweight Web-based framework to unite its various IBM i offerings. Short for Open Core for Technology Orchestration, Octo was initially put forward as a way to integrate and display information from other Remain Software applications, such as TD/OMS, Gravity, API Studio, and MiWorkplace, its lightweight, Web-based …
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Guru: Growing A More Productive Team With Procedure Driven RPG
June 24, 2024 Gregory Simmons
There are many great benefits to procedure driven RPG, and I have covered many of them in my previous articles. In this article, I want to share with you what I believe is the biggest benefit to implementing procedure driven RPG in your shop; procedures, when written and implemented properly, are reusable.
When you’ve written a new procedure that expertly tackles one task, you should be proud of the accomplishment. But don’t keep that in your program. Export it in a service program for your whole team to use! Now, undoubtedly, you will find yourself at one point thinking: “Yeah, …
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IBM Banking on Merlin 2.0 to Goose Modern Development on IBM i
June 19, 2024 Alex Woodie
IBM last week shipped most of the new stuff unveiled in the Spring Technology Refreshes, which includes Merlin 2.0, the Web-based application development and modernization environment for IBM i. Big Blue is betting that the new and improved offering will encourage IBM i shops to (finally) begin their journey toward truly modern coding techniques.
Friday, June 14 marked the start of general availability for the majority of the features IBM is including in IBM i 7.5 TR4 and IBM i 7.4 TR10, which it announced on May 8. The version 2.0 release of Merlin – whose official IBM name …
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MDNA Launches Unit Testing Tool for IBM i
June 19, 2024 Alex Woodie
Midrange Dynamics North America (MDNA) recently launched a new unit testing tool that’s designed to make it easier for IBM i developers to test their code. The software, called MDTest, is works with RDi and VS Code and integrates with MDNA’s change management software for IBM i.
MDNA created MDTest to provide for a simple way for developers to unit test their ILE code. The software automates the process of executing test scripts, recording results, and determining whether the software can be pushed into the next stage of the DevOps processes.
The product includes about 30 pre-built software quality tests …
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Youthful IBM i Optimism In Fort Worth
June 3, 2024 Alex Woodie
The IBM i community showed up in force last month for COMMON’s annual conference. And they sure didn’t drive or fly to Fort Worth for the weather, which was hot and muggy. The POWERUp 2024 attendees – all 1,100 of them – came to the show to learn about the platform, which may be in the early stages of – dare we say it? – a youth moment.
First things first: the attendance number. COMMON was shooting for about 1,000, which is about where its annual spring conference has been for the better part of a decade (the fall conferences …
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