• RPG Use “Skyrocketed” Says IBM i Marketplace Report

  February 20, 2023 Alex Woodie

  RPG has always been the number one development language on IBM i, the platform with which it is most closely linked. But as open source languages like PHP and Java spread on IBM i, some speculated that RPG’s popularity would begin to slip. That hasn’t happened, according to Fortra’s most recent IBM i Marketplace Survey Results report. In fact, usage of RPG has “skyrocketed,” it says.

  From 2015 to 2020, the percentage of Fortra (formerly HelpSystems) Marketplace Survey-takers who chose RPG as one of their development languages stayed steady, hovering around the 84 percent to 89 percent level. Structured Query …

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• Realizing The Promise Of Cross Platform Development With VS Code

  January 25, 2023 Jeff Tickner

  An integrated development environment is like a tractor or a truck, or indeed any other kind of tool. There are farmers who want a tractor from John Deere or Ford or Massey-Ferguson, contractors who want a Ford or Dodge or GMC truck, and carpenters and electricians who use Dewalt or Milwaukee Electric or Makita cordless tools.

  No matter the choice of tools, ultimately these blue collar workers are going to farm and build things, and the choice of tool should not interfere with that effort. White collar – or far more likely no collar T shirt – programmers are no …

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• IBM Publishes Power10 Performance Optimize Guide

  December 7, 2022 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops looking to squeeze the most performance out of their Power10 servers have a lot of options available at their disposal. IBM covers many, if not all, of them in its latest performance paper, titled “IBM Power10 performance optimization for IBM i,” which it released last week.

  The Power10 is the most powerful processor IBM ever built. Compared to the Power9 processor, the Power10 delivers 20 percent to 30 percent higher performance per core. And with 25 percent more cores per socket, that means oodles of more processing power to do useful work.

  At a system level, the …

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• On the Spectrum of Application Modernization

  October 19, 2022 Alex Woodie

  What is application modernization? If you ask 10 people in the IT world, you’re likely to get 10 different answers. For organizations looking to keep their IBM i assets relevant in an increasingly digital world, being aware of the spectrum of options available will help them make the best choice for their particular situation.

  Every organization is unique when it comes to its IT journey. Some may have large in-house development teams and would never think of running packaged business applications, while others have no developers and lean on their vendors and partners to keep things running. Some organizations may …

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• No Plan To Bring .NET To Power, IBM Says

  July 25, 2022 Alex Woodie

  IBM says it currently has no new projects underway to get .NET to run on Power, which IT Jungle previously reported was a project that was underway at IBM. What’s more, existing efforts to run .NET applications on IBM i that have been backed by Big Blue have apparently drawn very little interest from the vendor community.

  Back in March, we reported on a plan within IBM to get .NET running in a containerized Red Hat Linux and OpenShift environment running on Power, much the same as it had done with System z. Our source told us the project involved …

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• Database And Developer Enhancements In IBM i 7.5 And 7.4 TR6

  May 9, 2022 Alex Woodie

  IBM has made a number of enhancements to the Db2 for i database with the launch of IBM i 7.5, which becomes generally available tomorrow. It also is bringing new features for developers, including changes to Integrated Web Services (IWS), which will improve REST integration.

  Most of the new features added to Db2 for i are only available in IBM i 7.5, which will give users a reason to adopt it. However, there are a few enhancements added in IBM i 7.4 Technology Release 6, which doesn’t ship until May 24.

  As we previously reported, IBM i 7.5 expands …

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• Infor Touts Stronger Roadmap For IBM i ERP

  May 4, 2022 Alex Woodie

  It may not be fashionable in some circles to have ERP software that runs on IBM i, since containerized microservices running in the cloud are all the rage. But since it was fully acquired by Koch Industries last year, Infor does not care. That change of heart is at the center of a renewed focus on continued development of its IBM i ERP systems.

  For many years, Infor actively pushed many of its IBM i customers to move to other platforms, including cloud-based ERP systems. While it didn’t sunset any of the IBM i products (it has around a dozen …

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• Marketplace Study Shows How IBM i Language Use Evolves

  February 9, 2022 Alex Woodie

  It’s no secret that RPG dominates development on the IBM i platform. SQL and Control Language (CL) are also heavily used in the day-to-day operations of tens of thousands of IBM i shops. But what about other established languages, like Java and C++? What about newer open source languages, like PHP and Node.js? The recent HelpSystems Marketplace Study provides us a clue into language use.

  HelpSystems published its first IBM i Marketplace Study back in January 2016, reflecting data collected in late 2015 from 834 IBM i professionals around the world. One of the questions it has consistently asked is …

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• Guru: Global Variables in Modules

  December 13, 2021 Ted Holt

  When I first learned to program computers (RPG II, COBOL 74), the only kind of variables I knew of were global variables. Any statement within a program was able to use any variable.  It was not until I started my computer science degree that I found out about local variables, which are known to only part of a program. Since that time, it has been my practice to use local variables as much as possible and global variables only when necessary.

  Ideally an RPG program, service program, module, or subprocedure would have no global variables at all, but I don’t …

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• New OpenLegacy Product Creates ‘Tech-Agnostic’ Services

  November 17, 2021 Alex Woodie

  OpenLegacy recently announced OpenLegacy Hub, or OL Hub, a new offering designed to help customers create technology agnostic digital services from existing legacy applications and infrastructure. The offering supports IBM i and z/OS assets, among other platforms that are commonly grouped under the “legacy” banner.

  Since it appeared on the midrange scene back in 2015, OpenLegacy has been looking to help IBM i and mainframe customers extend their existing systems in new and profitable ways. Led by tech veterans from IBM and Software AG, the Israeli company created a development environment that could analyze legacy programs, such as 5250 …

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