• Keep Your IBM i Baby, Not The Bathwater

  May 7, 2018 Alex Woodie

  In the quest to modernize computer systems, some IBM i shops cease being IBM i shops. Wholesale migrations or complete rewrites of applications on different operating systems are sometimes necessary and beneficial, and sometimes they do more harm than good. When King III Solutions set out to enhance its advanced replenishment system, it managed to create a modern Web front-end that resonates with millennials without giving up its rock-solid IBM i back-end.

  Based in Marietta, Georgia, King III Solutions, or K3S, develops software that helps wholesale distributors and retailers better manage their inventory, in part through a collection of …

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• Profound Rolls Out Node.js Development Services

  April 11, 2018 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that want to get into Node.js development but lack the technical know-how to work with the language may be interested in a new professional service unveiled by Profound Logic last month in which the company will do the actual development work for you.

  Node.js has become one of the most popular development languages for a variety of reasons, including the way it unifies JavaScript for back-end and front-end work, the modular nature of Node.js apps, and the overall agility it gives to developers, particularly those building real-time apps that need to run across multiple platforms. The fact …

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• SEA Launches New Job Scheduler For IBM i

  March 28, 2018 Alex Woodie

  When it’s not talking System z mainframe tools, Software Engineering of America (SEA) has traditionally involved itself with IBM i security and messaging tools. But the New York software firm has expanded its repertoire to IBM i job scheduling with the recent launch of absScheduler.

  The new software was developed by SEA to be a “next-generation” job scheduler that can handle batch workloads across one or more IBM i partitions or systems. The software, which was developed by the same IBM i development team that developed the absMessage product over a decade ago, features both a 5250 green-screen interface and …

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• A Profound Replacement For My VisualAge For RPG Applications

  December 6, 2017 Dan Devoe

  In January 2016, I wrote an IT Jungle article outlining how my company, Boston Warehouse Trading Corporation, prolonged the life of our VisualAge for RPG (VaRPG) applications by getting them to work on 64-bit versions of Windows. And I’m pleased to say, that as of Windows 10 Creator’s Edition, they still work. However, the applications are on life support, and we needed to act sooner rather than later to begin the process of replacing the apps whose SDK and support died a premature and painful death.

  We have researched a few application modernization solutions. But it seemed that, when all …

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• Continuous Improvement: Within Reach, Without Fear

  October 18, 2017 Dan Burger

  There are relatively few companies with end-to-end operations that actually achieve the goal of continuous improvement. It tends to be more of a slogan than a policy for most. And it’s easily recognizable with a glimpse of the IT department. Cutting edge isn’t mandatory, but the stakes have never been higher for those that lag or, through inaction or other poor decisions, make costly mistakes — some quickly realized and others of the ticking time bomb variety.

  Keeping an IT department moving forward is no sure bet, but it helps when the company commitment to persistent progress is more than …

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• IBM Updates Cloud Backup Solution

  October 11, 2017 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops are getting new options for backing up data to the cloud from IBM, which last week announced an update to the Cloud Storage Solutions as part of its Technology Refresh for IBM i 7.2 and 7.3. Representatives from IBM and Rocket Software, which actually developed the product, clued us in on the news.

  It was almost exactly one year ago when IBM first unveiled Cloud Storage Solutions for i. The offering — which was mostly developed by Rocket Software and really is just one solution — enabled IBM i customers to back up their IFS data to …

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• One IBM i Route Into the API Economy

  September 27, 2017 Alex Woodie

  The so-called API Economy is emerging as a legitimate engine for driving the growth of commerce around the world. But with mostly monolithic apps written years ago, the IBM i installed base isn’t well positioned to be a major player. However, there are alternative pathways into the API Economy for IBM i shops, if they know where to look.

  The API Economy refers to the idea that, by exposing bits and pieces of our internal systems out to the world through well-defined application programming interfaces (APIs) – which usually manifest REST-based Web services, although SOAP and XML files will work …

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• BCD Presto Mobilizes Green Screen To Web App Dev

  May 24, 2017 Dan Burger

  Not every green-screen RPG application needs to be modernized. Some need it more than others. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. The same can be said for desktop apps. They don’t all have to be capable of rendering on mobile devices, but some need it more than others. Now BCD Software is helping in the decision making process by bringing responsive development capabilities to its version 7 release of Presto.

  Presto, of course, is BCD’s most popular modernization tool, while responsive design is the capability to design Web pages that display on any device desktop or mobile with a single …

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