• PTC Completes Database Support In Implementer

  September 11, 2019 Alex Woodie

  As a change management tool, PTC’s Implementer is well-regarded among IBM i users for its ability to track development tasks and smooth out the promotion process. While the product has mostly been used to track source code in programming languages like RPG and Java, customers have increasingly been putting business logic into Db2 for i. With the recent launch of Implementer 12.3, PTC has wrapped up planned enhancements for the database.

  PTC‘s Implementer provides a full range of capabilities for managing development processes for IBM i shops. The software works closely with IBM‘s Rational Developer for i (RDi) …

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• Software Change Management Has To Change With The DevOps Times

  September 9, 2019 Philippe Magne

  It is easier to change a system or a software development stack than it is to change the habits and preferences of people. People are the biggest friction in adopting new technologies – right up until the moment they are not. And then they are easy. So it is with any technology, and the transition from traditional software change management to open source DevOps tools is no different.

  It is ironic, perhaps, that the change comes last to the tools that track the changes. But the move to DevOps is as inevitable as it is desirable, flexible, and valuable.

  Over …

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• Boutique Footwear Company Finds A Great Fit With Node.js

  August 19, 2019 Alex Woodie

  As one of the premier providers of winter footwear in North America and Europe, Kamik knows what it takes to run a successful manufacturing operation. But when its custom RPG-based ERP system started to show its age, the company turned to Node.js to help modernize production systems, and found that it improved application integration and developer productivity along the way.

  “Legacy” is a word that the folks at Kamik can take pride in. Founded in Quebec in 1898, Kamik remains a family owned business to this day, with factories located in Canada and the United States. Through its brand-name and …

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• Midrange Dynamics Speeds Table Updates In Db2 Mirror Clusters

  August 5, 2019 Alex Woodie

  With the launch of Db2 Mirror with IBM i 7.4 in June, IBM heralded the age of continuous availability on the midrange platform, bringing IBM i up to par with Windows and Linux platforms. However, while the new software keeps production data in perfect synch, it’s not so great at keeping up with changes to underlying database tables. That’s an area that Midrange Dynamics is addressing with its change management software.

  With Db2 Mirror, IBM has essentially extended a single-server database implementation into a clustered database with two active nodes. As soon as a piece of data is created, updated, …

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• Remain Breaks New Ground With ALM Suite

  July 15, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Coding season just ended for Remain Software, the Dutch application lifecycle management (ALM) vendor with a growing US presence. That means customers are sorting through a torrent of new functionality in its flagship TD/OMS product, including improved hooks to DevOps tools like Git and Jenkins, a new cross-platform cross-reference module, and a nifty API generator too.

  New stuff started emerging from Remain Software around the POWERUp conference in May, when IT Jungle sat down with company representatives to talk about development trends, current and upcoming releases of Remain’s software, and what customers are looking to get next.

  Arguably the biggest …

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• Eradani Bridges The Gap Between Legacy And Open Source

  July 8, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In this publication, legacy is not a dirty word or even remotely pejorative. Rather, “legacy” is just a shorthand way of delineating between applications that encapsulate decades of the evolution of a business and the transactions it processes, and all of the other new stuff that this business is also doing and perhaps coding with newer tools and programming languages.

  A new company, called Eradani, has been founded by some experts in both the IBM i world and the open source world with the express purpose of building a technical bridge so these two different cultures can see a …

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• Bucking the System: Higher Ed, Hold the College

  June 12, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Jim Buck spent 15 years teaching IBM i and RPG at Gateway Technical College in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Buck achieved great things there, finding hundreds of students good jobs around the country. But ultimately the college experience grew old for Buck, so he ventured out on his own. That’s when he founded his own online IBM i educational company, imPower Technologies.

  That was two years ago, in the spring of 2017. After spending almost a year getting imPower Technologies up and running, Buck is teaching students IBM i and RPG once again. Currently he offers two courses: an introduction to IBM …

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• IBM i Gets a New Crop of ‘Fresh Faces’

  June 12, 2019 Alex Woodie

  The IBM i platform isn’t getting any younger, and neither are the thousands of individuals who work on it. But that doesn’t mean that platform as a whole should be marked by gray. To celebrate the viability of the platform’s ability to attract young people, IBM System Magazine just introduced its newest crop of “Fresh Faces.”

  IBM System Magazine has been calling attention to the IBM i youth movement since 2016, when it debuted its original crop of Fresh Faces. Liam Allan was a member of that group as a teenager, and he has since gone on to build himself …

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• Does Db2 Mirror Kill The Market for Third Party HA?

  May 6, 2019 Alex Woodie

  IBM launched Db2 Mirror for i two weeks ago to great acclaim, as the clustering technology puts IBM i on par with how most other major systems provide continuous availability. But will Db2 Mirror destroy the platform’s heritage of high availability solutions? IT Jungle asked IBM and the biggest providers of logical replication solutions, and the answer is no. Here’s why.

  The first thing to understand about Db2 Mirror is that, at heart, it’s a database clustering technology. IBM figured out a way to make a single instance of Db2 for i run on two separate systems, in an active-active …

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• IBM Clarifies Java Options Following Oracle License Crackdown

  April 3, 2019 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that are wondering how to maintain their Java environments following Oracle’s recent decision to restrict access to Java runtimes and development tools should pay close attention to some recommendations that IBM is making concerning Java, particularly how it impacts Access Client Solutions (ACS).

  Oracle is slated to ship a critical security update for Java Standard Edition (SE) 8 in a week and a half. But unless you have bought a commercial license for Java SE 8, your business won’t be getting that update, which could leave your systems vulnerable. That’s because in late 2018, Oracle made some …

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