• RPG, Java, And The Future Of Infor’s IBM i ERP Suites

  October 17, 2018 Alex Woodie

  Infor is in the midst of a multi-year overhaul of its three RPG-based ERP suites for manufacturers, which include LX, XA, and System 21. When the overhaul is complete, the products will still run on the time-tested IBM i server, but the code behind the products will look significantly different.

  In response to changing technology and customer expectations, Infor essentially is rewriting all three ERP suites using something called the Infor Development Framework. The IDF was originally developed to help transition the bulk of the Infor ERP XA product (MAPICS) from RPG to Java, and now it’s being used for …

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• CM First Removes IBM i Requirement From ALM

  October 17, 2018 Alex Woodie

  Companies that are adopting the application lifecycle management (ALM) software from CM First no longer need an IBM i server, the company announced recently. The move with CM MatchPoint is intended to widen the deployment options for CM First’s targeted customer base, which is CA Plex and 2E users.

  CM MatchPoint is used to automate the development of CA Plex and CA 2E environments, particularly among large development teams that are geographically dispersed. The software manages several aspects of Plex and 2E development, from user-submitted change requests and workflow to version control and deployment.

  With the delivery of CM MatchPoint …

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• More Transparency Needed For Open Source Running on IBM i

  July 25, 2018 Alex Woodie

  Open source may be the future of IBM i. It certainly seems that way at the moment. But if open source is going to soar to new heights on the platform, it will need better integration with the existing processes in place to monitor and manage the platform.

  That’s the opinion of JK Grafe, the CEO of Quad Nova Group, a Jacksonville, Florida-based IBM i consultancy that has offices up the Eastern Seaboard. By Grafe’s own admission, open source is a great thing for the platform. But the difficulty in seeing what’s actually going on with open source workloads …

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• VACAVA’s Low-Code Approach To Modernization

  July 9, 2018 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops have lots of options when it comes to application modernization. At one end of the spectrum are screen-scraper tools, which can provide a quick fix for shops tired with the 5250 interface. IBM i shops with more time, money, and inspiration may choose to completely rewrite their application on a new platform. Somewhere in between lies RapidBIZ, a low-code modernization affair from VACAVA.

  The folks at VACAVA knows a thing or two about the IBM i platform. For starters, the company is based in Rochester, Minnesota, home of the world-famous IBM lab where the AS/400 was created …

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• Yum, Liam Allan, and the Future of the Platform

  June 20, 2018 Alex Woodie

  It’s hard to believe, but Liam Allan has become a veteran at these things. He might be only 21 years old, but the young Englishman already has become a sought-after speaker on the IBM i event circuit and a respected voice for open source development. At COMMON’s recent POWERUp18 conference in San Antonio, Texas, Allan elaborated on Yum’s arrival on IBM i, his own open source work, and the future of the platform.

  Allan first appeared on the IBM i scene two years ago, when he won the 2016 COMMON Student Innovation Award for his work on the IBM i …

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• Q&A With IBM i’s AppDev Architect

  June 18, 2018 Alex Woodie

  During COMMON’s recent POWERUp18 conference in San Antonio, Texas, IT Jungle got a chance to sit down with Tim Rowe, the IBM i business architect for application development and systems management at IBM, to talk about what’s going on with application development on the platform. Here’s an edited version of that conversation.

  IT Jungle: So what’s happening in IBM i application development? What’s new up there in Rochester?

  Tim Rowe: In between all sorts of fun development stuff that we got going on back in the lab, I spend quite a bit of time talking with customers. We continue to …

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• Goodbye, Java Enterprise Edition. Hello, Jakarta EE

  April 30, 2018 Alex Woodie

  Developers who use Java Enterprise Edition will be happy to know that the development and runtime platform is gaining new life as Jakarta EE. As part of an agreement with Oracle, the tech giant will give up control over the platform to Eclipse Foundation, which has big plans to remake enterprise Java for the emerging cloud world.

  Since it bought Sun Microsystems back in 2010, Oracle has been fully in charge of Java. That includes defining not just the core Java language, but having a big hand in everything else governed through the Java Community Process (JCP), including the Java …

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• Multiple Security Vulnerabilities Reported In IBM i

  April 30, 2018 Alex Woodie

  IBM this month revealed an array of security vulnerabilities across IBM i middleware components, including OpenSSL, DHCP, and Java products. Most of the flaws were given a “high severity” rating, and all of them have been patched.

  This week’s security fun starts with DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol), which is used to automate the management and distribution of IP addresses within a network. According to the April 26 IBM security bulletin, IBM i 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3 are vulnerable to a pair of security vulnerabilities in the underlying DHCP protocol.

  The first DHCP flaw, which is identified as CVE-2018-5732 …

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• What A Concept: Distribution Software Aimed At Real SMBs

  April 9, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Time may pass in the IBM midrange, and systems and business practices have evolved, but the one thing that does not change is that some companies, especially those on the smaller size with limited resources to devote to IT hardware and software, want a simple system that just lets them do the work they need to do.

  The simplicity of the System/3X family, which has its start way back with the System/3 in 1969 and runs up through the System/38 in 1979 and the System/36 in 1983, up through the AS/400 in 1988 and up through the iSeries, System i, …

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• Service Extension Outlined For IBM i 7.1 And PowerHA 7.1

  December 4, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Operating system suppliers do not like to support too many releases of their code at the same time. It stands to reason because software support costs have people as a foundation, and people only get more expensive, not less so. And the companies that make operating systems have newer code with more features and better security and reliability that they want their customers to move to.

  IBM i 7.1 has been a well-regarded instance of Big Blue’s proprietary midrange operating systems, a line that arguably stretches all the way back to the first release of Control Program Facility (CPF) for …

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