RPG & DB2 Summit Archives

Final RPG & DB2 Summit Scheduled

June 28, 2021 Alex Woodie

With the return to in-person conferences taking longer than expected, the folks behind the RPG & DB2 Summit have decided to end the popular IBM i event. System i Developer will host the final event this fall, and it will take place online, as it has since the COVID-19 pandemic put an end to larger gatherings last year.

Ending the conference was not an easy decision for the principals of System i Developer, Susan Gantner, Jon Paris, and Paul Tuohy, who have been holding the RPG & DB2 Summit twice a year since March 2007. Despite the headwinds posed …
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POWERUp 2020 Pushed Online By Coronavirus Continuing Spread

August 5, 2020 Alex Woodie

Any hope that the spread of coronavirus would die down enough for COMMON to hold its POWERUp conference has been successfully smothered, as the user group last week was forced to cancel its annual meeting a second time in four months. If there’s any consolation to the COVID-19 chaos, it’s that online and virtual events are getting better and better – in the IT sector generally, as well as in our little neck of the i wood.

There will be no cake served during the 60th anniversary celebration that COMMON had planned for its annual meeting, POWERUp 2020, which was …
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Guru: RDi V9.6, Part 9 – RDi Helps with Refactoring Code into Procedures

July 6, 2020 Susan Gantner

I’m guessing that you have some RPG code in your shop that’s desperately in need of some refactoring. I have yet to visit an RPG one that wasn’t in that position. If by chance you don’t know what I mean by “refactoring” or why you may need it, I highly recommend that you read Ted Holt’s excellent series of Guru tips on refactoring RPG. I’ve included links to those tips in the Related Stories section below.

I was inspired to go back and review the entire series after I attended Ted’s session Refactoring RPG: What, Why & How at an …
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The IBM i Community Adapts To The New Normal

March 30, 2020 Alex Woodie and Timothy Prickett Morgan

As we enter the third week of the unprecedented coronavirus lockdown that has shut down large swaths of our country, IBM i shops are adapting to the “new normal” along with everybody else. For essential employees in certain industries, that means working in an uncertain and potentially hazardous environment, while for the rest of us, it means telecommuting from home.

If you work in finance or insurance along the two coasts, chances are good your headquarters has been closed down and your colleagues sent home to work remotely from laptops, smartphones, and PCs. But if your company makes or moves …
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A Lifeline For CIOs, The Toughest Job In IT

February 24, 2020 Alex Woodie

Let’s hear it for chief information officers, who have the toughest jobs in IT. If you’re good enough and lucky enough to succeed with your initiatives, you get to keep your job another year. But if the plans fall through, then you’re out on the curb. It’s a lonely job, but thanks to the CIO Summit event that Alan Seiden puts on with System i Developer, the CIOs at IBM i shops at least have a lifeline for support.

Research shows that CIOs have among the shortest tenures of any position in the C-suite. The management consulting firm Korn Ferry …
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Guru: Alternate SQL Row-Selection Criteria Revisited

February 24, 2020 Ted Holt

At the RPG & DB2 Summit last October, I chanced to overhear Rob Bestgen of IBM telling Paul Tuohy of System i Developer about a practice that he and others in IBM Lab Services had seen, a practice which they found horrifying. “Oh, no!” I thought. “I’ve written about that for itjungle.com!” Are you ready to be horrified?

Rob was telling Paul that they have seen SQL queries in which portions of the WHERE clause are enabled or disabled through the use of switches. I did not invent this technique — I realized more than a few years ago that …
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Guru: Remove Extra Blanks, Or Why I Attend Conferences

October 28, 2019 Ted Holt

Have you been to a conference lately? If not, you may be shortchanging yourself. I attend several conferences every year and I get immense benefit from them. I learn a lot, I get a break from the day-to-day, and best of all, I build relationships with other people.

I recently attended the RPG & DB2 Summit in Minneapolis, where I met a bright young developer named Kevan Robinson. He was kind enough to share his version of a tip that I shared with him and other attendees. It’s a technique that I learned ages ago from Craig Mullins, a mainframe …
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CIO Summit Brings Execs Up To Speed On IBM i

August 6, 2018 Alex Woodie

The IBM i server is mystery to many. Not only does it run on abnormal hardware – at least compared to “standards-based” X86 computers – but its programming languages, user interfaces, and administrative tasks can seem otherworldly to the uninitiated. For Alan Seiden, the organizer of an IBM i-focused executive get-together known as the CIO Summit, dispelling the platform’s mystery represents something of a personal challenge.

The next CIO Summit is in about two months, and Seiden, who’s a well-known PHP on IBM i expert as well as the founder and principle of the Seiden Group, is looking forward …
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