• Guru Classic: Looking For Commitment, Part 1

  June 19, 2019 Paul Tuohy

  Author’s Note: This set of three articles was originally published in March of 2009. (See links in Related Stories below). As companies look to modernizing their applications, commitment control can play an integral role. In my next three Guru Classic articles, I will be updating the content of these articles for free-form RPG.

  In this article, I will discuss what commitment control is, why you may want to use it, and the basic requirements for commitment control. In subsequent articles, I will look more closely at how commitment control works, different ways in which it can be implemented, …

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• Guru Classic: Giving RDi a Split Personality

  June 19, 2019 Susan Gantner

  A commonly asked question by RDi newbies is: “How do I view source in split screen like I can in SEU?” The answer is that you can’t do it exactly like SEU, but then why would you want to? The RDi editor offers far greater flexibility.

  The original version of my tip on this subject was published back in 2007. Back then, the toolset we know as RDi was called “WDSC”. Quite a lot of other changes have occurred within RDi as well. Originally, a specialized perspective was required to make this feature work well. Today’s RDi works well without …

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• Guru Classic: Where Does Data Live? The New Basics

  June 19, 2019 Jon Paris

  Every time I teach some of the more recent additions to RPG, such as XML parsing or Open Access, I find that I need to include some “remedial” education on some of the data definition enhancements that have been made to the language over recent releases.

  Most of these enhancements came into the language many years ago back in the days when D-specs were de rigueur, but if you had no immediate need for them, they may have passed you by. After all, even the most avid reader of this newsletter has probably forgotten most of what they read here …

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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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• CNX Welcomes 5250 Apps Into Valence Framework

  June 12, 2019 Alex Woodie

  For years, CNX has prided itself on providing the IBM i community with development tools for creating modern Web applications on the platform. The company looked unapologetically to the future, and encouraged customers to move on from their green-screen pasts. But in response to strong customer demand, the company has relented and decided to allow green screens into the framework via an innovative new Web-based emulator dubbed Fusion5250.

  Fusion5250 is all about giving customers choice, CNX says. The software, which is a core new feature in Valence 5.2+, lets Valence customers access a modern application developed with CNX’s Nitro App …

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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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• Fresche Bullish On ‘Factory’ Approach As IBM i Market Improves

  June 5, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Factories offer a level of repeatability, predictability, and efficiency that make the manufacture of goods simpler, less risky, and more profitable than it would otherwise be. Now the folks at Fresche Solutions are taking a factory-based approach to a markedly different endeavor: the modernization of IBM i applications. The early returns from Fresche indicate some optimism may be in order.

  Last week at the POWERUp conference in Anaheim, California, Fresche Solutions CEO Andy Kulakowski and his team spoke at length with IT Jungle about its new factory approach to selling modernization software and services, as well as the recent successes …

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• Speaking The SQL Lingua Franca On IBM i

  June 3, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  No matter what the job is, we all start out somewhere that is pretty far from being an expert and we depend on our elders and mentors to help us learn all the tricks and get good at the work.

  So it is with the nearly ubiquitous database query language, Structured Query Language, or SQL for short. It started out in the head of IBMer Ted Codd back in 1969, which was coincidentally when the System/3 minicomputer launched and its successor many generations later, the System/38 in 1978, was the first IBM system and the first system in the world …

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• Guru: 7.4 Brings New RPG Goodies

  June 3, 2019 Jon Paris

  As I’m sure you know by now, IBM recently announced version 7.4 of IBM i. Along with major enhancements such as Db2 Mirror, we also got a number of new RPG features. In this tip I’ll cover those that are already available in 7.3 via PTF. The 7.4-only enhancements will be covered in a subsequent tip.

  Before we get into the details of the 7.3 features, just a hint of what is to come . . . 7.4 brings the long-awaited arrival of dynamic arrays known to IBM as varying dimension arrays. No more do you have to compromise between …

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• These POWERUp Sessions Are About the Recent IBM i Announcement

  May 15, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Disneyland didn’t complete construction of Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge in time for next week’s POWERUp conference. But luckily for you, IBM did finalize its IBM i announcement soon enough for COMMON’s annual extravaganza, making next week’s show in Anaheim, California, a great chance for you to learn about the new releases of the operating system, including IBM i 7.4 and 7.3 TR6.

  According to COMMON’s online session guide, there are at least 16 sessions at POWERUp 19 having to do with IBM i 7.4, IBM i 7.3 Technology Refresh 6 (TR6), or the new software that will arrive with …

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