Back to the Future with RSE

If there's one thing that folks in the IBM i community love, it's a name change, right?

Well, here's one that we never thought we'd see - one that puts us back to where we were a few years ago. Nope, IBM i is not changing its name to iSeries or AS/400 (but that would have been a good April Fool's joke a few weeks ago, wouldn't it? Wish we had thought of that.)

We're sure you have all followed carefully the progression of packages and names for the Eclipse-based development toolset from WDSC (WebSphere Development Studio Client) to RDi (Rational Developer for i) and then to RDP, or RD Power as some prefer (Rational Developer for Power Systems). 

We're kidding of course. From the number of questions we get personally and see on forums, Internet lists, LinkedIn groups, etc., the litany of names has been a big source of confusion for many.

Guess what--we're going back to RDi again. Rational Developer for i. They've added "RPG and COBOL Tools" to the end of it, but still, it would seem that V9.0 (for those who have lost count, the current version is V8.5.1) will be called Rational Developer for i - or, we presume, RDi for short, as before.

We haven't seen any information yet on pricing, but we're hopeful that there won't be a significant increase beyond perhaps the (sadly) all-too-predictable 15% that seems inevitable with each turn of the crank.

As far as enhancements to function for IBM i RPG and COBOL developers, we haven't seen a lot. It appears that IBM Data Studio is now packaged with the new version vs being a free download that you could install yourself at 8.5.1.

Also listed are "Significant improvements to Remote Systems Explorer qualities of service." This sounds like lawyer-speak for bug fixes. We hope we're wrong but don't hold your breath. Then again, bug fixes would also be welcome.

There are two new packages, in addition to the basic RDi package:

1) Rational Developer for i RPG and COBOL + Modernization Tools, Java Edition - this would appear to replace the Rational Developer for Power Systems Software Power Tools for i.

2) RPG and COBOL + Modernization Tools, EGL Edition - this would appear to replace the oddly named RDi SOA toolset, which never changed to RDP when all the similar products did, for some reason.

From what we understand, if you have Rational Developer for Power Systems (what we've referred to as RDP) and have an active SW maintenance agreement, you will be entitled to a no charge license to the V9.0 RDi package. Someone reported on the WDSC-L list on Midrange.com that it will require a new Activation Kit to be used to install it, however.

Likewise, if you have a license to the RDP Power Tools, you're entitled to V9.0 RDi  + Modernization Tools, Java Edition, and if you have a license to RDi SOA, you're entitled to V9.0 RDi  + Modernization Tools, EGL Edition - both assuming active SW maintenance, of course.

So is all this good news, bad news or no news?

Until pricing is clear and, of course, we see how well the actual V9.0 code performs, it's hard to say. The new packages do seem to more accurately reflect what people really need. AIX/Linux developers have their own product and IBM i folks have RDi - as we did before. If you want/need more significant Java and/or EGL support, there are additional features for that.

Anything that simplifies the ordering process is a step in the right direction of course. But will the Rational reps stop trying to write up orders for RAD when IBM i shops call to get "Rational" to develop their RPG code? We can but hope! 

Back to the Future with RSE

If there’s one thing that folks in the IBM i community love, it’s a name change, right?

Well, here’s one that we never thought we’d see - one that puts us back to where we were a few years ago. Nope, IBM i is not changing its name to iSeries or AS/400 (but that would have been a good April Fool’s joke a few weeks ago, wouldn’t it? Wish we had thought of that.)

We’re sure you have all followed carefully the progression of packages and names for the Eclipse-based development toolset from WDSC (WebSphere Development Studio Client) to RDi (Rational Developer for i) and then to RDP, or RD Power as some prefer (Rational Developer for Power Systems Software).

We’re kidding of course. From the number of questions we get personally and see on forums, Internet lists, LinkedIn groups, etc., the litany of names has been a big source of confusion for many.

Guess what - we’re going back to RDi again - Rational Developer for i. They’ve added “RPG and COBOL Tools” to the end of it, but still, it would seem that V9.0 (for those who have lost count, the current version is V8.5.1) will be called Rational Developer for i - or, we presume, RDi for short, as before.

We haven’t seen any information yet on pricing - we’re hopeful that there won’t be a significant increase beyond perhaps the (sadly) all-too-predictable 15% or so that seems inevitable with each turn of the crank.

As far as enhancements to function for IBM i RPG and COBOL developers, we haven’t seen a lot. It appears that IBM Data Studio is now packaged with the new version versus being a free download that you could install yourself at 8.5.1.

Also listed are “Significant improvements to Remote Systems Explorer qualities of service.” This sounds like lawyer-speak for bug fixes. We hope we’re wrong but don’t hold your breath. Then again, bug fixes would also be welcome.

There are 2 new packages, in addition to the basic RDi package:

1) Rational Developer for i RPG and COBOL + Modernization Tools, Java Edition - this would appear to replace the Rational Developer for Power Systems Software Power Tools for i

2) RPG and COBOL + Modernization Tools, EGL Edition - this would appear to replace the oddly named RDi SOA toolset, which never changed to RDP when all the similar products did, for some reason.

From what we understand, if you have Rational Developer for Power Systems (what we’ve referred to as RDP) and have an active SW maintenance agreement, you will be entitled to a no charge license to the V9.0 RDi package. Someone reported on the WDSC-L list on Midrange.com that it will require a new Activation Kit to be used to install it, however.

Likewise, if you have a license to the RDP Power Tools, you’re entitled to V9.0 RDi + Modernization Tools, Java Edition, and if you have a license to RDi SOA, you’re entitled to V9.0 RDi + Modernization Tools, EGL Edition - both assuming active SW maintenance, of course.

So is all this good news, bad news or no news?

Until pricing is clear and, of course, we see how well the actual V9.0 code performs, it’s hard to say. The new packages do seem to more accurately reflect what people really need. AIX/Linux developers have their own product and IBM i folks have RDi - as we did before. If you want/need more significant Java and/or EGL support, there are additional features for that.

Anything that simplifies the ordering process is a step in the right direction of course. But will the Rational reps stop trying to write up orders for RAD when IBM i shops call to get “Rational” to develop their RPG code? We can but hope!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Holidays!

It's the Christmas season and this is our last blog of the year, which means it's our last chance to extend seasons greetings to our readers. In particular thanks to those of you who have contributed to the blog via your comments. It's always nice to know that some of you find the posts interesting enough to join in the discussion.

In the spirit of the season a little reminiscing is in order. Some of you may have already seen this but we got a real chuckle out of it and thought we'd pass it along. It is a 1960s (i.e., Mad Men era) impression of Google. Give it a test drive here. It's a lot of fun. When we fed in our own names some of the images of Susan were recognizable but Jon's--well, not so much. Jon's Google hits are always a bit odd anyway because a young rock and blues artist has the same name. For those of you too young to remember, it's a pretty darn good impression of what a '60s version of Google might have been like. Assuming there had been an Internet for Google to search, of course.

Our Naughty and Nice List Winners for 2012

Santa will shortly be on his way and we thought we'd just let him know via this blog who are our personal naughty and nice champions this year.

Naughty: Software companies that treat their existing customers badly. There's a certain purveyor of accounting software (you know who they are Santa) whose software we use on our Macs to do our bookkeeping. Every year they come out with a new release. And every year we get the same email.

"As a loyal customer ... we are pleased to offer you this special upgrade rate of only $..."

Only one problem. The "special rate" is invariably at least 20 percent higher than the cost of a brand new copy of the same software at any number of local computer retailers--and that is their normal price not a special sale offering. So for being a "loyal customer" we get to pay 20 percent more. Thanks but no thanks.

Nice: IBM Rational Software for removing the charges from Open Access. We were very critical of Rational's handling of Open Access so it only seems fair to offer kudos to them for making the right decision, reversing their position, removing the charges and incorporating it into the compiler.

Now that it has been liberated we are beginning to see more articles on the topic and people sharing their own ideas for handlers. Hopefully we'll see some collaborative open-source projects in the future and then, as Wallace (of Wallace and Gromit), the voice of our GPS, would say, "Let's see what this baby can do!"

We hope you all have a wonderful festive season--no matter how or where you celebrate it.

Rational Developer for Power Systems 8.5 & Beyond

You don't have to have been following this blog for long to know that we are both big fans of RSE, which is currently packaged in Rational Developer for Power Systems (RDP). Many of you are probably RSE users as well and you may have noticed that Rational came out with a new version, RDP 8.5, back in June. If so, you may have wondered why you haven't seen us blog about it.

Well, we installed 8.5 and while there was at least one really major new feature we liked, we also encountered a few idiosyncrasies that gave us some problems. In particular if a connection dropped while we had source files open, it took forever to get the workbench back in action as you had to respond to a seemingly endless series of connection-related dialogs. None of them offering the option to work off-line, etc. Admittedly we are perhaps unusual in that we often travel to a client site, connect to their system, and then go back to our hotel with the sources still open, knowing that we will be back on site next day. Once we open up the laptop again it can take 10 to 15 minutes to regain control. There were other issues, but to be honest, neither of us can remember exactly what those were. We're also not sure whether they were new features that we just needed to learn how to utilize properly or whether they were bugs. We also saw several reports on the WDSC-L list on Midrange.com and other places of other people who were having trouble with 8.5.

Bottom line, we are both so addicted to using RDP for our development that we decided to postpone digging into it for a while. Fortunately, we had also kept our old installation of RDP 8.0.3 so it was an option for us to keep on working with that version.

The good news is that a fix pack for RDP 8.5 has recently become available. So maybe it's time that we give 8.5.1 a try and see if it works better for us than our earlier attempts at 8.5.

Another reason for postponing the use of the new release is that we didn't have a really burning requirement for the only significant new feature that we heard about in the community--a dynamically updated Outline View. It's a nice feature, to be sure, but since we don't work as much with very large programs, occasionally refreshing our Outline Views isn't exactly a huge burden.

And we also had real difficulty finding a good list of any other enhancements in 8.5 that would cause us to want to dive in right away. We have now found such a list on developerWorks and thought we'd share with you, just in case some of you are also postponing the upgrade. So here it is--courtesy of Dave Dykstal--a nicely detailed list of new features, complete with link to a video of the RPG Outline View enhancements by Edmund Reinhardt.

But wait, that's not all! (sounds a bit like a late night infomercial, doesn't it?). The 8.5.1 fix pack includes several new features, not just bug fixes. You can read all about the 8.5.1 fixes and enhancements here. Spoiler alert: any IBM i COBOL programmers out there may want to pay particular attention to the Outline View in 8.5.1, according to this list. They have waited a long time for a usable Outline View, and it looks like their patience has been rewarded.

Maybe in a future blog post, we'll report on our findings of all the cool new things we've experienced in 8.5.1. As soon as we're both able to get the fix pack installed, that is. Jon's update to 8.5.1 worked flawlessly, but Susan seems to have hit a (hopefully temporary) snag.

In the meantime, any of you who have used 8.5 or 8.5.1, please feel free to share your experiences in the comments.

AMTS: PDM Without PDM

You don't have to have been following our blog for long to know that we love RDP (Rational Developer for Power Systems) and use it every day. That's not to say that we never use PDM. As a matter of fact, we both use PDM quite a lot. We just don't use it to start an SEU edit session, particularly for our RPG, COBOL or DDS code.

We use PDM mostly for source and object management. It's quite useful for moving things around from place to place, doing the same thing to many items in a list via user-defined options, even doing compiles sometimes, especially if we have need to do a mass-recompile of many members at the same time. For some tasks (editing RPG source code _not_ being one of them) we find PDM lists a very productive way to work. Sure we can do all of those things from RDP as well, but often PDM and the green screen response time just works better for us.

Most RPG and COBOL shops have probably had the ADTS product (the IBM product that contains PDM, SEU, SDA, RLU, etc.) on their systems for decades. When IBM changed the licensing scheme with 6.1 to a "per developer" one, most shops had enough developer licenses of ADTS grandfathered to them (what IBM calls entitlement) so that most or all of their programmers could continue using PDM without paying additional license fees for ADTS.

Sadly, no similar entitlement was afforded to cover those of us who used RSE packaged in WDSC--not unless you were one of the tiny number of licensees of the Advanced Edition of WDSC. It does seem a bit strange that the new tool IBM wants us all to use costs extra, but we can keep using the old stuff they want us to give up for free. But we digress. …

There is clearly much overlap in functionality between RDP and ADTS--almost a complete overlap. So what about new development shops? Say you're purchasing a new system where developers will work and so you don't have an entitled (free) licenses of ADTS. Must you buy licenses of RDP and ADTS along with a license for RDP for every programmer?

Some would say no--just let the programmers use RDP for everything. They don't strictly need PDM for anything. But we think developers would really miss having PDM as an object/member management tool. (Note that we're not even considering the option that developers will use only PDM/SEU--a life without RSE is something no developer should be subjected to!)

Enter a new tool from Rational--and a well-kept secret--Application Management ToolSet (AMTS). AMTS is a cut-down version of PDM that does not support editing RPG, COBOL or DDS. But you can edit CL, commands and simple text type members with it using SEU. You can also do most other object/member management type of functions with it. Familiar commands such as WRKOBJPDM become WRKOBJAMT instead, but can still do most everything except editing code--with the notable exception of CL code. Since it doesn't support DDS development, it makes sense that it also does not have support for SDA and RLU, nor does it support ISDB or DFU.

IBM quietly announced AMTS in April of this year. It seems mostly targeted to operations and systems management staff who do a little CL and command development from time to time, but no RPG or COBOL programming. For those folks, RDP would tend to be overkill (and let's face it, as wonderful as RDP is at editing RPG/COBOL/DDS, CL is not its strong suit).

From IBM's perspective, it would seem to be a bit of niche product for those who don't do development for a living. However, we think it will eventually be widely used as a host-based complement to RDP in new shops that don't have entitled licenses to ADTS.

We feel it is important for professional developers to have a full set of tools that allow them to work productively. For editing RPG code and some kinds of management tasks, RDP is by far the best tool. But for those many situations when you just can't beat PDM for productivity, well, you may not have PDM, but there's little reason not to have AMT instead. It's cheap as it's not licensed per developer, as nearly all the other Rational products are. There is a (small) fee per system for AMTS. In the U.S., for a system up to a P20 tier, we understand it costs around $300 for use by everyone. At that price, we suspect nearly every new system will go out the door with an AMTS license.

Welcome to the IBM i development family, AMTS! We can imagine that one of the first things many experienced IBM i developers using AMTS will do is to create their own commands named WRKOBJPDM, WRKLIBPDM, WRKMBRPDM, which simply map to WRKOBJAMT, WRKLIBAMT, WRKMBRAMT, because our fingers as just too well trained to the PDM commands!

RPG: Not Dead Yet

Wow. One of the things you learn very quickly when writing a blog like this is that you never can tell what subjects will result in reader comments and which won't. Of course with a subject such as "RPG is Dead ..." we expected a few comments, but given that the original article was also open to comments the number of posts surprised us. Our post was even mentioned in the Angus blog.

One thing Mel's original post succeeded in doing is to get RPGers thinking--and talking--about why RPG is a great language and is indeed being used routinely to create new and modern business applications. Maybe that was his intent all along--to get the community to rally around the great language that is today's RPG. We could always give him the benefit of the doubt on that. ...

In terms of RPG being an "old fashioned" language, many situations in the IBM i world contribute to this perception. Not the least being the number of IBM i ISVs that continue to deliver software written in RPG III. And these are the big guys, the ones with multiple 0s at the end of their annual licence fees. We're not sure what they do with all those dollars. Maybe they need it because maintaining the old RPG/400 code is so much less productive than the newer, more modern syntax?

Several customers that we have talked to recently use heavily modified versions of one of the biggest ERP packages in the IBM i community. They had all stopped implementing maintenance releases as they had reached a point where applying the fixes to their heavily modified code was just not practical. They either did not need the enhancements or had already implemented similar features on their own. However, as part of their move to V6 it was necessary to update to the latest level. These are go-ahead shops who long, long ago moved all their own code to RPG IV. Imagine their disappointment when they discovered that this expensive "latest and greatest" release was still predominantly RPG III with RPG IV
being apparently used only in cases where the size of the program had exceeded RPG III's limits!

It's hard to understand why ISVs wouldn't convert their programs, if only to help with on-going maintenance chores. The two RPG flavors (as long as you stay away from the pure ILE aspects) are so compatible that the package in question has actually been successfully converted to RPG IV by relatively small shops (in one case by a one-man-band) that recognized the benefits of making the transition and got tired of waiting for the ISV. Just the extra white space alone, let alone tooling such as Rational Developer for Power and all of the other features of RPG IV, makes it so much easier to read and maintain compared with RPG III.

We've always been surprised that IBM hasn't applied more pressure (or incentive?) to large ISVs to keep their applications even moderately up to date with the modern system's capabilities. Strangely, we heard recently that one such ISV announced that their next release will require IBM i 7.1. Dare we hope this is a signal that their application code has been modernized to require it? Nah, that would be too much to expect.
 

Lawson Software Users Flock to RSE (or at Least They Should!)

It's conference season again! For us, that means travel season--even more so than our normal travel schedule. Most of the conferences we attend are hosted by local user groups. We were in Wisconsin in March for one of our favorite events--the annual WMCPA conference, followed by our own RPG & DB2 Summit, which involved quite a lot of interaction with the MMSA user group in Dallas. One interesting aspect of both conferences was the increased number of younger developers in attendance. WMCPA always has a few because their president, Jim Buck, usually brings a group of his students along to assist and participate. But we were very pleasantly surprised to see the number of younger folks at Summit--we're used to Aaron Bartell being the youngster!

The following week (now) we're at the NEUGC event--a unique event where multiple local user groups in the area pool their resources to put on a successful and fun conference each year. Once again there seem to be a few younger folks around, but the really good news is that overall attendance is up. We should all applaud that. Next week, we head to Fort Wayne, Ind., for an all-day session focusing on RSE hosted by the local user group there. Then the day after returning from Fort Wayne, we head to Sweden for a developer conference there. The following week our own local user group, TUG, holds its annual TUG TEC event, which is followed by the grandaddy of user group conferences, COMMON in Anaheim. We'll be speaking at COMMON this year for the first time in a while; it will be nice to see some old friends again.

So what does all this have to do with Lawson? Today at one of Susan's RSE sessions at NEUGC, she had the pleasure of making one person really happy over the idea of using RSE to edit source code. In fact she was positively ecstatic. Many SEU users are happy when seeing the productivity features of RSE than leave SEU in the dust. But ecstatic? That is the reaction you get when you're a programmer who can't even use SEU to edit her RPG source code!

What would programmers be using instead? How about EDTF (Edit File)? Never heard of it? It's the green-screen editor for IFS stream files. You can get to it from WRKLNK. Imagine: no PDM or even SEU. Just WRKLNK and EDTF to edit your source code. Next to EDTF, even PDM and SEU look like the greatest programmer productivity tools ever invented. If you've not had the pleasure of using EDTF, perhaps you can remember eons ago using a truly rudimentary editor called EDLIN. EDTF is a tad more advanced that EDLIN but not a lot.

Why has this person been editing RPG source with as primitive a tool as that? Because her source code is stored in the IFS and it was the only editor that she knew of that could edit IFS stream files.

She's not alone. More and more shops are finding themselves in the position of having to edit source code in the IFS because Lawson's recent releases started storing and shipping all of their source in IFS files rather than source members in regular source physical files. Who knows why they would decide to make that rather strange decision? Perhaps someone out there among our readers can enlighten us. Perhaps even stranger is the fact that Lawson doesn't seem to have told their users that RSE is the way to go for editing the code.

Regardless of the reason, the effect has been a dramatic drop in programmer productivity among those RPGers who must make changes to the Lawson code because EDTF is the only obvious way to do it--at least if you're limiting yourself to green-screen tools.

Now the person in Susan's NEUGC session today has learned that RSE (packaged in RDP/RDi/WDSC) has no problem whatsoever working with source stored in IFS stream files, and hence her unbounded joy. RSE can seamlessly handle IFS files for editing, compiling, etc., in exactly the same way it works with source members for the rest of the IBM i community.

This individual wasn't the first Lawson programmer who couldn't wait to get her hands on RSE. One of our recent private classes was to an entire group of Lawson programmers who were equally ecstatic over the prospect of leaving EDTF in the dust.

Now, if we could only get the rest of the SEU users still out there to a have similar revelatory moments about how much more productive they could be ...

Calling All RSE/RDP Users--Vote Now!

Back in December we blogged about the RSE wish list. But lately, we've discovered that it seems not many of you followed up on our suggestion, so we're taking another shot at it.

IBM developerWorks has a place for submitting and voting for your favorite requests for enhancement (RFEs) for RSE (and/or other Rational products). Many of the requests we have heard most often from RSE users are already on the list. If some of your favorites are already there, add your votes to help direct IBM's development efforts to the features that the most users want/need.

For example, we took a look at the top 20 voted RFEs for Rational Developer for Power Systems. Some of our favorites are in the top 20, such as an SQL prompter, the ability to re-indent /Free-form RPG code and--our personal pick--support of RDP running natively on Mac.

So there are some great RFEs out there. But the sad thing is the small number of votes that have been cast for the enhancements. Given how many RSE users we hear from who want some of these functions, there should be (at least) hundreds of votes out there for several of these RFEs. But when looking at the top 20 RFEs by number of votes, as of yesterday, we found fewer than 50 votes for even the most popular ones.

Susan taught two RSE sessions yesterday at the RPG & DB2 Summit in Fort Worth, Texas. Each had enough people present to double the votes for nearly all of the requests if every student present voted for them.

Just as Susan challenged all of her session attendees to go look at the submissions and vote for their favorites, we're now challenging all of you out there. You can put in your own suggestions as well. But make sure you check to see if something close to your own requirement is already out there so that you can simply add your own vote.

It's easy to add your opinion. Go to the website and create an IBM ID if you don't have one already. Under "Browse RFEs," look at the top 20 voted RFEs. Then choose Brand: Rational, Product family: Design & Development, Product: Developer for Power Systems. There are many other ways to browse and search for RFEs if you don't see your favorites in the top 20.

Don't just sit there, VOTE. Your favorite tool needs you.

Rational Gives an Early Valentine With Free Open Access

They love us. They really love us! Finally IBM Rational has admitted the folly of trying to persuade us to buy our own gifts and is giving us Open Access for free.

Today's announcement confirms the rumors that have been circulating for the last few months. Namely that the OA run-time components are being bundled with IBM i and the compiler components are being included with the compiler. Of course it will all have to be distributed as PTFs for a while, but over time will be shipped as standard. We just read Steve Wills' You and i blog and noticed that our "Valentine" headline is even more appropriate than we thought because the PTFs are due to be available starting on Feb. 14!

The link we have for the formal announcement letter doesn't seem to be working right now so we'll post that in the comments as soon as we can confirm it.

We think this is a good thing for several reasons:

1. ISVs that have products that utilize OA no longer have to get customers to install an additional chargeable feature before they can even take advantage of a free trial. IBM partly addressed this by making a trial version of OA available a few months ago but it was still an impediment.
2. Smaller ISVs that might otherwise have developed handlers couldn't justify doing so since, in some instances, the cost to the client of installing OA would have exceeded what they could reasonably charge for the product. 
3. Open-source advocates were never going to embrace writing handlers that relied on a chargeable product.
4. Similarly the number of magazine articles on the subject of OA has been severely lacking. Although we have written a couple ourselves we're only aware of two or three other writers who have done anything. In fact we had given up writing on the subject, other than here in the blog. The reason is the same--there's little satisfaction in writing an article on a subject that you know most of your readers can't put into practice. Now that everyone will be able to use the examples we present we'll be dusting off a couple of ideas that we have on hold. In the meantime you can find our earlier articles on OA here and here.
5. Last, but not least, it will hopefully dispel the notion that the only thing OA is good for is modernizing 5250 applications. As we've said before, while this is a very important function of OA it's only a tiny part of what can be done with it. We need more applications that exploit email, processing IFS files, Web services, etc. OA is an excellent way to enable such features for "the masses." Even highly skilled RPG programmers can make use of OA. For example, during a recent discussion with IBM's Barbara Morris, we discovered that even though she is comfortable with using the IFS APIs, she actually finds it easier to use an IFS handler that she wrote herself whenever she needs to process IFS files in RPG.

Rational has shown us a little love here. Let's return the favor and thank them the best way we can--by using OA to add new functionality to our favorite language.

Please use the Comments section of this blog to pass on your ideas of the kind of handlers you'd like to see written or indeed to tell us about those that you plan to write.

Looking Back at IBM i Application Development in 2011

It's that time of year when people traditionally look back over the past 12 months and attempt, perhaps, to extrapolate from that what might come to pass in the next 12. Problem is that if the past 12 months have taught us anything it is that we have no idea what may happen next! For a start we were convinced that long before now the IBM Rational would have realized the folly of its ways and removed the charges for RPG Open Access--no such luck. But at least there's a really strong rumor that we can expect to see that happen before the spring. Please, pretty please. We'd hate to be back here again next year bemoaning the fact that it didn't happen.

That said, time for a few words on some of the more interesting trends that have emerged over the year.

Free and Almost Free
Of particular note is the increase in the number of vendors in the iBM i space who now offer their products (or at least a base version of them) for free. Still others have abandoned the notion of charging for the software itself and instead simply charge for maintenance. This is a trend we expect to see continue, and indeed grow, over the coming months. We've already heard rumors of at least one vendor that's considering offering a free "community edition" of its product. If indeed that comes to pass it has the potential to significantly shake up at least one segment of the market. 

Mobile
Mobile this, mobile that. Some days we think we may scream if we hear the word just one more time. Luckily this is a trend that makes sense. Sure lots of folks are jumping on the bandwagon, but it does make perfect sense in many cases. In particular the availability of GPS capability in most mobile devices makes tracking the whereabouts of folks such as delivery drivers affordable for even the more modest-sized business. Knowing who is where and therefore being able to re-route them to make an emergency pick-up (for example) can increase efficiency and improve customer relations. We'll be having a mobile focus again this spring at the RPG & DB2 Summit, and we're hoping this time we'll have a chance to attend a few of the sessions ourselves. Now that we have both iOS devices (iPad and iPod touch) and an Android phone we’re more and more interested in what can be done with these little devils.

Upgrading Applications and Skills
This is a long overdue trend in our opinion. Admittedly as our business involves consulting and training on modernization topics we have a vested interest, but we're seeing more and more of clients looking to enhance the skills of their development teams and make the most of the application inventory they already have. An increasing demand exists to make IBM i data available to applications on other platforms. This is a welcome trend, because two or three years ago all we were seeing was folks busily exporting data from the IBM i, manipulating it on some other box and then re-importing it. Having the i remain at the heart of the process is good to see. This kind of updating makes sense in these tight economic times. Why not make the most of what you have--both in terms of personnel and applications.

We're still not seeing as many people actively modernizing their code base as we'd like. We still see far too much of the "if it ain't broke ..." mentality but perhaps in time. It has always been a mystery to us that rather than invest $x in re-engineering their software, management will pay $y (where y is typically 20 percent or so of x) over and over and over again. And for each iteration the cost of y rises and rises. Admittedly it's tough to quantify the cost/benefit of re-engineering. All we know is that, of those we have worked with, every single one wishes wish they'd done it sooner!

Did we miss some trends you've spotted? Let us know. In the meantime, we wish all of our readers a healthy and wealthy New Year.