Programming Highs and Tire Lows

Last week we experienced an interesting mix of high and low points.

The big high for us was teaching a class of Java programmers about the joys of RPG. We also spent a little time on RDi, but since they already used Rational Application Developer for their Java work that was mostly just to introduce them to the IBM i specific features.

Three things helped make this an enjoyable class to teach:

1. The students were all young--and we don't mean young in our terms (i.e., anyone less than 50) we mean young young.
2. They were all enthusiastic and asked the right questions, which clearly showed that they were not only understanding the language but also getting a feel for its power and simplicity. We'll be going back to complete their training later this year once the students have had a chance to absorb the initial lessons and we're looking forward to it.
3. This was our first opportunity to teach the new all-free-form RPG flavor of the language. While it was a lot more work to retrofit our teaching materials than we had anticipated (never thought about how many of the examples have F, D and P specs in them!), what a difference it makes when teaching RPG to Java (or C/C++/C# or PHP, etc) developers. Those pesky columns--even when just for data declarations--always caused so much consternation in past classes. This time, the only hitch was the occasional need to remind them that the code must start on or after column 8 and end at column 80.

This class has reaffirmed our belief that all too often, trying to replace your retiring RPG programmers with experienced RPGers is a waste of time. Not that there aren't good RPGers out there looking for work, but most are too expensive for companies are looking for junior to intermediate level staff. Either that or their "30 years of experience" is actually three years repeated 10 times over because they are so reluctant to learn new skills. Case in point--and one of the lows of the week--we had an email concerning a shop where the staff (we won't dignify them by using the terms "programmers", "developers" or "RPGers") are busily stripping out things like embedded SQL and prototyped program calls whenever they have to maintain a modern program because they can't be bothered to learn this "new-fangled stuff." They probably rue the passing of the tabulator and the punched card too. Sad, so sad. No wonder the shop is moving away from the IBM i.

The other high/low mixture of the week concerned our rental car. Very soon after we set off from the airport a low tire pressure warning appeared. We checked but the tire appeared to be fine. Given that rental car companies often do a lousy job of what would be the PDI (pre-delivery inspection) at your local car dealer we have encountered such false warnings many times before. We kept checking but despite the warning light the tire appeared fine. Until it wasn't. Suddenly it lost pressure so we took it to the local tire store to see if they could fix it. Nope. It had a side wall leak, which couldn't be plugged. No problem, they inflated the tire again and we called the rental car company. "Yes sir - we will happily exchange your car. Just drive to your nearest location and they will help you." Fine except only corporate locations would do and the nearest was a 90+ minute round trip away and it was already getting late in the day. It was a slow leak so hopefully it would last until the next evening when we could drive down and swap the car.

The next morning arrived sunny, hot and humid with the tire completely flat. Changing a tire while in work clothes and 95 degree weather had not been high on Jon's wish list for the day but. ...

Luckily that was the end of the lows. We drove the car back to the rental company and, to cut a long story short, the only replacement vehicle they had available was a Mercedes 350. Not a bad swap for a Chevy Impala! Only problem is that Jon is enjoying driving it so much that he wants to keep it. Sadly that is not on the cards but at least we get to use it for a few more days.

  

Time to get iThusiastic!

Rousing the IBM i community spirit is not a new theme for us (check out "Kindred Spirits in the IBM i Community" among other posts on the topic). That's why we loved reading the recent posts from Von Enselman and (fellow Canadian) Steve Pitcher.

We love Von's clever term, "iThusiasm," which she defines as "… my vehicle and brand to communicate my opinions and support for the IBM i on Power Systems, the professionals who support it and are supported by it, and the user groups (both local and large) that bring us together." Cool! What a great concept. We've known Von through her work with the Omni User Group for years and love her enthusiasm and dedication to "all things i". Give her new blog a read; it's well worth your time.

Steve's post reminds us of the need to help cross-promote content between communities and streams - for example, sharing content you find valuable with your fellow iThusiasts--whether you wrote it or you just read something particularly helpful somewhere--but not just on your "media stream of choice." He suggests we should try not just tweeting about it or posting it to Midrange.com or Facebook or various i-related LinkedIn groups, but perhaps change the "or" to "and" to help to ensure that more IBM i professionals can benefit from it and the IBM i message gets out there.

Good idea, Steve. Jon has already been doing some of this, but we could certainly do a better job of it. Of course, we're personally a little leery of trying to hit all (or even most) of the plethora of LinkedIn groups, as we discussed recently in our blog. But a few posts on some well-chosen LinkedIn groups never hurts. By the way, Steve has some particularly insightful Tweets; consider following him @stevencpitcher.

So if you see posts from people like us (or Steve or Von or …) promoting our latest article or blog posts in multiple places, we hope you don't think we're reaching for the spotlight. Maybe we're reaching for the spotlight, but not for ourselves. We want a spotlight on a much better target--IBM i.

Technology and Age

Jon has long been a fan of Douglas Adams (author of all five parts of the Hitchhiker's trilogy) and he recently came across a quote from Adams' "The Salmon of Doubt" relating to technology:

I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:

1. Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

2. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

The older we get, the more true this seems to be!

The age of 35 may be a little low, especially for IT professionals, because our jobs tend to force us to be a bit more open to new technologies. Although when you consider the number of RPGers still writing in RPG III (albeit in RPG IV fixed form syntax) perhaps not that low. Certainly the older we get, the tougher it seems to be to imagine how (or sometimes even why) we should take advantage of some technologies that cross our paths. For example, we've puzzled over the value of LinkedIn and Jon has even had a rant about automation in public bathrooms.

But challenging as it may be, it's critical to our own futures and that of our beloved IBM i, that we not allow this tendency to keep us completely in our comfortable stage 3 world without exploring all the new technologies that may at first glance seem "against the natural order of things." Google's proposed self-driving cars are an example where we have seen many friends throw up their hands in horror at the very idea.

We're not just talking about "green screens" here (but if the shoe fits ...). Change just for change's sake is not worthwhile, but sometimes maybe we just need to look a little harder at the advantages.

As an example, Jon worked on a webcast recently with the folks at Lansa and was impressed with the native phone/tablet integration of their LongRange mobile tool targeted to RPGers. It often takes seeing a few examples before we catch on to things like how an integrated camera or GPS and mapping software on a handheld device can be integrated into business processes to dramatically improve RPG-based applications. Perhaps those under 35 inherently understand how the use of such technologies can make life and business easier for our users. Us older folk take a little longer.

This reminds us of another point we've made in "Give the Kids a Chance" and "Educating New RPGers." On several occasions, we've suggested that too many IBM i shops waste time searching for experienced IBM i and RPG staff--sometimes even considering moving off the platform because of an inability to find them. As we've suggested before, you really should focus on finding good, creative and energetic business-oriented developers, regardless of the language or platform they currently have experience on or indeed whether they have much experience at all. Teaching those folks IBM i and RPG (the modern, free-format version) is a piece of cake and you may be surprised how many of them love both the platform and the language.

That doesn't necessarily mean they will be young. There are creative and energetic developers over 35 out there looking for work as well. Some may even have RPG and IBM i experience! But if they do happen to fit within Adams' magic 35-year-old boundary, they may bring the added benefit that they more naturally understand how to harness technology to improve business applications.

By the way, we only mention Lansa because we've worked with the company recently but many other IBM i mobile solution providers offer great products--some of which may be a better solution for your own particular situation. It's the idea, not the specific product, we're talking about. We welcome comments on mobile solutions your shop has used or is considering.

Hear Ye, Hear Ye! It's Announcement Time!

We had an unexpected week off last week due to some issues related to a DDoS attack on the blogging platform's server. Did you miss us? We know a few people did because they wrote to us, which was nice, but we're back now and just in time for the 7.2 announcement, which took place yesterday (Monday, April 28).

In all honesty, the first thing we should point out is that there is very little new RPG content in this release. And most of what is there will probably not immediately impact the majority of you as it relates to CCSID conversions. As Barbara Morris pointed out to us when we discussed this topic in Toronto last week, "You had your presents early, you can't expect to still get another great big gift now." Of course the "present" that she was referring to was the introduction of completely free-form RPG that debuted back with TR7 at the end of 2013. The best part of getting our present "early" was that more of us can get our hands on it now, as the support made it into V7.1. Much better than having to wait until the shop installs 7.2. We'll be experimenting with some of the new 7.2 options as soon as we can get our hands on an upgraded system to see how many of the issues relating to UTF-8 fields 7.2 helps resolve. You can read Barbara's take on the enhancements here.

In fact the only non-CCSID enhancements relate to the ability to control the length of the year portion returned by a %SUBDT. In addition you can also specify the number of fractional seconds in a timestamp. However, this enhancement is really only for external compatibility. RPG will still only populate the same amount of data--we just get more zeroes!

For RSE users, RDi V9.1 was also announced yesterday. The biggest item in the new release is a code coverage tool for testing. You can test your programs and the tool will tell you which lines of code were executed--or perhaps more importantly, which were not executed! Initially it will work only for testing programs in batch but we're hoping it will offer more options in the future.

Also in the new release is yet more proof of how important it is to let IBM know what features you want to see in the future. Several popular Requests for Enhancement (RFEs) were answered with this release. Two of them related to one of our all-time favorite features--the Outline view. The RFEs asked for searching or filtering on items such as field names in the outline, so in 9.1 there's a search box at the top of the outline similar to the one in the Preferences dialog.

The RDi F1 help key will now recognize BIFs and keywords (hurray!) and the wizards for procedures, D specs and Java method calls now have the option to generate code using the new all-free format syntax introduced a few months ago.

So what else is there in 7.2 that is likely to be of interest to developers? Well for one thing the IBM i Integrated Application Server is now powered by Liberty 8.5, the latest app server from the Websphere folks. IBM feels that this will be a good replacement for Tomcat. It is also upward compatible to full Websphere, which means that your experimental use today will not have to be rethought if and when you need to "move up." Although 7.2 marks the public debut of Liberty on IBM i, it has actually been in use under the covers by a number of IBM tools since 2013 so any rough edges should have been worn off by now. Also of interest to the Java aficionados among you, 7.2 introduces a new version of the JT400 Open Lite toolkit aimed firmly at the mobile market.

Those of you that develop Web applications will be pleased to see an update in the Apache server, which takes it to version 2.4 with improved performance and support for Server Name Indication (SNI) and
Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP). We know many folks have been waiting for those to appear.

There are too many DB2 enhancements to cover here so we will simply refer you to Mike Cain's blog for more information on those. We also that know many of you make extensive use of the browser based Navigator, Tim Rowe's blog covers the new features in detail.

As and when we get to play with 7.2 we'll be back with more. In the meantime try to be grateful for the presents you've already had.

Just When Things Were Going So Well ...

Back in March we blogged about it being a "Good News Week," so it seems only fair to pass on some bad news.

Last week Penton announced to its subscriber base that the company is ceasing production of its iProDeveloper and Power IT Pro publications. This weekend their forums went read-only. Traffic on the forums had indeed fallen substantially in the last year or two, but frankly we always felt that that was self-inflicted damage. They changed the software they used a few years back and made a complete hash of it. Not only was the new forum truly horrible to use, but they also made a complete mess of linking in the old content. Over time they fixed many of the issues that arose--but in the interim period many folks had "wandered off" and found their technical fixes elsewhere.

We were not really that surprised that Penton pulled the plug on iProDeveloper. There seemed to be less and less content in each issue. In fact with many issues we rarely got beyond scanning the table of contents, there was so little there that interested us.

In part we suspect that this is all related to the vendor consolidation that has been going on in the IBM i space in recent years. When only a relatively small number of vendors own all of the products in the marketplace, it's bound to affect the amount of advertising dollars available. And advertising dollars  drive magazine (print or digital) content. No dollars, no content.

As part of these changes, Penton is making all of the previously restricted content on the website publicly available. How long they will continue this service is anybody's guess. So we suggest that if you have any articles on the iProDeveloper website that you reference frequently that you grab yourself a local copy while you can.

But enough of the bad news. Right now we're off to join a great bunch of fellow IBM i fanatics at the annual NEUGC conference near Boston, Mass. That will make us feel better--at least once we get past the frustration of having had our flight cancelled (sigh)--seems to be be just one of those days.

Advertising IBM i

So, did you see that great TV ad that IBM ran during primetime last night? Some of the things it mentioned were:

• That IBM i has true integration of operating system, database, security and web serving. Designed in from the beginning--not added on as an afterthought. The very same integration that Oracle and others are striving to achieve via acquisition, not by design. True integration brings simplicity and reliability.
• That DB2 for i fully automates many typical DBA tasks, such as storage allocation and extensions, maintaining database integrity, updating statistics. It has tremendous scalability, such as the ability to handle more than 400 TB of data in a single SQL table and can bring incredible I/O and CPU parallelism to bear to process and query massive amounts of data. A simpler, more powerful and more scalable database housed in a single server delivering unprecedented performance at a lower cost for both transactional data and business intelligence applications.
• That reliability and security of IBM i systems running on Power are dramatically better than competitive systems. They mentioned that an independent study showed costs of downtime for IBM i servers to be 90 percent less than for Windows server clusters and 71 percent less than for Oracle Exadata, translating into three-year savings of between $700,000 and $35 million for IBM i shops.
• That SAP runs better on IBM i than on competitive platforms and is easier and cheaper to install and maintain.
• That IBM i has a lower cost of ownership over three years: 55 percent less than Windows running SQL Server and 50 percent less than Linux running Oracle. In addition, even the initial cost of acquisition of IBM i servers is 18 percent less than x86 servers running Windows/SQL Server and 43 percent less than x86 running Linux and Oracle.

Did you notice that today's blog is dated April 1, 2014? Yes, it's April Fool's Day.

Sorry, there was no ad for IBM i on prime time TV last night. But that's the only part of this blog that is not true. So maybe we could all help to make sure that even without ads the IBM i story is heard.

For more details on the facts stated here and more data to use in spreading the word, take a look at some of the resources on the System i Developer iAdvocate page.

Spread the word.

 

Testing, Testing, Testing ...

We've recently been involved in a number of discussions concerning the testing of IBM i applications. One thing that became apparent very quickly was that nobody seems to have a really clear view of the current "State of the Nation" in IBM i-land--at least as far as testing methodologies and practices are concerned. And before you can even have that discussion you really need to define just what you mean by testing in the first place. Unit testing? System testing? Regression testing? Code coverage? Usability testing? And on and on.

Then there is the whole area of testing tools. For sure any number of options exist for automating testing of Web applications. After all a Web app is a Web app regardless of whether it has the best system in the world driving it (IBM i, in case you have any doubts) or one of those inferior platforms. But how to you know whether the database was updated properly from that Web app? And it doesn't help with code coverage and other areas such as testing batch applications or green-screen interactive applications, etc.

To help us in trying to form a clearer picture of the current state of the art, we decided we would ask you, our noble readers, to help us fill in the gaps.

So here's what we're looking to find out.

1. Does your shop have any formal testing plan in place or is it just down to whatever the individual developer feels the need to do?
2. Do you do formal unit testing? And if so do you use RPG Unit or similar tooling?
3. Do you currently use automated tooling to assist in testing interactive applications--either Web or green screen? And if so, is it homegrown or purchased software?
4. What about code coverage? How do you ensure that all possible code paths have been tested?
5. Do you have formal regression testing plans?
6. Any other testing related issues/practices that apply to your shop?
7. Do you develop code just for your own company's use or so you work for a software vendor? We ask that because we suspect there may be different testing requirements/practices in place based on that.

We really would like to know as it seems that testing is a long-neglected area and we'd like to better understand what is going on out there. Please help us out by posting your comments. If you prefer to remain anonymous for fear that your comments will inflame your fellow developers (or worse still, your management) you can do so, it all depends what display name you use when commenting. Thanks!

Letters to Santa Bring New RDi Update

In a blog post a few weeks ago we mentioned that we had the opportunity to test the beta version of the new RDi support for fully free-form RPG and were impressed by it. We had originally thought it would be well into 2014 before this new support became publicly available, but apparently Santa--in the guise of IBM Rational--has delivered support for the new free format H, F and D specs now. We RPGers must have been very good this year!

The support was released as part of the latest fix pack for RDi. That takes it to version 9.0.1. You can get the details of the fixes and enhancements here  and the actual fix pack can be obtained here. Alternatively simply load the Installation Manager and tell it to update the product--that worked for us.

But it's not just about free-format RPG support. Much like letters to Santa, some RDi users have been asking Rational for usability enhancements. And at least four of those requests have been granted--early Christmas presents--as the features requested are included in this new fix pack. You see, we told you it pays to share your suggestions with the folks at Rational! This is done via Requests for Enhancements (RFEs) and we blogged about it quite some time ago. In case you missed it, take a look for the details of how to add your own suggestions to the list.

The RFE enhancements in this fix pack include improvements to the automatic removal of error messages after compiles and enhanced block nesting options. This includes the ability to set the color for the nesting indicators shown by Crtl-Shift-O. This is a small, but useful, change that we like because the old default of black just didn't show up that well.  

There are still a few missing features. For example the wizards for D-specs, Java method call and Subprocedures have not yet been released, but frankly we rarely use those so it is not a problem for us. Assumedly these features may be coming in subsequent fix packs. Considering the early indications were that we might have to wait until February for this new support, it is nice to get an early Christmas present! Thanks, Santa!

Tidbits on Tools, Amazon Prime Air and Mobile

Sometimes there is no one "big thing" that piques our interest in a given week - particularly around holiday periods when there is less in the way of IT-related news. But often we have a backlog of little things that we think worthy of mention but which are not big enough to warrant a complete blog entry. So this week a few of those.

Finding the Tools You Need

First up is the (relatively) new list of Web development tools on Midrange.com. The idea is to provide a single point where you can look for tools in the arena of refacing, building new Web applications, development IDEs and more. Since this is a community-developed page, the hope is that it is less likely to be subject to overblown vendor rhetoric and that tools will be categorized where they best fit. By no means a comprehensive list and we know of a few tools that are missing, but it is a good start. If you find something missing by all means add it.

When You Just Gotta Have It (Almost) Now!

In the category of "Is it April 1st already?" comes the latest from Amazon--Prime Air. This is the official piece on the Amazon site, but simply Google "Amazon Prime Air" and you'll get more than 30 pages referencing that exact term! You can say what you like about Jeff Bezos, but the man certainly knows how to get the world talking!

Will Prime Air ever happen? Well there are any number of issues ranging from gun toting individuals taking pot-shots at the delivery vehicles, to insurance issues as a drone slices up the family cat as it lands, to the sheer number of distribution centers that would be needed to ensure 30-minute delivery. But we have a feeling that it, or something very much like it, is in our future--just maybe not in the two- to five-year timeframe that Bezos is talking.

The Next Step in Mobile

One of the issues in developing mobile applications is that it can take a lot of effort to make applications that will work even when you are not able to connect. Certainly the new local storage features of HTML5 has made this less of a problem than it has been in the past, but even so, a lot of Javascript skill is required if you want such apps to work on both Android and iOS systems.

Enter the latest update to Lansa's Long Range product. It provides local storage via the SQLite database engine that is built-in to both operating systems. No Javascript required according to Lansa. Just your RPG or COBOL skills to configure the components. You can find the details here. We look forward to seeing how this feature works.

Lansa, of course, isn't the only vendor to offer mobile capabilities in their products. Asna, BCD, CNX, look, Profound, Rocket, and countless others, offer such capabilities in their tools. But Lansa isthe first that we are aware of that directly support stand-alone disconnected operation. If indeed another vendor does support this capability and we've missed it, please let us know.

That's all for this time. We hope all our American readers enjoyed their Thanksgiving. Ours was almost derailed by a major plumbing problem, but all went well in the end, just a little more chaotic than we had intended. In fact we're awaiting the arrival of the plumber as we write this; wish us luck!
 

Simplifying Complex Concepts

As our regular readers know, we're fans of simplification in our code. Today's application needs are getting more complex every day, but we advocate that developers strive to hide as much of that complexity as possible. Open Access is one tool that can help in that aim; subprocedures are another. The nitty-gritty detailed code must be there but it doesn't need to be in the forefront.

When it comes to talking about our beloved IBM i system to non-i people, simplification is also important. Most of us understand the things that make our platform unique (e.g., single-level storage, object orientation, TIMI and the integration of not only DB2 but also most of the other bits and pieces needed to make a business application system run).

But can we explain these concepts in a few words, holding the attention of the listener while getting across succinctly the value of these concepts? Most of us can't. We get caught up in the technical details that seem so cool but can sometime muddy the waters of understanding the business value.

Here's help. Hopefully you all followed the 25th anniversary celebration activities earlier in the year, including the publication of 25 vignettes, each celebrating one aspect of the power of our platform. We looked forward to reading each one as they came out--25 nice rah-rah moments for the IBM i community.

Recently, we've gone back to revisit some of those vignettes in a slightly different context, using them as vehicles to advocate for the i platform to the uninitiated. Rather than simply relegating these to the annals of history or preaching to the choir, maybe we could make use of some of them to preach to others.

You probably read them, but how well do you remember them? For example:

• How is TIMI like a pair of shoes?
• How can car keys be used to describe the value of single-level storage?
• What does Harry Potter have in common with IBM i? 
• An operating system without an integrated database is like a hotel room without a bed--unthinkable.

We all need to be advocates of our platform. Even if you don't know of any potential threats to the platform in your own shop, it's still wise to ensure that the powers that be truly understand the value of what you have.

Do yourself, and your business, a favor by arming yourself with some of the simple analogies embodied in these vignettes so that you can drop them into conversations and meetings to illustrate the value of IBM i.

From our System i Developer iAdvocate page you can download the whitepaper that IBM created with the 25 vignettes and you can also get a set of PowerPoint slides in case you get a chance to insert some of these into a presentation. You may even want to remind yourself and your colleagues of these gems by downloading and printing a poster of the 25 vignettes here.

You'll also find many other iAdvocate resources on the Web page mentioned above. It never hurts to be prepared for the occasion that may arise to advocate for the best platform there is!