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!
 

Mobile Is ... Different

To our U.S. readers, welcome back to reality after the Thanksgiving break. Hope you had a wonderful holiday surrounded by friends and family and that this week hasn't proven too much of a come-down for you.

Three things triggered this week's blog. The first was an email from a friend and client who, having just gotten his hands on an iPad, was looking for recommendations for a 5250 app. The second was an email that announced the publication of the latest part of IBM Systems Magazine's Special Report on mobile applications. This particular report focuses on security and should be compulsory reading for all those moving into the mobile universe. The third component originally came to our attention back in October at the Fall RPG & DB2 Summit where the folks from CNX showed us a preview version of their new iAdmin product. Having had the experience of wrestling with a smartphone 5250 app just to enable a user profile, we were thrilled to see this product in action. Now that it has been officially released, we can tell you about it. For those of us with older eyes and/or fat fingers this really is a great idea, and a great example of just what can be done with mobile apps. Give it a test drive from your phone or tablet at iadmin.cnxcorp.com and see what you think.

One thing that all of this highlighted for us is that mobile is different. The design issues are different. The security issues are different. And different challenges require different thinking. We might have been able to get away with designing our Web applications as giant multitabbed and (hopefully) prettier versions of 5250 applications, but not mobile apps. We need to rethink our design perspective and look for our inspiration elsewhere. The folks at CNX initially developed their new application for in-house use based on their own frustrations with teeny tiny 5250 screens (and they are all much younger than us!). What is missing in your shop? What problems could mobile apps solve for you? Things are changing quickly and embracing mobile technology may well be a make-or-break point for many IBM i shops. Because if we don't do it somebody else will.

IBM Mobile Database Syncs with DB2 on IBM i

Following our recent blog post on mobile computing and IBM i, we were contacted by our old friend George Farr. As some of you may know, George moved out of the IBM i Rational team a while back--remember the letters "IBM"stand for "I've Been Moved"--and joined the DB2 team. He's now the product manager for DB2 on mobile devices.

Luckily for us, George hasn't forgotten his roots and wrote to tell us that he had made sure that his first new product (IBM Mobile Database) would sync with DB2 on IBM i. The product is free of charge and allows you to sync to both DB2 and Informix databases. The product is part of the "IBM solidDB" family and you can find the details on this page. If you want to just jump into the details try this link. We had a lot of trouble finding these documents, but it turns out the trick is to Google with the following: "IBM Mobile Database" site:ibm.com. Note the quote marks and the "site:" part. Without those you'll get a lot of hits but nothing terribly useful! To download go to this Web page. You'll notice on the right-hand side a download link for the binary and for a sample development set-up for Eclipse. Hopefully one of our friends that works with Android will give this thing a try and get back to us with a report. Aaron Bartell are you listening?

We've also been thinking a lot about database administration of late. Several of our clients now have really huge amounts of data and are beginning to wonder if they need a dedicated DBA. We started off intending to write a blog comment on the topic, but it turned out there was a lot more to say than could really be accommodated in a blog entry, so instead you'll find it in an article in the most recent edition of the magazine's IBM i Extra e-newsletter.

Mobile and i

For a variety of reasons we have been increasingly looking at the mobile world of late. We freely confess though that we do not fully understand the need that many people seem to have to be constantly connected. When we were trying to have some down time recently the Facebook app on Susan's iPhone nearly drove us crazy. We really don't care if you have just arrived at the XYZ grocery store and we certainly don't need to have that non-information shouted at us. It does seem to only push notifications for close friends--not all--but we don't want push notifications at all; we did turn of all the push notification options we could find. So if anyone knows how to have the FB app on your smartphone _without_ having the stupid thing keep notifying you of everything please let us know.

That said, we're not complete luddites. We do see a great deal of potential in these devices for personal use and of course for business applications too. We love our iPad. It keeps us entertained and has a big enough screen to allow us to do real work as well, from writing articles to reading emails. We like our iPhone a lot too (not so happy with our Android phone, but that's another story) but can't use it for real work as the screen is just too small for our old eyes. However, it was certainly useful recently when we were shopping for things for our new house. By using the built-in camera and a bar-code scanner app we were able to find reviews of the items we were looking for and compare prices with other stores. That is a useful application of technology.

Similarly many business applications can be enhanced through the use of a mobile application. Consider an insurance assessor being dispatched to view damage to an automobile or house. Using a mobile device he can receive details of the location, navigate there using the built-in GPS, then complete the required forms, attach pictures, voice notes, etc. He can "sign" the paperwork and the whole thing can be wrapped up quickly and efficiently. It would, of course, be foolish to think that our insurance rates would drop as a result but. ...

In our own IBM i world the term "mobile" crops up more often in our mailbox than "cloud" and almost certainly with more justification for the average shop. Just how important is mobile? Well, if you have any doubts take a look at this review of the latest report from analytics firm Flurry. To quote from the review:

" ...  the rate of these smartphones and tablets adoption is 10 times faster than that of PCs in the 1980s. ..."

Ten times! And you thought you had problems when people started demanding to connect their office PCs to the system! Think about it, that was a significant problem for many of us not so many years ago.

If you aren't already looking at mobile applications you should be. For some it could be the thing that helps cement the IBM i within your organization. Oh, and by the way, that insurance company application we mentioned? The majority of that can be handled by free software, and you know how we love free! Lansa's free LongReach tool can provide the mobile underpinnings for much of what we talked about in this blog entry. We won't go into detail as we've covered it before, but check it out. If nothing else it might give you some ideas.