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!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RDP Plug-ins

As you know, we’re big fans of RSE and its related tools found originally in WDSC and more recently in RDP. There are many, many features that come in that toolset directly from IBM—so many that we keep learning new ones all the time. But as many things as are there, there is still a long list of nice-to-have features that aren’t there. We published a wish list some time ago about some of the additions we’d like to see. Some of these have since become available and many more are on IBM’s RFE (Request For Enhancement) list.

The fact that these tools are built on Eclipse means that it’s not always necessary to wait for IBM to implement a feature. Eclipse was built from the ground up to allow developers to plug their own features directly into the toolset. Fortunately, many people have done just that. More fortunately still, many of these plug-ins are available for free.

We want to share just a few examples of some of the plug-ins with some specific IBM i functionality that we are aware of. We haven’t personally tried many of these plug-ins yet, but perhaps some of you have. If so, we hope you’ll let us know (via the comments) how you like them. Also please let us know about plug-ins that we’ve missed. We’re sure there are many more out there. Please help us add to the list.

Many software companies have plug-ins that interface to their (usually) host-based software. Examples of these include many of the source control or change management products, such as those from Arcad, PTC (formerly MKS), Aldon and SoftLanding. In addition, there are plug-ins that interface to tools such as DBU from ProData and Surveyor from Linoma and probably many more. If you use the corresponding software on the host, these plug-ins can provide a great way to integrate your editing environment with that software.

For our purposes here, we’re interested more in tools that are more generic in nature that don’t require other software (other than RDP or WDSC, of course) to be installed to make use of them.

Are you frustrated by the limitations of RDP’s Templates and Snippets? Someone on the WDSC-L list on Midrange.com was and developed a plug-in with much more robust template functionality called FreeMarker. If this sounds interesting to you, visit this site for more information or to download that tool.

Several other people on the same list use the QuantumDB plug-in for database access. It is not written specifically for IBM i but does work with DB2 for i. For more information, see this site.

We mentioned Arcad Software’s tools related to their products above. They also offer some generic tools for RSE users that do not relate to nor require installation of their products. They have a 5250 emulator plug-in. And their latest tool is a Data Area Editor plug-in. You can get more information and fill in a request for download of these free tools here.

SoftLanding also offers a generic set of tools called RSE Extensions Plug-in. It offers several utilities, including a spooled file viewer (it was created before RDP had its own and still has some advantages over the “native” one), a message queue monitor, a Data Area editor and tool to display Data Queues. You can get more information and download the tool here. We noticed that the website says the latest version is verified through RDP 8.0, so if, like us, you’re already on 8.5, you may want to check around, perhaps on the Midrange list archives, to see if others have experience with it at that level.

The newest set of plug-ins for RDP that we’ve seen is from Germany. There are two plug-ins from Task Force IT Consulting GmbH. One is a version of the TN5250J Emulator that lets you run an emulation session within the workbench. The other is a set of tools called iSphere. iSphere contains a Message File Editor, a Binding Directory Editor and a Compare/Merge Editor for source members.

We’ve just installed iSphere and we’ll be reporting on our progress with using it in our next EXTRA article, which will be available in two weeks. So if that one sounds interesting to you, take a look out for that. You can subscribe to the free IBM i EXTRA newsletter here. If you don’t want to wait for that and want to try out iSphere for yourself, take a look at it here.

 

 

 

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.

Happy Endings

We're writing this on the plane flying from Stockholm to Heathrow en-route to a brief stopover at home before we head to Minneapolis for the upcoming RPG & DB2 Summit.

Our friends at Data3 did a wonderful job and the event was very successful with more than 100 of the faithful gathered together to hear about the "latest and greatest" in all things IBM i. The location was beautiful too - just outside the downtown core right alongside the channel into the main harbor. In fact one of the sights at the hotel is to watch the daily arrival and departure of the large and very modern ferries, which the locals affectionately refer to as the "booze cruise." Two or three of these leave Stockholm each day and make the overnight run to Finland or sometimes, apparently, simply into the nautical equivalent of no-man's land. Why? Because Sweden has very high taxes on liquor and apparently these cruises take long enough for you to qualify for a substantial duty-free allowance. As our friends Trevor Perry and Alison Butterill noted, this accounts for the people getting off what appears to be a cruise liner carrying only tiny overnight bags--and very large bags of duty-free items!

But telling you how lucky we were to have been teaching in such a gorgeous location was not intended to be the point of this blog. Instead we wanted to pass on a story related to us by our hosts of one Swedish company's successful approach to the problem of finding new RPG blood. Like many of our customers, the company faced an aging RPG population. While some of their work is outsourced, the organization felt the need to have a strong in-house core to the development team. The solution was to hire recent computer studies graduates and have them trained in RPG. Those of you who read our blog regularly will know that this is an approach we have long advocated, and we have been involved in several such programs. It was encouraging, therefore, to see others successfully using this approach. The training consisted of a three-week classroom period, followed by four weeks of practical hands-on experience and then an additional week in the classroom. Needless to say, crucial to this effort to persuade these new hires that RPG did not mean "Role Playing Game" was the use of modern tools like RDP--no green-screen chains for these newcomers!

If you can read Swedish you can find the details in Data3's excellent magazine. We tried Google translate but it just isn't good enough to publish in that form. So, we hope to work with our friends at Data3 to produce an English version, which with luck we can share with you in next month's IBM i EXTRA eNewsletter.

It is nice to hear a story with a happy ending! But Jon will probably never persuade Susan that herring  is a real delicacy worth exploring.

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.

Are IBM i Shops Cheap?

Several recent blog comments have highlighted something that we've often pondered ourselves. Why do so many members of the IBM i community seem to be so cheap?

Nathan Andelin commented along these lines in response to last week's post on RPG OA. Elsewhere Jon came upon the latest of many complaints from programmers bemoaning the fact that they can't persuade their management to buy into RDP**.

Often at conferences we come across programmers who have been tasked with writing utility X and are looking for direction. It's not uncommon that they have already spent many hours attempting to build something that a $1,000 tool could have had up and running weeks ago. Susan often fields questions regarding the "best practices" for creating ILE applications, only to have the questioners reject the guidance because their home-grown source-management facility can't cope with doing things the "right way." Now admittedly change-management tools cost a lot more than $1,000, but our experience indicates that most shops that use home-grown tools spend waaaaayyyyy more money maintaining them than they would have spent buying a commercial tool.

Perhaps more to the point, the folks tasked with doing such work are usually among the most senior (and therefore most expensive) staff. The same staff that could more usefully be building libraries of subprocedures for functions that are company specific for use by other staff, thereby making everyone in the shop more efficient. Or perhaps they could spend their extra time investigating new technologies that could make the whole operation more efficient.

But no. Many IBM i shops would rather repeatedly reinvent the wheel. Sadly it often seems to be these very same techies that perpetuate the "If it wasn't built here it is not worth having" mythology. Why do they do that? Personally we'd rather be exploring new stuff, not reworking the in-house email program for the 50th time.

Perhaps what's needed is for ISVs to include a "true cost" calculator on their websites? IBM Rational could take the lead with one for RDP. We'll give them a hand with a few basic calculations:

Salary of an RPG programmer: (say) $50,000 pa. Hopefully you are paid more than that (you're undoubtedly worth it) but we'll work with a low figure.

Additional costs--healthcare, accommodation, equipment, etc.: Normally a minimum of $50,000 pa.

How much more efficient could the programmer be if they used RDP? The lowest figure any user has ever given us is 15 percent and most claim 25 percent or more, but let's stay low and say 15 percent.

How much would it cost to achieve that 15 percent? Well to really make their work sing along let's add an additional 20-plus-inch monitor to their configuration. That's a combined total of about $1,000 for the RDP tool and the monitor. In other words the cost of acquisition is 1 percent of the annual cost of the programmer. Is there any other aspect of the company's activities where a guaranteed return of 15X wouldn't cause such a rush for the checkbook that the carpet would spontaneously burst into flames?  

If indeed Nathan's view is correct then perhaps RPG OA will never achieve its true potential because ISVs aren't going to build tools that nobody buys. That would be sad.

Does this match your experience? If not how did you achieve this nirvana? If so, what do you think can be done to change things? Please share your thoughts by commenting to this post.

** It's an interesting side note that despite the many complaints about IBM charging for RDP, it's a simple fact of life that uptake of the tool has been far greater since it had a price tag. Sadly the ones that suffer the most because of the cost are the early adopters for whom WDSC became a way of life and (assumedly) they now have no way to prove to their management how much more efficient they are when using the tool and therefore can't get the dollars for RDP.