Adding Web Tooling to RDi

We recently had an email from a fellow RDi user asking if we knew what had happened to the HTML editing capabilities that had been in WDSC. He had not needed to use them since switching to RDi and now needed to use them. The simple answer, sadly, is that when IBM made the move from WDSC to the RDx versions, the additional Web tooling was dropped from the base package. We blogged about it a while back. The tooling has always remained available but in the higher priced configurations of Rational Developer.

After further research to establish that nothing was available in the basic RDi tooling, we went in search of some Eclipse plugins. Our initial attempts were not very helpful as "HTML" as a keyword to search the Eclipse market brings up hundreds of options. Not only that, but as it happens RDi is not based on the latest-and-greatest version of Eclipse (Kepler), but on the previous version (Juno). This increased the difficulty of the search. Another challenge is that it wasn't immediately obvious to us which of the tools was free and which for-fee. So, we did what we often do under such circumstances and reached out to the RDi community on midrange.com to see what others were using.

Several people suggested that we install the Eclipse Web Tools Platform extension to give us both HTML and additional Java capabilities, so that's the direction we chose. But that still left the "How" part and although we have done this before, each version of Eclipse is a little different. That's when another suggestion from the RDi group helped out. This time they pointed us to the Useful Stuff blog, which provided step-by-step instructions with images for _exactly_ what we needed. We followed the instructions and it worked beautifully.

Of course it's always dangerous to let Jon lose on anything like this as he inevitably gets into "Ooo, that looks interesting" mode. This time he decided that while he was extending his workbench he should try adding some PHP support. He's been using both Zend Studio and the PHP version of NetBeans, but thought it would be nice to have a single IDE for those times when he's working on a project that uses PHP, HTML and RPG. Because Zend Studio is based on the Eclipse PHP Development Tools project (PDT), it would (or should) be a familiar environment and indeed that is the way it turned out. For those of you thinking of following in his footsteps, we offer one word of caution: To find the PHP tools you can filter for "PHP" (just as the Useful stuff blog suggested you filter for "Web" earlier,) but when you do, you'll see two sets of options. You do _not_ want the ones identified as SDK. Just pick the three items identified simply as PHP Development Tools (PDT) and all will be well.

Once we have had a chance to work a little more with these Web tools we'll report back. In the meantime if you find any other Eclipse projects that are useful for RDi users, please let us know. We are already familiar with those from SoftLanding and TaskForce's iSphere  (which we hope to review soon) but are always happy to hear of others via the comments section.  

A Hidden Gem in TR6

This week’s big news in the IBM i world is of course the announcement of Technology Refresh 6 (TR6). We’re sure our fellow bloggers Dawn May and Steve Will will give you the lowdown on the wonders within over the coming weeks - but we were drawn to one of the less vaunted items that we spotted in the partner and press briefing materials.

The title of this new offering is “IBM i for Business Intelligence” and we think it has a lot of potential for IBM i shops under pressure to move data off the box. Data is at the heart of any system and it is IBM i’s capability deliver that data reliably day in day out that makes it the “secret weapon”* of many companies. Many IBM i shops are pressured to move that data off i onto other platforms in order to “mine” it for the underlying information it contains. This offering takes the position that if you are going to analyze your data on another box then why not make that other box an IBM i?

Think of it as a Solution Edition package for DB2 Web Query. By that we mean it is a complete package consisting of discounted hardware, software and service offerings all designed to get you up and running as quickly as possible. The packages start as low as $40K and with the amazing horsepower of the new POWER 7+ hardware behind them we’re sure that many customers will find that even the smaller boxes meet their needs for data analytics without disrupting the production system. Not only that, but even the smallest of the packages has more than enough horsepower to also be able to act as a development box, or experimental home for introducing new Web technologies, or ... well you get the picture.

In part our interest in this new packaging stems from the fact that we have chosen data analytics as a focus area for our upcoming Summit event under the banner of “Keep Your i on the Data.” If you know you need to do more with your data then check out the details of some of the sessions listed here. Now that we’ve seen this announcement, we know why our IBM speakers were so keen to suggest these particular sessions!

One other item that piqued our interest was news of the new mobile tooling from Zend. Having watched the video, we have decided that we want to have a chance to play with it some before we talk more on the topic. If you are using PHP, or considering doing so, it is well worth a look.

 

* Ever wondered why you don’t see IBM tell the world about the huge corporations who build their success around IBM i’s legendary reliability? Fact of the matter is that many of those companies won’t let them. They would much rather see their competition waste millions of dollars in ill-fated attempts to use a “more modern” platform. Wouldn’t you feel the same way in their position? Sad though.

 

 

iAdvocates: Advocating for IBM i

When we were in Minneapolis for the 12th RPG & DB2 Summit last week, we experienced a couple of "firsts." For example, because it was near Halloween, we did trick-or-treating at the exhibitor booths. It was fun going around to the exhibitors looking to see who had your favorite goodies--including some childhood favorites from years past.

More significantly, we also held the first "iAdvocate Tutorial and Discussion" after the technical sessions ended one day. We had no idea how many attendees might decide to hang around at the end of a long day of sessions to learn about things they can do to advocate for the IBM i platform, both in their own shops and in the community at large. We were pleasantly surprised at the number of people who enthusiastically participated in the discussion. We had to bring in extra chairs multiple times due to the overflowing crowd in the room.

Mike Cain did a fabulous job of leading the discussion and left us with many thought-provoking tidbits as he discussed ways in which he has advocated for our favorite platform and database in competitive situations. For example, Mike asked, "What do Oracle, Microsoft and Apple have in common?"  Answer: "É the pursuit of integration."  The punchline, of course, being that they are struggling to achieve what we have had for years--so much so that we often take it for granted. It's a thought that we mused about here about 18 months ago in our open letter to Larry Ellison.

Mike Pavlak from Zend stopped by and was joined by IBMers Alison Butterill and Tim Rowe, who came up from Rochester just to join in the iAdvocate discussion. They made many excellent contributions, including the fact that many IBM i customer success stories are available on IBM's website and the fact that some new ITG studies on the value of IBM i will become available online soon.

We're currently working on gathering some of the materials discussed during that session so that iAdvocates everywhere can get help in keeping the IBM i front and center in their shops and beyond. We'll be sure to let you know when we have a website available to diseminate that information.

Many, many thanks to Mike Cain for sharing his wealth of experience on this subject in such a straightforward and entertaining way, and to Alison, Tim, and Mike Pavlak for joining in the discussion and providing pointers to additional resources. One more person to thank--Dan Burger for his inspirational piece about why we should all care about becoming iAdvocates.

MySQL Is Back as Zend DBi!

In January  we blogged about Oracle giving the cold shoulder to the IBM i world by announcing they would no longer be supplying a compiled IBM i version of MySQL. Today we have an update on that subject, at long last.

MySQL became popular among IBM i shops because of the popularity of PHP on i. While PHP certainly doesn't require MySQL, many open-source PHP applications that have caught on in IBM i shop (e.g., Joomla, Drupal and SugarCRM) are written to use it. Indeed SugarCRM has become so popular among i shops that they have produced an IBM i specific version. The availability of the DB2 for i Storage Engine for MySQL also made it easier to integrate those applications with more traditional IBM i applications and databases.

Back in January, we speculated that IBM and Zend were in discussions about a potential solution to the uncertainty caused by Oracle's actions. Now, we finally have an answer. Zend has agreed to step up to creating, maintaining and shipping compiled versions of the MySQL code to run on IBM i.

Zend has decided to call this distribution Zend DBi--we don't understand why, really. But not to worry, the intention is that the code that runs on IBM i coming from Zend will be the same as MySQL on other platforms. Zend will simply be compiling and packaging the pieces. Required code changes will be made available to the MySQL open-source project as required under the terms of the GNU GPL license.

Zend will distribute the new Zend DBi code as part of Zend Server and will also make it available for download by IBM i shops as a stand-alone package, much as we had downloaded MySQL from the Oracle in the past. And the storage engine that helps to integrate MySQL with DB2 for i will continue to be supported and made available by the DB2 for i folks in Rochester.

So it came to pass as we predicted it would; it just took a little longer than we had thought it might. Hmmm, it seems the idea was conceived in January and arrived in October. That's about the right gestation period. Welcome to the world, Zend DBi!