@PaulSE2017 Perhaps SE-RPGLE? #ibmi
– Matt Qualls (@QuallsMatt) (in reply to PaulSE2017)04:47 – Nov 18, 2022
“We’re committed to the IBM i market and we see the i-UG as being the best vehicle for us to get our message to the audience and for the audience to understand how we can help them” – Jonathan Bailey, Fresche Solutions #iug #IBMi #usergroup #technology #ipower #conference
“We’re committed to the IBM i market and we see the i-UG as being the best vehicle for us to get our message to the audience and for the audience to understand how we can help them” – Jonathan Bailey, Fresche Solutions #iug #IBMi #usergroup #technology #ipower #conference pic.twitter.com/YMQW2AEVGZ
– i-UG IBM i UserGroup (@i_ug_uk)01:42 – Nov 18, 2022
014 Season 4 Out with a BANG!
014 Hello Friends! That’s a wrap on Season 4! A special thank you to ALL OF YOU – our listeners, our awesome GUESTS, our amazing guest hosts Steve Bradshaw and Marina Schwenk – they will be back again, to our sponsors – imPOWER Technologies, Midrange Dynamics and COMMON.We will be back mid-January with season 5. More customer stories, more subject matter experts, and hopefully a YouTube channel! Please reach out to share your incredible i story! Email: [email protected]: 612-242-0821 (text or call)This episode is sponsored by…imPOWER TechnologiesWe have a new show sponsor – imPower Technologies. imPower Technologies is your go to resource for learning ILE RPG, RDi, SQL and all things IBM i. Check out the show notes for more information and reach out to Jim Buck and Michelle Lyons – they are happy to help.COMMONMidrange Dynamics Change Management Software – Built for IBM i modernization!Be sure to check out our website, LinkedIn page and like and subscribe – all those things! Interested in sharing your IBM i story? Want to sponsor the podcast? We want to hear from you! Reach out to Peg.
Talsco Weekly: Crash Course On The Value of Kubernetes
Welcome to another edition of Talsco Weekly
Data: A Hands On Guide: IBM Cloud Pak for Data. IBM Db2 now runs on AWS.
Open Source: A Quick Look at Kubernetes. Crash Course On The Value of Kubernetes.
Development: Node.js Security Best Practices. Deploying a Node.js app to the IBM i.
Cloud: Getting IBM i Data To The Cloud.
Data
A Hands On Guide: IBM Cloud Pak for Data
IBM Cloud Pak for Data is a unified, integrated, and collaborative data and AI platform that enables enterprises collect, organize, and analyze data and inject AI into business processes and applications. It aims to give deeper business insights for smarter business outcomes.
Get the Redbook.
IBM announced its strategic partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to deliver IBM SaaS products in the AWS marketplace.
“Db2 empowers developers, data engineers, DBAs and enterprise architects to run low-latency transactions and real-time analytics for the most demanding workloads.”
“IBM Db2 Database — our cloud-native relational database — is built on IBM Db2’s decades of innovation in bringing data governance, data security, low-latency transactions and continuous availability to your mission-critical applications.”
Open Source
Is “your organization is an early adopter” or are you “just getting started” with Kubernetes? Either way the “possibilities for automation, optimization, and innovation are endless with Kubernetes.”
Kubernetes is changing the way companies do business. As a technology, it has been around since 2014.
If you want to learn more, here is a 15-minute overview on Kubernetes.
Crash Course On The Value of Kubernetes
What is Kubernetes?
“Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration platform that automates deployment, management, and scaling of applications.”
“Kubernetes and the broader container ecosystem” has matured into a general-purpose platform that in a way is replacing Virtual Machines (VMs).
What do Kubernetes allow you to do?
“Kubernetes and the broader container ecosystem” is a PaaS, of sorts, that takes care of infrastructure and operation-type tasks, which allows development teams to focus on coding.
Here are some example “use cases for Kubernetes.”
What are containers?
They are “lightweight, executable application components that combine application source code with all the operating system (OS) libraries and dependencies required to run the code in any environment.”
Comparing traditional infrastructure to VMs and Containers
“Traditional Infrastructure” applications run on a physical server and grab all the resources they can get.
“Virtual machines (VMs)” are servers abstracted from the actual computer hardware, enabling you to run multiple VMs on one physical server or a single VM that spans more than one physical server. VMs make better use of resources and are more cost-effective to scale than traditional infrastructure.
“Containers” offer the same isolation, scalability, and disposability of VMs, but because they don’t carry the payload of their own OS instance, they’re lighter weight (that is, they take up less space) than VMs. They’re more resource-efficient — they let you run more applications on fewer machines (virtual and physical), with fewer OS instances.
The rest of this article dives deep into the nuances of Kubernetes as well as what it can do. You can read more about it here.
Development
Node.js Security Best Practices
If you are an IBM i developer diving into Node.js, here is a detailed guide on how to secure a Node.js application.
Overview
Best practices: A simplified condensed way to see the best practices. Use this issue or this guideline as the starting point. It is important to note that this document is specific to Node.js. If you are looking for something broader, consider OSSF Best Practices.
Attacks explained: Illustrate and document in plain English with some code examples (if possible) of the attacks that we mention in the threat model.
Third-Party Libraries: Define threats (typo-squirting attacks, malicious packages…) and best practices regarding node modules dependencies and more.
Deploying a Node.js app to the IBM i
Here is a basic video tutorial of how to write a simple Node.js application and deploy it to the IBM i.
Cloud
Getting IBM i Data To The Cloud
While there are no IBM i runtimes in the public cloud as of today, IBM i shops are still seeing value by migrating their Db2 for i data into the cloud, using technologies such as Apache Kafka and Apache Camel, as well as updating IBM ETL solution.
It’s no wonder, the transition to the cloud is predicted to account for half of IT spending by the year 2025.
Past vs Present
In the past, organizations used Netezza, a Teradata machine or even an Apache Hadoop cluster to process and analyze data. Now, they are leveraging “cheap and massive data lakes running on AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure as the platform for their data analytics efforts.”
Cloud-native architectures allow for the separation of storage and compute where you can quickly spin up and shut down an “Azure Synapse, Databricks, or Snowflake instances to crunch data and build machine learning models.”
While IBM i shops can’t yet provision CPWs in public clouds to crunch data natively, they can still use cloud services like OLAP, advanced analytics, streaming analytics, machine learning, and AI.
There are a number of ETL products that IBM i shops have used for a long time from various vendors such as, “IBM, Informatica, Talend, Fortra (previously HelpSytsems), and Matillion.”
Now there is another option, “DataMigrator.”
IBM’s DataMigrator database management tool has been upgraded with the release of Db2 Web Query version 2.4. The add-on was originally unveiled back in 2015 but just recently received a major revamp as part of an IBM i Tech Refresh.
If you want to learn more, John Westcott, a Db2 for i analytics consultant, gives a “compelling overview of DataMigrator’s low-code and no-code data transformation capabilities, as well as its new cloud streaming features in this week’s issue of IT Jungle.”
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Code for IBM i: Project Mode
Visual Studio Code for IBM i recently acquired a series of enhancements that greatly enhance the RPGLE developer experience.
Known as Project Mode, the new features allow RPGLE developers to easily navigate their code — and understand it — all while editing remotely in the IDE. They can now find all references to definitions, find definitions of all references, and go to the implementation of export procedures without leaving the editor.
Liam Allan kindly shared his excitement over these new features with us (his favorite is Peek) and showed us how to use them.
The Basics
As reported earlier this year, VS Code for i gives you a standard Outline View and smart content assist that understands what definitions you have access to.
Now in the Outline View you will see that file definitions automatically appear. According to Liam, Code for IBM i is talking to your system to understand all aspects of your code so you no longer need to leave your codebase to understand your existing definitions or file definitions.
You may also find the new Hover support useful. When you want to know what something does at a glance, just hover over it for more information. For example, you’ll see that hovering over a procedure will show you the procedure’s signature as well as where it is defined.
Digging Deeper Into the Details of Your Code
Visual Studio Code can tell you even more about your code. Right click on any definition to access three additional options:
Go to Definition takes you to where the chosen symbol is defined
Go to References shows you where the symbol is used throughout the current source code
Go to Implementation, a very new feature, will take you to where an export function/procedure is actually defined.
Because Visual Studio Code knows all about your project even when you don’t understand where everything is coming from, you can navigate your codebase more easily. This is particularly powerful for new developers working on code written by others.
The Power of Peek
While all of this functionality is useful, one additional feature makes it even more powerful: Peek.
Peek works with Go to Definitions, References and Implementation to let you see where they are explicitly defined without leaving your active editor.
In the image below, we are “peeking” the definition of ENTER. We can see that it is coming in from another file, which is brought in as a copybook in the source.
Final Touches
What Liam loves about using Visual Studio Code for RPGLE development is that it supports a wide range of development setups. He knows that every IBM i development team has their own style for the SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle.) VS Code for IBM i is flexible and adapts well to most environments.
VS Code also supports the many ways of developing RPGLE and COBOL applications. Whether you write your source code in source members with change management or in the IFS and use Git, it will work for you.
Liam also points out that if and when you want to start using Git for your RPGLE or COBOL source code, Visual Studio Code can help get you going. Code for IBM i supports local development and compiles for any ILE language, and it comes with an excellent built-in Git client.
Code for IBM i Resource Guide
To learn more about Visual Studio Code for i and to get started using it, check out our curated compilation of the best how-to resources for Code for i.
Many thanks to Liam both for his work on the Code for IBM i project and for keeping us up-to-date on its progress.
