RDi 7.1 trial version now available
Posted: April 30, 2008 Filed under: IBM i, RDi 4 Comments »A 60-day trial version of Rational Developer for System i V7.1, is now available for download on developerWorks (http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/downloads/r/rdi/learn.html). Enjoy!
Web(2.0)Facing
Posted: April 21, 2008 Filed under: Abe Batthish, HATS, Web 2.0, WebFacing | Tags: Ajax, community, Content Assist, ENPTUI, feedback, HATS, RIA, Subfile, user experience, user interface, Web 2.0, WebFacing 5 Comments »When providing a UI Modernization solution, ultimately it’s all about the resulting UI (User Interface) and UX (User Experience).
These are areas that have endless opportunities for improvements, and for WebFacing this is no exception. In fact, it’s been lower on the priority list for too long.
ENPTUI support? Better Subfile UI? Content Assist (e.g. Calendar widget for date fields)?
What UI enhancements are highest on your list to directly improve end user usability, enhance their experience, or enable the development of richer WebFacing applications?
I’m open to rants as well. Feedback is valuable in any form.
Me, IBM, and i
Posted: April 19, 2008 Filed under: Abe Batthish, IBM i, IBM Power Systems, iSeries, System i | Tags: Abe Batthish, Apple, AS/400, Google, i5/OS, IBM i, IBM Power Systems, iSeries, naming, OS/500, System i 5 Comments »I’ve always wanted IBM to take advantage of the “i” in iSeries. Apple had the right idea with iPod, iTunes, iMac, even though I do believe iSeries was there before the iPod came around. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Well IBM, after deliberating with the user community, has taken it to a new level… introducing IBM i. Simple enough?
BTW.. Love the new logo. Not only are we saying goodbye to the OS name i5/OS, once OS/400… now just IBM i.
And for hardware: System i, once iSeries, AS/400, and others before my time… now merged with System p to form IBM Power Systems.
But we’re also saying goodbye to the VRM version naming: so i5/OS V6R1 now simply IBM i 6.1. Believe it or not, I think this will be the toughest one for me to get over since its been around the longest.
Though I think “i” will be tough to Google. Simple is good. “IBM i” seems to Google well.
Lots of changes. I just hope these names will finally stick around. To me its always been the “i” in IBM.
PS: Blog name changes once again :)
NEUGC and the Debugger
Posted: April 17, 2008 Filed under: Debug, Don Yantzi, iSeries, RDi, RSE, WDSC Leave a comment »I just returned from two days of presenting at the Norteast User Groups Conference on various WDSC and RDi topics. A fun conference, with great attendees and lots of WDSC users!
A couple funny stories about the debugger while I was there. Earlier in the day on Wednesday Jon Paris was telling me about a problem he had seen at a customer site where the debugger was displaying an error about “retrieving children”. I said I had never seen or heard of the problem before. Later that afternoon I’m demoing the debugger in front of about 40 people. I set my service entry point, call my program, the debug perspective opens and up pops the exact same error. I guess I can reproduce that one now :) The good news is I was able to get some details about the error and it doesn’t appear to actually have any functional impact.
In the same demo , I’m stepping over a write to a display file and the F spec is highlighted and I’m hitting “step over” a few times until it gets to the next line, when someone in the audience tells me about the *NODEBUGIO compiler option. I never knew that even existed (and it’s always good to learn something new). What makes this even more funnier, is that about 20 minutes later (same session) another person in the audience asks if there is any way to prevent having to step over I/O multiple times in the debugger. Sure, just use *NODEBUGIO option when compiling your source :)
One last tidbit I learned this evening is that you can’t get the value of a CL variable to show in the hover box when debugging like you can with ILE RPG and COBOL. But this restriction is only if you are using the Remote Systems LPEX Editor as your debug editor (the default). If you switch to listing view in the debugger, or use the Debug Editor (preference on Run/Debug > Compiled Debug preference page) then you can get the value for CL variables to show in a hover box.
i think, therefore iMac
Posted: April 16, 2008 Filed under: Dave Dykstal, Ease of use, Macintosh, Quick Thoughts 16 Comments »I have a confession.
I’m a Mac bigot.
There. I said it. Now I feel better.
I was a Windows user from the mid 1980s. I’m probably the only person you’ll run into who bought Windows 1.0 and every version of Windows since (until Vista). I’ve also played with the Lisa, the Next machine, Mac OS 9, and several distros of Linux (RedHat, Fedora, SuSE, Ubuntu, Mandriva, …). I’ve written programs for OS/2 and Windows to the native API. I’ve amassed a large collection of software bought specifically for Windows.
I bought my first Macs for my kids in 1998 when they were in grade school and the things were running Mac OS 8.5. I bought my first Mac when OS X came out. I gradually forsook my Windows investment and haven’t looked back since.
The tools are there, the speed is there, the ease-of-use is there (depending on the application). The only things I long for are a decent version of Quicken, and (lately) a less bloated version of PowerPoint.
I’m curious if there is a following among i users. I hear rumors.
Let me know I’m not alone.
Please allow me to introduce myself …
Posted: April 15, 2008 Filed under: Dave Dykstal 9 Comments »I’m Dave Dykstal. I’ve had a long history both inside and outside IBM and am the only one on the RDi development team from Rochester. I’d like to think that gives me some sort of special status, but my colleagues don’t seem to share that opinion. Funny how that works.
I moved to Rochester in at the beginning of a cold January in 1977 to work on a new system that IBM was building — the System/38. I was enthralled by the technology: 48-bit address space, capability-based addressing, cool little punch cards, a whopping 64Mb disk, and these new 5250 terminals that beat the pants off the DECwriters I had used as a grad student at the University of Wisconsin.
In the first three years at IBM I witnessed the shipping of the System/38. During that time I worked on compiler back-ends and utilities. In fact, I worked on the first query utility. While I was doing that, others on my team were working on the first Source Entry Utility — SEU as we called it. The one you know and love now traces its lineage to the second version, and yes, I was there for that one too. If you don’t recall the first one, you really don’t want to know.
Since those ancient times I have worked on System/38 and AS/400 software architecture, System/38 Basic, developed some of the original UI standards for green screen terminals, developed the AS/400 user interface manager, got fascinated with graphical user interfaces, and developed the first AS/400 GUI prototypes using a new programming technique called “object-oriented programming” in the late 80′s and early 90′s.
I left IBM in 1994 for a small company called Object Technology International to work on object-oriented programming tools. In time OTI was acquired by IBM as a subsidiary and in 2003 I was back as a full-fledged IBM employee. Who says you can’t go home again?
Today I work on OpenRSE — the port of the non-i bits of RSE in the Eclipse Project. I also work on the projects support in RDi. My objective here is to communicate as well as I can (and within the limits established by my employer) where we might want to go with these over time, as well as solicit opinions from the community on various topics. I might even offer a few unvarnished opinions of my own though “Minnesota Nice” is in my nature.
My professional interests are in application modernization, collaboration, programming tools, beautiful code, and agile techniques. I’d like to help bring ideas for these to the i community, and hopefully keep learning from the community as I have in the past.
Personally, I’m a Mac OS user, an amateur photographer, and (soon to be former) president of our local UW alumni chapter. I enjoy my family, an occasional beer, and a good joke. I like to walk and when my wife and I go on vacation we prefer road trips to flying.
How to connect to an i5/OS WAS instance from within the IDE
Posted: April 4, 2008 Filed under: Hania Abd-El-Razik, HATS, How To, i5/OS, WDSC, WebFacing, WebSphere | Tags: HATS, i5/OS, WebFacing, WebSphere 2 Comments »You might sometimes need to test a web application on an i5/OS WAS instance. If you find it too much of a hassle to export your project as an EAR or WAR file, upload the file to the remote server, then install the application (and repeat the process again when you make a change!) – or if you just don’t want the overhead of running WAS locally – consider configuring your remote server within the IDE so you can use it just like a test environment.
Here’s how:
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