"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet." -- Shakespeare, from Romeo and Juliet.
Yes, a few weeks ago, IBM announced that they were changing the name of our beloved system from iSeries to System i. Actually, if you want to be technical about it, the previous name was IBM eServer iSeries, and the current generation was called IBM eServer iSeries i5. Now, the current generation is IBM System i5, and the server line is called IBM System i.
Our... Read the rest of entry >>
Posted @ 03/30/2006 9:36 PM By
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I am glad to see people responded to my recent From the Trenches article. One person said the article hit the nail on the head. What are we, as customers to do? IBM seems oblivious to what their current, paying customers want from development tools and opportunities. What is the best way to get them to evolve, when a revolution on our part is not possible or desired?... Read the rest of entry >>
Posted @ 01/12/2006 11:44 AM By
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Here's a surprisingly obvious question that IT managers don't often ask. Why not?... Read the rest of entry >>
Posted @ 09/23/2005 4:19 PM By
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There's a major schism evident in this blog between those that believe that RPG is a language for traditional programming and those that see it as a capable language for the future. The former perceives RPG as a language for 5250 applications, text-only reports, and batch jobs. It's not hard to understand where they get this perception, since that's 99% of what you see when you look at RPG programs. The other side thinks it's capable of much more, and I fall into that category.
If you read... Read the rest of entry >>
Posted @ 09/16/2005 3:04 PM By
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SOA (service-oriented architechture) seems to be a big buzzword these days both within IBM and in the general IT press (e.g., Computerworld). From what I've learned so far, I'd describe SOA as an expansion of Web services concepts. Here are my working definitions:
Web services are applications that use a set of XML-based standards (SOAP, WSDL, UDDI, etc.) to communicate. The goal of Web services is to allow platform-neutral, language-neutral communications between applications.
SOA defines... Read the rest of entry >>
Posted @ 09/14/2005 6:05 PM By
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It is pretty encouraging to see people outside of IBM being positive on the marketing future for the iSeries. I love the hype! Anything that exposes the iSeries to the world is a good thing. Now we need to be patient and let IBM follow through with their commitment. Let's see it work IBM!... Read the rest of entry >>
Posted @ 07/17/2005 2:05 PM By
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Have you seen "classic" ways managers or developers cause a software project to fail? Add them to our list.... Read the rest of entry >>
Posted @ 07/06/2005 4:34 PM By
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Ok. Time for my irregular rant.
With HIPAA and the new privacy laws in effect, how do we still get away with using production data in our test environment? Well, it's just so quick and easy to do a CPYLIB from production to test... right?
So, you want to know what terrible disease someone has? Just look at the test data! Want to know someone's Social Security number and their DOB and their spouse's name. Just look at the test data!
I am not a fan of encrypting data in our on-line... Read the rest of entry >>
Posted @ 07/06/2005 2:56 PM By
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IBM this week have announced 13,000 job losses throughout Europe. Obviously, there are many contributory factors to this announcement but I sometimes wonder if their advertising campaigns do not help.... Read the rest of entry >>
Posted @ 05/07/2005 1:00 AM By
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IBM needs to deliver free-format D-specs for ILE RPG, and SOON!... Read the rest of entry >>
Posted @ 05/04/2005 9:14 AM By
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