RPG Career Planning, ERP and Legacy Code Modernization

Welcome to another edition of Talsco Weekly

News: Vendor Rebranding. IBM has a stake in Blockchain Network.
Career: RPG Career Planning.
Development: PHP Toolkit and ILElastic a self-contained web application server.
ERP: Do ERP systems have to be sexy?
IoT: Deploying IoT in the enterprise.
Modernization: Is all legacy code bad?
Trends: Legacy organizations push the sharing economy. The biggest obstacle to finding RPG talent has been taken away.

News

Another name change: Syncsort’s Rebranding Syncsort, like many tech companies that have been around for a while, made a recent decision to rebrand. The IBM midrange community is all too familiar with name changes the AS/400, iSeries, i5, and IBM i. Sometimes a name change is due to an acquisition, other times it's due to market trends. So with that in mind Syncsort, a vendor in the IBM i security space is now called, Precisely. Precisely's focus going forward is data. Connecting enterprise data to cloud-based analytics systems. In summary, "Precisely has inserted itself smack dab in the middle of an emerging chain of tools for moving data from source systems to analytical systems." IBM Takes 7% Stake in Trade Finance Blockchain Network We.Trade "IBM has become a shareholder in we.trade, the trade finance platform jointly owned by 12 European banks, signaling further consolidation across the enterprise blockchain space." "Trading lies at the heart of a market economy, yet many banks have not developed their trade finance offering, a vital component of trade deals, for decades." We.Trade is the answer. In-memory Computing from IBM "The most efficient computer possible already exists. And no, it’s not a Mac or a PC – it’s the human brain."

Career

Planning Your Future When the Future Is Uncertain I find this interesting:

The reality is that there is a need for both highly specialized and generalized skills. However, there's a gap between them that is creating new roles beyond the business analyst that sits between the business and specialized areas of IT including cybersecurity, data science and software development.

I believe the IBM i (AS/400) is unique in that a high percentage of the RPG developers are specialists as well as generalists. They always have been. It's the nature of the platform. The core development on the IBM i will always be RPG. This is certain. RPG Career Planning. The future role of the RPG developer will be to master the IBM i platform and become an Integration Specialist, having the ability to connect core business systems to web, cloud, eCommerce, IoT, and other emerging technology.

Development

PHP Toolkit for IBM i The PHP Toolkit for IBM i (Toolkit) is a PHP-based front end to XMLSERVICE that helps programmers call RPG and CL programs along with other native resources from within PHP. What is ILEastic? It is a self-contained web application server for the ILE environment on IBM i to run microservices. It provides a simple, blazing fast programmable HTTP server for your application. You can easily plug your RPG code into a services infrastructure and make simple web applications without the need of any third party web server products. Turnover Pre-Run and Post-Run Promotion Form Commands "When we are promoting changed objects, using Soflanding TURNOVER, we sometimes want to run commands before or after the form runs. These pre-run and post-run commands are easy to add to any form."

ERP

Who Said ERP Systems Need To Be Sexy? "Many ERP implementations have been in place for a decade or more. While routinely patched and upgraded, plenty of them have not been comprehensively reassessed since their original implementation." In this article, here are five reasons this organization chose to refresh its legacy ERP.

IoT

Report: Enterprises face challenges with IoT deployment With the adoption of the Internet of Things on the rise, expect cybercriminals to target consumer and enterprise IoT devices in an effort to exploit customers and manufacturers." How to Increase Machine ROI with Predictive Maintenance IoT in manufacturing helps predict maintenance issues.

Modernization

Legacy code is not the problem This article's title reads "COBOL is not the problem; The data is". One can just as easily insert RPG into the title. Or Visual Basic for that matter. There is a lot of legacy code out there. The key point being made in this article is that there is a lot of legacy code that works and rather than spending modernizing the application may be the best approach is Data-centric modernization. What is data-centric modernization?

Data centric refers to an architecture where data is the primary and permanent asset, and applications come and go. In the data centric architecture, the data model precedes the implementation of any given application and will be around and valid long after it is gone.

Trends

How Legacy Businesses Can Compete in the Sharing Economy "Until recently, most traditional companies could not adapt their established business models to participate in the so-called sharing economy. But sensors and related technologies are changing that reality." Why is this important for the RPG developer to understand the value chain of their company but also the value chain of the sharing economy? So your company has said you can work from home forever—now what? This is more than a trend. I am hearing from IBM i and RPG Developers all over the US. " business leaders are announcing that remote work is here to stay long after the pandemic subsides." What does this mean for the IBM i community? One of the biggest barriers to finding the right talent has been taken away. Location.

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