RPGDevNet

Will You Reach The Clouds?

You can hardly read a newspaper or technical journal these days without hearing about “the cloud” and how it is upon us. So, what does all this really mean, what is the cloud and what does it mean for you. The cloud refers to the growing presence of hosted applications, storage, and processing capabilities. It provides you and I with a great set of choices on how to best manage both our internal IT, as well as providing another way to deliver our applications to our customers (be they internal or external customers).

Firstly, let’s demystify “the cloud.” The cloud really just refers to hosted resources. So it’s not a big jump to simply replace “hosted” for “cloud” and you have a more down to earth description. (no pun intended !). So, what we are talking about is really the move from applications and resources that are local to those that are hosted, either by someone else, or by your own company. Let’s look at a few examples. Perhaps the best know and most successful cloud company is Salesforce.com. They provide a customer relationship management (CRM) product that users access via a simple web browser. No software installed, nothing to maintain. This is a huge cost savings for customers, and allows them to focus their resources on their core business. Another example would be Amazon’s “Elastic Cloud Compute (ECC).” Amazon provides users with access to hosted platforms, including disk space, operating system of choice, IP addresses and more, all charged by the hour. And you can dynamically increase or decrease resources as you need them, also by the hour. This gives you amazingly new control over your IT spend, and you are freed from all of the administrative tasks of managing this infrastructure.

There are a variety of initiatives underway from several of the major market players including Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Symantec, with Oracle set to unveil their offering shortly.

What does this have to do with you? Maybe something, maybe nothing. Some questions your company should ponder are the following:

1. Is our internal IT basically a commodity. We use standard technology and IT administers it?
2. Do we expect our IT resource needs (computers, operating systems, disk storage) to be changing over the next 24 months (either up or down)?
3. Would our customers benefit from an option to use our application over a simple web browner rather than having to buy and install clients?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, it is well worth looking into offerings by some of the companies mentioned above. If you answered “no” to all of these questions, you should still pay attention to the developing cloud. Why, because it is the new model of computing that is being embraced worldwide. You may not see it everywhere today, bit the infrastructure is being built out as fast as physically possible, and it is no longer a question of “if,” but “when.”

For those of us who remember the mainframe days, you may be struck by déjà vu, when you realize we have gone from centrally hosted computing severing dumb terminals, all the way back to essentially the same model. However, it is clear that what makes this go-round quite different is dramatically lower cost and faster hardware and networks, and large variety of high quality applications. The lack of these led to the initial demise of the mainframe as the predominant computing platform.

So, sit back, relax and enjoy your flight! Our trip into the cloud will be a very exciting and rewarding journey.

[photo credit: SXC]

"A Proactive Approach Is Needed to Address IBM's Legacy Solutions"

Excerpt of an article by Greg Schottland published today on MCPress Online.

ISVs and enterprises must move forward, while leveraging their existing knowledge and investments.

The System i (formerly known as iSeries and AS/400) is a midrange platform produced by IBM. In the '90s, the AS/400 platform became one of IBM's greatest success stories. A symbiotic relationship between platforms and independent software vendors (ISVs) proved to be a critical success factor for both the platform and the application providers. The value propositions of the System i platform and the advantage over alternatives led thousands of enterprises and ISVs to develop vertical applications based on System i and to put their trust into and base their future on this environment. It was the golden age of the platform, and new vertical solutions were created one after the other.

As with other technology-based products, over time there was a decline in purchases of new System i boxes. The decline in revenue reflected the difficulty IBM had trying to sell the System i line, which in turn caused IBM to change its product strategy regarding this platform. The System i Division was reorganized into the Power Systems and Business Systems units for larger and smaller clients, respectively.

“We’ll Modernize After I Retire….”

by Greg Schottland

I have the pleasure of talking to senior management at many iSeries shops each week. A small but dedicated group recite this headline to me at some point during our discussions. I often ask “Do you think you’ll still be using the iSeries in 10 years.” The answers are interesting. For some, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” applies. Their iSeries apps are working just fine, they still have RPG developers and there is no reason to change now. For others, some event has pushed them to move – loss of a key developer, the desire to offshore development, consolidation of IT around a different platform, or for ISVs, simple economics as users demand modern platforms.

I wanted to discuss (if not defend!) those stalwarts that are not ready to move off the trusted, dependable iSeries. Are these folks wrong, missing the boat, locked in the past? No! Not even close. In almost all cases, these managers understand the cost and value of IT to their businesses, having literally started the IT department in many cases. They innately understand the economics. They are immune to the “gear-wow” of new technology that for them, is not necessary today.

But…I must also temper this defense with a word of caution. It is always better to prevent a fire than put one out. It is much easier to take your time, analyze, design and implement the evolution of your IT applications. It is no fun to have the clock of urgency and impending deadlines loudly ticking while you try to do these same tasks. iSeries apps are large, highly functionally and very integrated. You will want time to move these to another platform whenever that day comes. And unfortunately, it will come someday…maybe after we all have retired to the golf course, but it is inevitable.

So my answer to: “Why modernize now, nothing is broken?” is simple. Don’t. But, understand when that day comes, you’ll need some time to get it done. So when you see that horizon coming into view, give yourself a few years lead time. Start on the easy steps of analyzing what you have and where you might move, when that day comes.

Until then, you won’t hear a word from me for staying the course! It just makes sense.

[photo credit: SXC]

Have you ever considered modeling?

by Greg Schottland

 

Ok, so I’m not really talking about fashion modeling, but rather software modeling (If you're fashion model you probably aren’t reading this blog!). I thought it might be interesting to discuss the current de-facto standard graphical notation for expressing software design, the Unified Modeling Language, or UML as it’s known. It’s true, a picture does paint a thousand words. As engineers we know this eternal truth better than most. In software there has evolved an entire history of graphical standards for communicating software designs. Over time, as procedural languages evolved to object oriented languages (C#, Java,C++, etc.), the UML emerged as a standard. The UML was actually a collaboration of three earlier notations into one “unified” standard. Grady Booch, Jim Rumbaugh and Ivar Jacobson joined forces in 1995, became known as “the three amigos” and released UML version 1 in 1996. To keep things open, the UML standard was owned and managed by the Object Management Group (OMG), an industry consortium that manages the standard. The current version of UML is 2.12. and can be found on their site at http://www.uml.org/#UML2.0.

The UML notation is broken down into several parts, the two most important being its ability to document and communicate both static structure of applications as well as dynamic behavior. Static structure communicates your files and objects, their properties and what methods (or functions) they reveal; how your applications are built, what the parts are and how the parts are fit together. The dynamic behavior discusses what happens when the user actually uses your application – at a granular level. So what happens when a users enters data and hits Enter. This can describe both user level interactions as well as details of internal processing. If you think of the old state machines from computer science class, you’ll be thinking about one example describing dynamic behavior. The UML has several additional (and very cool) ways to document dynamic behavior.

An important point to mention is the UML was built for describing object oriented systems. So this means it speaks in terms of objects like classes, attributes, methods, etc. However, you can easily use this same notation to describe functional languages. For example you can represent a file using the standard class picture, and functions in the file as methods of the class. Yes, it requires a little creativity, but it’s worth it. Why? Because there are a plethora of high quality tools out there that you can use to quickly design or document existing software--AND you don’t have to reinvent the wheel by creating your own “standards” and teaching everyone. Instead they can pop into any Barnes and Noble bookstore and find 20 books on UML (yes, literally, it is very popular).

The UML is a big and comprehensive notation--in practice people use a small segment of it. Rather than try to cover details of the UML in this blog (you’d navigate away to some other site long before we finished!), I wanted to introduce the idea of modeling and the UML as something you may want to look into. It is interesting, valuable on a daily working basis, and may be required knowledge by your next employer.

[photo credit: SXC]

Welcome!

Welcome to the RGPDevNet Blog!

This is a forum to discuss the evolving landscape of RPG development. We are looking forward to sharing tips on the latest development techniques, tools, and platforms.

Contributors include industry veterans such as Eduardo Ross and Roger Pence as well key players from the BluePhoenix ASNA development and services teams.

We hope you enjoy!