1. Best Practices: Taking an Incremental Approach to SOA

With the fervor of SOA activity, you need to know how to derive the most value and how an incremental approach addresses planning, development, and deployment challenges.   Enterprises of all sizes are increasingly recognizing the

2. BPI and SOA Working Together

SOA is a key enabler in propelling business process integration (BPI) initiatives within an organization. We have been talking seriously about SOA for two or three years now. But is SOA a good solution for the short term? Isn't it a time b

3. Moving to Structured Software Change Management

In today's complex IT world, choosing the right change management system is crucial. As your business needs evolve, a greater volume of software changes—possibly over several platforms and certainly under a tight schedule—are r

4. Open-Source Technologies for Change Management Systems

Change management is no longer a luxury; it's a necessity. Fortunately, the required software is free.

5. Strategies for Change Management

Graduate from simple version control to enterprise software configuration and change management.

6. Programmers Should Love Change Management Software... Seriously!

CM isn't just for management!

7. Software Test Automation Improves Development Output

There is no excuse for inadequate quality control.

8. Change Management: The Key to Successful Projects

If you want your projects to come in on time, on target, and on budget, some sort of change management methodology is required.

9. It Is Best to Embrace Change

Consistent tracking of source code changes and system objects is one of the biggest challenges facing application developers. We are all familiar with situations in which source code is missing or there is no record of which version of a program is t

10. A Better Way to Distribute Your AS/400 Software Changes

Take advantage of TCP/IP for software distribution.

11. Logical Files: More than Alternate Sort Sequences

Add new fields to physical files without recompiling programs.

12. Reusing Object Code

An appliance store in my hometown used to advertise with the slogan "Only the rich can afford cheap appliances." Their contention was that people who spend their money on less than the best appliances would eventually spend more money than they had s

13. Tools from the Trenches

Soft-coding is writing source code that allows someone to change the behavior of a program without modifying and recompiling. It makes programs more flexible by allowing users to change programs to meet their needs without calling on you. Soft-codin

14. Common Sense Normalization

Relational databases store data in two-dimensional tables, a concept that's relatively simple to understand. However, putting data into a relational database does not guarantee that the data will remain correct or logically consistent. Unless the dat

15. Finding Programs that Use a Specific File

From: Carlos Irigoyen To: All How do I easily locate the programs that use a specific file? From: Sharon Cannon To: Carlos Irigoyen There may be other ways to do it, but here's what I do. About once a week, I run this command. DSPPGMREF PGM(*A

16. Object Reference Utility

Brief: Because every programming change has the potential to cause unexpected problems, fear of change is something every programmer lives with. Using the utility in this article, you can find the relationships between objects. Programmers are not p

17. Object Oriented Programming Concepts

Brief: Object Oriented Programming (OOP) holds many promises for software developers such as higher quality, higher productivity, and reusability. Conventional wisdom may lead you to believe that OOP concepts are difficult to learn. This article take

18. Field Reference File

From: Lee Smith To: All I am about to clean up an application left by a vendor with whom my company no longer has a business relationship. This application has about 30 physical files and about 150 RPG programs. I would like to create a field refere

19. Current Library

From: Ted Holt To: All When we replaced our S/38 with an AS/400 several years ago, we decided to continue to do certain things the S/38 way. One thing we've done is to ignore the current library (which didn't exist on the S/38), always leaving it se

20. Identifying Changes

Q: What is the best way to keep track of system changes (e.g., workstation entries, pool changes and system value changes)? When I perform a release update that overrides some of these changes, I want to know which changes to reapply. A: Create a CL

21. Writing AS/400 Commands Part 2: Command Definitio

Part 1: Getting to Know Commands (January 1993) Commands can create a consistent, easy-to-use interface between your users and the AS/400. This first installment presents an overview of how commands work and shows you why you should create them for

22. In the Trenches: Something for the Road

A road trip checklist. Don't leave home without it! Scenario one: You are a project manager at an AS/400 software company. The president of the company asks you for a tape of presentation programs he will use in making a sales pitch to a large cus

23. List Source Maintenance Activity

A utility to list the last time source members were modified. All day long you've been making program changes in several source files. Now it's 4:30 p.m. and, in order to go home with a clear conscience, you need to recompile all the members affecte

24. Relational Database Design -- Part 3

In this the last installment of the series on relational database design, we will cover the physical implementation of the sample database described last month. The implementation of our three files AUTHOR, ARTICLE and ISSUE will be done using three

25. Diagrams: An Inside Look

It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words, nowhere is that more true than in the design of computer systems. It's a known fact that almost everyone--programmer/analysts included--grasps concepts easier if they are presented in a grap

26. Relational Database Design -- Part 2

This month's installment covers the logical design of a sample database. This database will be a very simple one, as it is intended to be a training tool and not a database for a finished system. What is a database? The term database, as I am usin

27. Relational Database Design -- Part 1

More and more, a company's operational and strategic work depends on data processing. It is now apparent that data is itself an important company resource. Since a company's information on its products, customers, suppliers, employees, competitors,

28. Developing and Installing International Systems

Slip this advice into your briefcase as you pack for your trip. by Barry DiGiacinto You just got the news - your company is expanding into the international market, and it is up to you to ensure that the systems everyone in the U.S. has been using

29. AS/400 Source Librarian

A tool that controls the check-out and check-in of production library members to a development library A Data Processing Manager needs to control the way in which the programming staff makes modifications to the system's l