It's time to rethink how we develop applications.

Written by David Shirey

"Application modernization" is a pseudo marketing term that is often used when we talk about the future of legacy systems. It pops up a lot these days, and that's fine because many of our business applications were developed 10, 20, even 30 years ago, and it's not hard to believe that they need to be modernized.

Produce better code and exchange knowledge with code reviews.

Written by Tom Snyder

One of the most typical obstacles with the adoption of modern programming techniques in RPG shops is the fact that everyone is at a different level of knowledge in different areas. All programmers have their areas of work that they find important, and they may not always be in the same genre. With code reviews, you give all of the people with different flavors of programming styles the opportunity to share their knowledge with the others on the staff.

If you don't buy your business applications, you have to build them. If you have to build them, your development staff could benefit from some of these tools.

Written by John Ghrist

Although application software vendors are getting better at customizing their wares for use by companies that need a slightly different flavor of widget, many enterprises still favor tailoring their business apps from the ground up. Creation, maintenance, and feeding of in-house apps is a time-honored practice in the Power Systems/IBM i world and is unlikely to change soon. For response time on change requests and software tailoring to an enterprise's actual business practices, in-house developers are hard to beat.

While the promised benefits of a service-oriented architecture are becoming increasingly clear, converting legacy systems over to SOA continues to pose challenges.

Written by Chris Smith

We asked a number of industry leaders what their views are of the future directions of service-oriented architecture, or SOA, and received back a number of interesting responses. The large amount of stable code in place today that doesn't really lend itself well to a service-oriented architecture makes true conversion difficult. Programmers and IT administrators nevertheless are working to implement services, and SOA, one step at a time where it makes sense.

Discover Scrum and learn how to deliver build better, higher-quality applications.

Written by Marty Acks

Agile programming has gained significant momentum recently by changing the way in which organizations develop software. When I was first introduced to agile programming a few years ago by a colleague, I politely listened to his enthusiastic description, but it really did not resonate for me. The more I learned, the more fascinated I became. Now, our organization is in the process of moving to Scrum, which is a well-known agile programming methodology.

It's likely additional resources won't become available to oversee Power Systems operations, so "work smarter, not harder" may be the catchword of the day—in short, automation.

Written by Martin Norman

Editor's note: This article introduces the white paper "The Top Ten Job Scheduling Challenges and How to Solve Them" available free at the MC White Paper Center.

The last 10 years have been tough for organizations the world around. When it comes to a recession, everyone is forced to do more with less. But at the same time, companies still need to move forward at a frenetic pace—just to maintain a competitive advantage through the recession and beyond. It is this enhanced speed at which the business must operate that creates a new level of resource challenges to address, often with no time to waste. It's no wonder that "work smarter, not harder" has become the hallmark of modern business.

By allowing you to extend EGL to embrace new technologies, IBM has provided the ultimate business programming language and ensured that EGL won't lag behind the technology curve.

Written by Joe Pluta

Editor's Note: This article is an excerpt from Developing Web 2.0 Applications with EGL for IBM i, published by MC Press.

I know the core focus of this chapter is supposed to be the multi-tiered applications, and instead I've gone a little off the reservation focusing on style and such. Well, let me digress just a tiny bit further, and then I'll get right back to the meat of the discussion. I promise that you'll appreciate this particular side trip, though.

The purpose of this excursion is to introduce the concept of extending EGL to integrate other technologies. EGL, both the basic syntax and the Rich UI, have intrinsic capabilities for extending the language through the use of the ExternalType.

Combine the merits of open-source software configuration management (SCM) tools and i5/OS native utilities.

Written by Junlei Li

For decades, in i5/OS (aka OS/400, iSeries, or IBM i), there has been a lack of free, powerful, and easy-to-use software configuration management (SCM) tools for i5/OS programmers working on green-screens. Now, it's the time to change this condition.