Whether just for use in-house, or destined for sale, software apps must be tested before being put into production environments. Testing tools can help significantly.

Written by John Ghrist

There's pretty much no getting around it: New software applications have to be tested before putting them into general use. However, unless producing software for sale is your primary line of business and you already have a testing process in place, the odds are that your enterprise could use some help in this area. Fortunately, there are some software solutions available that can facilitate this process.

Proper planning is the key.

Written by Eden Watt

Editor's Note: This article introduces the Able-One webinar on application modernization.

Technology is now the leading factor for innovation in 71 percent of businesses, according to an IBM study. IT professionals have become acutely aware of this over the past decade, with the exponential progress of the Internet, social media, mobility, cloud computing, and the possibilities with advanced software and infrastructure. IT management is under pressure to maintain mission-critical operations while leading their organization forward at a rapid pace with these capabilities.

Qshell's Unix-like interface to the iSeries is especially helpful for developing in Java and for working with the IFS.

Written by Ted Holt and Fred A. Kulack

Editor's Note: This article is an excerpt from the book Qshell for iSeries, which is available as an e-book from MC Press.

A shell is a program that allows a human to interact with an operating system in a conversational way. The QCMD program that runs on the IBM iSeries computer is a shell of sorts. DOS, the original operating system of the IBM PC, boots up to a shell called Command.com.

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.