System iNetwork

September 2008

September 29, 2008 10:23 AM

YiPs Plan to Host Open-Source Development for i on Website

The coolness factor of IBM i is about to be elevated to the level of awesome. A small group from Young i Professionals (YiPs) has fired up a website dedicated to educating people about the i OS and all that it can do, including supporting open-source development.

The website (YoungiProfessionals.com) features a forum, Wiki, and blog and soon will support open-source development projects on i.

"Open source is really the grassroots initiative of this group," says Brian May, a 30-year-old YiPs website blogger and the de facto webmaster. "We plan to do some open-source development using apps that people haven’t necessarily put on i: RPG/CGI apps on DB2." May is the information systems project lead for software development at Garan Manufacturing in Starkville, Mississippi.

The website went online a few months ago right after COMMON Nashville when the YiPs expressed to Trevor Perry how cool it would be to have a website for open-source development and other YiPs activities. He made it happen about the same time that one of the YiPs in the group landed on the tarmac after his return flight from the conference.

The website relaunched just last week on an IBM Power System 570 running i 6.1. It is written in PHP using Zend Core and has other applications using the MySQL database. The website is set up on its own partition in the box, which is maintained by the IBM Academic Initiative for educational access. The box also runs sandboxes where educators and students can play with IBM i.

"It really coincides with the general mission of the Academic Initiative," says Justin Porter, one of the minds behind the YiPs website and a blogger on the site. "It integrates the academic community with the needs of the business community and gets them on the same page." Porter is a 26-year-old director of technology for Westside Produce, a small company in California's bread basket.

The YiPs hope the website will uncover the secret that IBM i is technology for today's world. "Some people don’t realize you can take any application from open source and port it over pretty easily," Porter says. "The website is a proof of concept. It's us turning back to the community and saying, 'You can do this and here it is.' This is our answer that we don't need to have that debate."

And it just might work. Sure, IBM and others have tried to elevate IBM i's coolness through web videos on YouTube, games unlocking RPG programming and i Security, and other tactics, but I'm guessing that those kinds of activities don't hold a programmer's interest for long.

Enter what a programmer likes to do--write code--and perhaps there exists a winning solution that will raise people's awareness of all that the i can do.

"It's a never-ending passion to tinker with; it's something we've all learned to enjoy," says Aaron Bartell, another YiPs website organizer and blogger. "I don’t have any hobbies other than technology. When I get done with work, I go and pound out code on something else because it’s driving me nuts that I can’t figure out how something works." Bartell, who runs his own MowYourLawn.com website, is a 29-year-old software developer for Krengel Technology, Inc.

Bartell is enthusiastic about ending the i's image as archaic technology and opening other programmers' eyes to its open-source possibilities. "We accept the challenge and want to take it to the bank," he says.

Most of the applications running on the box are open source. May has spent the last few months porting open-source applications that run on Linux to IBM i for the website.

The forum runs on an open-source application called phpBB. The open-source blog publishing application WordPress lets the group communicate with other YiPs and open-source enthusiasts. Another customizable, PHP weblog tool called Pivot handles the site's news announcements because it doesn't require a back-end database. The wiki runs on the PHP-based PmWiki application. And the whole enchilada is under the care of the open-source content management system called Joomla!.

"That application is going to help us a lot when new content is added because we don't have to go in and manually add it to the website ourselves," May says. "Users with the appropriate login can add it themselves."

The website's wiki contains a section that details exactly what May did to get the applications on the i so that other programmers can take those instructions and have the applications "up and running in a half hour," May says.

There doesn't seem to be any limit to what the YiPs have planned for the i. The group wants the website to be a host code repository for open-source projects. They want other i enthusiasts of all ages to download source code and submit changes and updates and new features to projects the group initiates.

The first project the group is working on is a tool to management all the planned projects. They've been busy creating an interface for the subversion client that will communicate with the subversion server to transfer RPG and PHP code to the repository. In this case, the i will serve as both the client and the server.

It may seem obvious that the younger crowd among the fanatical following would launch such an endeavor. But it shouldn't be.

If IBM i can do anything as many proclaim, then why hasn't anyone else thought about an open-source development website for i projects? Or maybe there is one and I don't know about it. Let me know.

And tell me what you think. Would you participate in open-source projects on the i? (All are invited to participate, not just YiPs.) Do you have the time? Is that what you'd use your free time for?

--Rita-Lyn Sanders, industry issues & RPG editor

Posted by rsanders on September 29, 2008 at 10:23 AM | Comments (3)

September 15, 2008 1:23 PM

Hurricane Ike and the System i Community

Did Hurricane Ike hit you? Share your recovery story with your fellow IT pros.

The destruction from Hurricane Ike (and Gustav before it) stretched from central Texas to Louisiana and threatened to cripple energy supplies and a strong regional economy. More than 2.5 million homes and businesses lost power. We hope that all members of the SystemiNetwork.com community along the Gulf coast rode the storms in safety.

We invite those of you who battled these calamities of nature to share your stories. How did your business continuity/disaster recovery procedure serve you? Do you have any tips for fellow IT professionals to help them better prepare for such catastrophes? Did you find any particular products or technologies especially helpful for communication?

Please post your experiences in the comments section below. We'll publish the most compelling stories--the ones that include details about your organization's disaster recovery procedures as well as human interest anecdotes.

Finally, here's a quick list of disaster recovery articles available to registered users on SystemiNetwork.com:

The Serious Business of Business Resiliency. Security expert Dan Riehl draws on real-life examples to promote the importance of disaster recovery plans.

Is Your Organization at Risk? Scott Steinacher says identifying risks, estimating their probabilities, and weighing their potential effects are important steps in writing useful disaster recovery plans.

Are You Prepared for Disaster Recovery? Brian Bohner offers a simple checklist.

When Disaster Strikes. Sean Chandler explains how improvements in server and storage technology have made disaster recovery more approachable and economical to implement.

--Vicki Hamende, application development and database editor

Posted by vhamende on September 15, 2008 at 1:23 PM | Comments (0)