IBM i Developer

As IT professional and IBM i developer, my role is to modernize and enhance our mission-critical business application to exploit the newest IBM i technology.

As well as analyzing, coding, building, unit testing, regression testing and deploying IBM i software, I collaborate with the digital side of the business to align my software and processes with the open source tools used by our Web development teams. I am responsible for onboarding new development staff and handling knowledge transfer on our IBM i application suite. New hybrid cloud options mean our deployment processes are changing fast.

How can ARCAD help me?

Your challenge? You need to…

Spend less time understanding legacy IBM i code.
Maintain the highest standards of code quality and still meet deadlines.
Spend less time on tedious testing while ensuring reliability of code
Ensure consistent build and deploy to prevent downtime to the business or having to work evenings and weekends
Find a way to quickly and simply modernize legacy code and make it more understandable and easy to change.
Transition to a modern and mature DevOps culture, remain employable and an asset to the employer.

How can Arcad help?

Spend less time understanding legacy IBM i code

Compress weeks of effort understanding legacy IBM i code into just hour

ARCAD Audit automates the cleanup of legacy IBM i applications; auto-detect anomalies between source code and objects; archive and delete obsolete source code and compare and realign environments.

Use ARCAD Observer for graphical application analysis of legacy IBM i applications. Instant cross referencing shows where files, fields and objects are used and by which programs. Automated multi-platform impact analysis shows integrations and dependencies to other platforms. The auto-documentation generator produces professional, easy to read and up-to-date documentation to help with understand legacy code.
Advanced automation frees more time to spend on more important value-added tasks.

Maintain the highest standards of code quality and still meet deadlines

Maintain the highest standards of code quality without time-consuming manual code reviews

ARCAD CodeChecker works like an automated peer review which checks code continuously using team-defined and pre-shipped quality rules. Built-in security rules highlight any code change that risks creating a new security vulnerability. Other quality rules highlight code changes that make code less maintainable or that impact performance.

Integrate ARCAD CodeChecker with Jenkins for continuous code quality checking and SonarQube for quality reports and metrics.

Spend less time on tedious testing while ensuring reliability of code

Keep your application resilient and ‘shift defects left’

ARCAD iUnit creates test cases quickly and easily from existing IBM i code. Click on objects and procedures to enter input parameters and expected results. Execute test cases individually at any time even as code is being changed. Group tests into suites for re-use as testing assets. Using ARCAD iUnit program mocking and freestyle capabilities, generate test code in just a few clicks.

ARCAD Verifier records and replays functional tests to detect regressions automatically. Capture keystrokes and results of business functions and store them as test data. Re-run tests after changes are made to reveal if any unexpected regressions have been introduced. Re-initialize test data automatically. Together, ARCAD iUnit and ARCAD Verifier deliver the ‘shift-left’ effect meaning testing is performed earlier in the development cycle when errors are easier, quicker and less expensive to correct.

ARCAD iUnit and ARCAD Verifier integrate with Jenkins and Selenium for continuous, automated test.

Ensure a consistent build and deploy to prevent downtime to the business or having to work evenings and weekends

Ensure application integrity and eliminate out-of-hours working

ARCAD Builder simplifies the complex task of consistently recompiling IBM i applications and optimizes the process to avoid lengthy mass recompilations ‘of everything’.

DROPS synchronizes the deployment of IBM i and non-IBM i software, handling dependencies between applications automatically.

Execute ‘smart’ dependency deployments, rollbacks, auto-integrity checks and database upgrades with DROPS.

Manage deployments of parameter data and dynamic changes to configuration files with DROPS DataChanger.

Deploy database schema changes to very large (multi billion row) files with minimal downtime with DROPS WAP (While Active Promoter).

Find a way to quickly and simply modernize legacy code and make it more understandable and changeable

Simplify and accelerate the modernization of legacy IBM i code

ARCAD Transformer RPG automates the conversion of legacy fixed format RPG IV code into modern Free-Form RPG easy to understand and learn by Java developers or those new to the platform. A new generation of younger IBM i developers are up to speed with the IBM i quickly.

ARCAD Transformer RPG does a full conversion of C, H, F, D and P specifications so it can be used in any RPG IV environment with near 100% accuracy. It converts sinful GOTO statements and supports both mass and unitary conversions.

ARCAD Transformer DB converts legacy DDS database code to SQL.

ARCAD Transformer Synon converts legacy 4GL CA 2E(Synon) code to modern RPG Free Form.

ARCAD Transformer Field automates all code changes needed in case of a field name/type and size.

Advanced ARCAD Transformer automation reduces modernization project duration by as much as 70% in many cases, freeing time to work on value-added tasks.

Transition to a modern and mature DevOps culture,
remain employable and an asset to the employer

Automate a continuous DevSecOps cycle integrated with enterprise open source tools

ARCAD For DevOps tools and expertise are built around mature DevOps practices. The integrated ARCAD for DevOps toolstack helps simplify, automate and accelerate software development on IBM i. ARCAD tools go deep on the IBM i platform to provide a robust solution for mature DevOps, application analysis, modernization, test automation, data anonymization, release orchestration and more. Thanks to flexible and multi-platform deployment capabilities ARCAD for DevOps facilitates the shift to hybrid cloud.

ARCAD for DevOps integrates with multiple open source and 3^rd party tools Rational Developer for i (RDi), Git, GitLab, GitHub, BitBucket, Jenkins, CloudBees CI, Azure Pipelines, Selenium, Jira, ServiceNow and more. IBM i Developers with mature DevOps skills are more employable and a greater asset to their employers because of increased productivity and tighter collaboration with modern digital teams.