Welcome to TUG's eNewsletter "TUG Buzz!" for November 14, 2011

IN THIS ISSUE:

  1. TUG Night School Starts November 21
  2. Meeting of Members – November 23
  3. "Linux! Time to Get Acquainted" (Article by Mark Buchner)
  4. Al Barsa Challenge (Message from David Gibbs)
  5. "TUG Night School Matches Enthusiasm with Capability" (Article by Dan Burger, IT Jungle)

TUG Night School Starts November 21

Now is the time to register for TNS classes, especially WEB102 and AMP103 which are starting soon! Note that we are offering LIN101 (Intro to Linux) and OGL302 (Open Graphics Library) FREE OF CHARGE! We are doing this so that you can get a "Taste of TNS", and then hopefully sign up for more... In addition, even though the pricing of these courses are "member prices", if you are on your own, we will waive the individual membership fee requirement for any classes booked in 2010. Check our blog for more details.

Also, check out this article on TUG Night School in IT Jungle by Dan Burger:
www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh110711-story06.html

Blog

Night School (TNS) 2011/2012 Calendar

TUG is offering a high-value, instructor-led, hands-on training that is designed for minimal conflict with your day-to-day operations because it is conducted on weekday evenings. You can select one or more offerings. It is only possible because of the relationship between TUG and Seneca@York. Attendees have access to IBM Systems and software which are part of the Academic Computing Systems at Seneca and York University.

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Enter your Comments on our Blog
Blog Link Course Name Fees Start Days Instructor
Open Platform
Intro Linux
N/C Nov 21 1
Mark Buchner
HTML CSS
$100 Nov 28 2
Peter Meth
Apache, etc.
$200 Nov 30 3
Peter Meth
JavaScript
$350 Jan 09 4
Vic Metcalfe
HTML5, CSS3
$200 Jan 11 3
Larry Petropoulos
Mobile
OGL Intro
N/C Dec 19 1
Wallace Trenholm
BlackBerry Dev
$30 Feb 06 4
Mark Buchner
System i
Rational Web
$400 Feb 15 5
Claus Weiss
SQL for i
$350 Mar 12 4
Russell Pangborn
Modern Ops for i
$350 Mar 28 4
Garry Kipfer
PHP on i
$275 Apr 16 3
Mark Buchner

TNS QR code

QR code for TNS Registration

Register

Register for TUG Night School at http://www.tug.ca/tns/TNSReg.htm

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TUG Meeting of Members
Wednesday, November 23, 2011

LOCATION: IBM Toronto Lab. 8200 Warden Ave, Markham
ADMISSION: Free to all TUG members ($40 non-members)
Keynote: Rational Developer for Power (RDP):
What's New & Exciting?

AGENDA:

4:30 Sign up & Greeting

Eric Chan Edmund Reinhardt

5:00 Session 1: Visual Design Tools in Rational Developer for Power

  • Speakers:
    Edmund Reinhardt
    and Eric Chan
  • Join Edmund Reinhardt and Eric Chan for a deep dive into the DDS designers available in Rational Developer for Power. Learn the philosophy and design of the tools as well as cool functionality that you may have never seen before. A live demo will show you how the Screen and Report Designers can make it easy to design your display and printer files.
  • Edmund Reinhardt started with IBM in 1989 working on SDA and in the intervening 20 years he has worked on visual DDS design tools on 4 operating systems and 4 different languages. In the past decade, he worked on the WebFacing product to transform DDS based screens to web interfaces. As our Power tooling expanded to include AIX, Edmund's role has expanded to COBOL tooling on the AIX platform as well as representing all of the IBM i tooling.
    Edmund has presented at COMMON and TUG and is often heard from on the COBOL/RPG Cafes and the WDSC-L list.
  • Eric Chan is a Staff Software Developer in the IBM Toronto Lab, currently working on Rational Developer for Power. He graduated from the University of Waterloo with a Bachelor of Applied Science in Computer Engineering, and has been with IBM since 2005.

6:00 Intermission (Buffet Dinner & Networking)

Kushal Munir Barbara Morris

7:00 Session 2: - Open Access RPG with Web Services

  • Speakers:
    Barbara Morris
    and Kushal Munir
  • Join Barbara Morris and Kushal Munir as they demonstrate how Open Access: RPG Edition can be used to access and update services available through the internet. They will begin with an overview of Open Access RPG before a live walkthrough of an example of using Open Access RPG to interact with a service provided over the web.
  • Barbara Morris is the lead developer for the Rational Development Studio compilers in the IBM Toronto Lab. She has been working on the RPG compilers since she started at IBM in 1989 after receiving a Computing Science degree from the University of Alberta. The first enhancement she developed was the ENDIF/ENDDO opcodes for RPG/400 in V2R1. Some of her more recent enhancements were Open Access: RPG Edition in 6.1 and the ability to sort and search data structure arrays in 7.1. Other notable enhancements that she developed for RPG include subprocedures, qualified data structures, call-interaction with Java, and V5R4's native XML processing op-codes. Barbara is a regular participant in several online RPG forums, and has published many articles about RPG.
  • Kushal Munir is the development manager for Rational Development Studio on IBM i, and the Rational Developer for Power product. He has been a senior developer on RD Power and Rational Team Concert, with responsibilities including architecture and implementation of the next generation of development environments and collaborative application lifecycle management solutions for Power Systems. He graduated from the University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Applied Science in Computer Engineering, and has been with IBM since 2001.

8:45 Wrap Up and Door Prize Draw

Register now for the TUG MoM at www.tug.ca/reg_meet_form.php

register

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Article:

Linux! Time to Get Acquainted

Mark BuchnerBy Mark Buchner

IBM System i customers have a relative on their platform that they typically have not gotten to know as they should. Maybe they’ve been busy, or maybe this relative seems foreign, speaks a different language, or belongs to a different religion. So it does take some effort, but the rewards are considerable, and you will develop mutual respect and admiration. Who knows, it could be of great value to you career, lift your spirits, and help you live a more fulfilling life. That relative is Linux...

The reason Linux is a close relative is that your IBM POWER Systems running your iSeries can handily run a “distribution” of Linux on the same machine, sharing the same processors, memory, and IO. The kernel (the part of Linux that works directly with the hardware) is roughly analogous to the “MI” on AS/400 and is the part that works with IBM’s POWER systems microprocessors and takes advantage of all the cool SMP, SMT, RAS, and other features. At the same time, the attraction of LINUX is the large treasure trove of applications that are enabled on the famous “LAMP” Linux-Apache-MYSQL-PHP stack.

Much of today’s system requirements stem from dynamic web and mobile computing requirements. These have a tendency to weigh heavily on the use of an authentication system for users, an application server to handle today’s HTML5 & CSS3 content, an open relational database, and cool new apps—which typically are developed using languages such as PHP, Perl, JavaScript, and Python. If you are doing this, you are likely looking at an operating system to anchor your stack. Linux makes a better alternative than Windows and a much less expensive one than IBM i. Activation of i/OS on a POWER system can range from $20–$50K, whereby Linux will cost a few thousand for the maintenance and support. Frankly, it’s the fastest growing OS on the planet because of this!

Linux is a relative of UNIX, so it has roots that run deep. But where Linux differs from UNIX is on the governance of the software. UNIX today, is made available as proprietary software. That is, you buy the OS and support form a vendor like IBM (AIX), SUN (Solaris), or HP (HP-UX). You don’t get rights to see, use, or resell their source code. By contrast, Linux adheres to the GNU licensing model. This is a concept espoused by Richard Stallman that says that software should be a public property, and source code should be open and shared. It is “Open Source” and is not governed by a vendor, but rather by the Linux Council, led by Linus Torvalds. Torvalds, of course, is famous for commercializing Linux as a Unix-like OS using the GNU governance model.

COME AND GET A PEEK AT LINUX AS WELL
AS TUG NIGHT SCHOOL FOR NO CHARGE!

TUG will be hosting a special Night School open house class on November 21. This is a one-evening only, informal chance to get to see our night school setup and show-off Linux – in its open source form. We will:

  • Review Linux and IBM I history
  • Look at the command and options structure of Linux
  • Learn to work with Paths including wildcards and globbing as well as links
  • Understand Linux security setting s for files and directories
  • Learn about the power of piping and redirection of IO
  • Build simple regular expression for pattern matching
  • Build a simple shell script

Consider coming to our special Nov. 21 class, 7:00 pm room S3174 Seneca@York. Advantages:

  • There is no charge
  • You will see the fantastic lab setup TUG uses for our 2011-2012
    Night School Program
  • You will get to know your distant relative – LINUX…

Register here…. http://www.tug.ca/tns/TNSReg.htm

Register

Mark Buchner
Executive Director
Toronto Users Group for Power Systems

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Al Barsa Challenge

Folks:

I've started the Al Barsa Challenge 2011 to raise funds for the COMMON Education Foundation's Al Barsa Memorial Scholarship.

Details can be found here: http://urlq.us/barsa2011

The challenge runs from today (November 14) through December 16th.

Thanks!

David Gibbs [david@midrange.com]

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The Toronto Users Group  
 for Power Systems (TUG) is a user group/forum for the exchange  
 of ideas, and specializes  
 in providing affordable 
  education relating to the  
 IBM iSeries, AS/400,  
 System i, and Power Systems platforms.  

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