Liam Allan habla sobre Node en IBM i

 Liam Allan, como Scott Klement, han dado un impulso formidable al IBM i (AKA AS/400, iseries), explorando, popularizando y explotando los sucesivos cambios tecnológicos habidos en el equipo desde hace años. El comentario sobre Node lo hace Liam en la entrevista que Charles Guarino le hace en TechChannel. La participación de Liam, reciente, ha implicado cambios radicales en el modo de encarar al IBM i, comenzando por su editor de programas. Debemos decir que el ambiente y las prácticas relacionadas con el IBM i históricamente han sido más vale conservadoras, apropiadas para un set de equipos que solía ser el núcleo del procesamiento de las empresas que lo usaban. Dice Guarino sobre este aspecto: I still think there’s still a lot of newbies—even the most seasoned RPG developers are still newbies—and open-source makes them nervous, perhaps because it’s a whole different paradigm, a whole different vernacular. Everything about it is different, yet obviously there are so many similarities, but the terminology is very different. Klement y quienes lo siguieron, y ahora Allan, han representado una renovación y actualización más que conveniente,  necesaria.

Por mi parte, dándole vueltas a su uso con Plex. Ya Klement ha potenciado su integración con sus propuestas a nivel de integración de lenguajes java y c/c++ a través de ILE.

 Lo dicho sobre Node:

Charlie: (...) So Liam, I do have a lot of things that I want to talk to you about, but when I think of you lately what comes to my mind is Node. I mean I kind of associate you with just Node and how you really are really running with that technology, especially on IBM i, but I think there are a lot of people who don’t quite understand where that fits in, what Node actually is and how it fits on your platform. So what can you say about that in general?

Liam: Absolutely. So I mean, there’s a few points to be made. I guess I’ll start with the fact that you know, it is 80% of my working life is writing typescript and Javascript. So I spend most of my days in it now, which is great. A few years ago, it was more like 50% and each year it’s growing more and more. So I usually focus on how it can integrate with IBM i. So you know having Node.js code, whether it’s typescript or Javascript talking to IBM i via the database—so, calling programs, fetching data, updating data; you know, the minimal standard kind of driver type stuff that you do, crud, things like that. What I especially like about Node on IBM i is that it is made for high input/outputs. It’s great at handling large volumes of data and most people that are using IBM i tend to have tons of data, right? Db2 for i has been around for centuries at this point; it’s older than I am, and I can make that joke. No one else can make that joke but I can make it and you know it’s been around for the longest time. And so people have got all of this data and in my opinion Node.js is just a great way to express that data—you know, via an API. I think it’s fast. It’s got high throughput and yeah, it’s a synchronous in its standard. It’s easy to use, it’s easy to deploy, it’s easy to write code for especially. One of the reasons I like is the fact that I can have something working within 20 minutes. It’s a fantastic piece of technology and it’s been out for a while. I mean it’s been out for like 10 years, 10 years plus at this point. It’s just fun to use. I really enjoy it and I encourage other people to use it too.

Nuevas capacidades del System i (AKA AS400)

Se llame System i, AS400, o cualquier otro nombre intermedio, el i no es un equipo estancado, sino todo lo contrario: robusto como siempre, y evolucionado al paso de las tecnologías. Como un breve recordatorio, Alex Woodie, en The Four Hundered, enumera las nuevas características sumadas entre 2014 y 2015:

1. Native Flash Storage

IBM added support for native flash storage in the latest round of technology refreshes, which were IBM i 7.1 TR 10 and i 7.2 TR 2. This enables native use of solid state drives (SSDs) based on flash technology.

Prior to this, getting flash storage running on an IBM i-based Power Systems server was accomplished by way of the Virtual I/O Server (VIOS). Not all IBM i shops are thrilled with VIOS, which is an AIX program and can muddy the troubleshooting of performance issues. Thanks to VIOS and the overall adoption of virtualization in the IT world, there are rumblings from the natives that we've gotten too far away from the data.

But thanks to native support for flash, IBM i shops can now benefit from the ridiculous performance boost that NAND technology can deliver, especially for busy IBM i applications that are I/O bound with traditional DASD. And it can do so without going down the VIOS/AIX rabbit hole, which still looks intimidating to smaller shops.

2. Row and Column Access Control

This security feature was added with the release of IBM i 7.2 in 2014 to prevent unauthorized users from accessing huge swaths of data. As IBM's DB2 for i guru Mike Cain explains, RCAC was added at the request of IBM i customers to protect sensitive data.

"Prior to RCAC, the security scheme was provided through the object-based security measure," Cain says in this video on the RCAC Redbook landing page. "This really means that someone. . . could get access to all of the rows or records, or they would have no access to the row or file."

Since there was no prior way for DB2 for i to subset the record access--absent defining it at the application level, which leaves the data vulnerable still to ODBC/JDBC--IBM built it, and that's RCAC. "DB2 for RCAC provides a new and robust solution that allows for the governance and control of data through all interfaces, whether those interfaces are SQL or whether they're native record-level access," Cain says.

Simply put: If you need to dole out data based on a user's specific role and don't want to completely rebuild your database schema to prevent snooping, then you need RCAC, which means you need IBM i 7.2.

3. JSON

IBM added a technology preview for JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) in IBM i 7.2 TR2 and IBM i 7.1 TR10, which shipped in the spring.

JSON is a lightweight, human-readable data format that's become the default way that Web applications store and share data. Compared to XML--which 10 years ago paved the way toward self-definable data--JSON is both easier for programmers to use and faster to load.

Considering the rising adoption of JavaScript frameworks like Dojo, Ext JS, and jQuery among IBM i developers for front-end Web development, it was a natural for IBM i to add support for JSON in the database. (While JavaScript doesn't require JSON, there are advantages to using them in combination.)

The JSON Store Technology Preview that IBM shipped with the latest TRs allow JSON documents to be stored and retrieved using DB2 for i database tables. For a good primer on the three ways developers can utilize JSON, check out this recent developerWorks article.

4. Node.js

IBM unveiled support for last October with IBM i 7.1 TR9 and IBM i 7.2 TR1.

You're probably aware of how JavaScript can accelerate development of Web clients. The frameworks mentioned above bring a host of out-of-the-box UI widgets that developers can easily drop into their development environment. What Node.js does is extend that ease-of-use to the server. Node.js (or simply "Node" to those in the know) is an open-source runtime environment for server-side applications written in JavaScript. The framework has been widely adopted because it takes much of the complexity out of building and running scalable, data-intensive Web applications.

The addition of Node.js is a good example of IBM reacting to changing trends in application development (the addition of support for Ruby is another example). To learn more about Node.js, check out Aaron Bartell's LinkedIn story about his first experience with the framework.

5. REST Web Services

IBM's support for Representational State Transfer (REST) Web services, which IBM shipped in December with the group PTFs for IBM i 7.1 TR9 and IBM i 7.2 TR1, can be grouped into the same vein as JSON and Node.js: Keeping the platform relevant to a new class of developers and a new programing style.

If JSON has become the defacto data integration standard on the Web (largely replacing XML), then REST has become the defacto program integration standard for Web-based applications--largely replacing the XML-based service oriented application protocol (SOAP) that came before it.

If you want to connect your IBM i app so it can talk to hosted cloud service, such as Salesforce or Netsuite, you're going to be doing it via REST. IBM i developers who want to keep their apps current would do well to adopt REST, not only to partake of the rich ecosystem of REST-enabled services that are already out there, but to contribute back to it too.

Como se ha dicho otras veces, el problema no es el 400, sino la apertura de ideas de quienes toman decisiones sobre su uso. Usado como servidor, suele quedar atado al criterio más bien conservador en el manejo de la lógica de negocios escrita en los servidores.