Mardi Gras, distinct architecture, jazz and the Mississippi River await the delegates at the 2016 COMMON Annual Meeting and Exposition in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Taking place from Saturday 14th May to Wednesday 18th May 2016 at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside Hotel. The event will feature some of the biggest names in the IBM i community, including the likes of Aaron Bartell, Alison Butterill, Scott Forstie, Pete Massiello, Dawn May, Steve Will, Stephanie Rabbani and Mike Pavlak to name but a few.
Here’s my personal pick of the workshops available over the five days.
Build a PHP application from scratch
John Valance
John Valance is a developer and consultant specialising in database and web application development on the IBM i platform. In this workshop, he will help attendees ‘build a PHP database inquiry application from scratch, and at the end of the day have a working application similar to an RPG subfile, running in a web browser’.
He’ll cover ‘database retrieval using PHP and SQL, then formatting the data in an HTML table, as well as adding search filters and CSS styling’. Attendees will then add pagination logic and add a CSV download option.
What’s new in DB2 for i?
Scott Forstie
The annual exposition always provides an opportunity for IBM i development teams at IBM to share the latest updates to the platform. This is sure to be an interesting and insightful workshop from the DB2 for i Business Architect.
Getting started with PHP on IBM i
Mike Pavlak
Mike is Zend Technologies’ Solutions Consultant working on promoting PHP and Zend on the IBM i. PHP has become an important and significant part of the IBM i modernisation and development ecosystem. In this workshop, Mike will introduce attendees to ‘the steps to get going with PHP in the typical IBM i environment. Topics include software installation, configuration, troubleshooting and basic PHP script creation’.
For those not lucky enough to go to New Orleans for the event might want to register for Mike Pavlak’s webinar ‘Getting Started with PHP on IBM i: Top 5 Things You Need to Know’ in conjunction with BCD Software (now Fresche Solutions). Slightly less glamorous, but certainly as informative.
You can also follow the link to find a host of resourcesPHP on IBM i resources courtesy of Proximity, Zend and BCD Software.
Learning and quality assurance from NASA
Yvonne Enselman
A slight departure from the PHP / open-source angle in my choices, but who doesn’t want to learn something about NASA? Enselman will use examples from history, we will discuss current issues such as disaster recovery (the Apollo One fire), test coverage (Apollo 13), specifications and prototypes (the development of the LM), user ability and experience (Apollo 14), and further education development (Apollo 17).
PHP past, present and future
Mike Pavlak
Another Mike Pavlak workshop, this time looking at PHP through the ages – and what might be in store in the future.
Swim in the ocean of open source
Aaron Bartell
Bartell is the Director of IBM i Innovation at Krengel Technology, Inc. and has been at the forefront of Ruby on Rails adoption on the IBM i. This technical session looks at one of the reasons open source is growing so quickly on the IBM i – the PASE portion of IBM i is essentially an AIX runtime.
What’s new in 7.1 and 7.2 security?
JEFF UEHLING
Responsible for security development, IBM i operating systems at IBM, Uehling will give an overview of the ‘range of security enhancements added by IBM in the 7.1 and 7.2 operating system releases’. Maybe this particular workshop will be slightly behind the times as rumours abound about an imminent announcement about 7.3, or iNext…
Eclipse does GIT, and so can you
Clark Everetts
A senior professional services consultant at Zend, Everetts will focus this workshop on source code version code using Git. In September last year, we published a blog about the benefits of using Git for version controlthat you might also be interested in.
Mobile to go- Overview of mobile technologies on IBM i
Alison Butterill and Tim Rowe
Butterill is the IBM i Product Offering Manager at IBM and Rowe is the Business Architect for Application Development and Systems Management for IBM i. This joint workshop will focus on the many tools and options available for mobilisation on the IBM i.
The latest IBM i Announcements
Steve Will
Will is the Chief Architect, IBM i at IBM. As the name suggests, this breakfast briefing looks at the latest developments on the IBM i. There may, or may not be an announcement about IBM i 7.3. Possibly.
Lessons learned building IBM i mobile applications
Trevor Parry
Often controversial (Parry has an ongoing battle with the less enlightened amongst the IBM i community who continue to refer to the platform in any of its previous guises), but nonetheless a popular ‘veteran of the IBM i community’ Parry will guide attendees through the lessons he’s learnt over the leads developing mobile applications on the IBM i.
Maria is the new MySQL for IBM i
Mike Pavlak
Pavlak once again leads a workshop, this time focusing on MariaDB. ‘MySQL has become wildly popular on IBM i for the last several years and many organisations rely on it as the data store for homegrown and open source PHP applications. The DB2 storage engine cements its value in the IBM i space as yet another extension of the native IBM i environment. The open-source community is migrating to MariaDB which was started by the same folks who created MySQL and is designed to be a drop in replacement for MySQL.’
What is Node.js?
Tony Cairns
A senior programmer at IBM, Cairns looks at what Node.js is and how it ‘offers speed and scalability for modern web apps’. If you want a little more information on about the subject, then take a look at the blog written last year entitled Node.js for the IBM i.
Rest web services for the RPG programmer
Tim Rowe
Rowe leads another workshop looking at how Web Services have become an important part of IBM i modernisation projects. Previously only SOAP-based, IBM provides ‘the ability to easily create REST-based services for your ILE RPG programs and service programs. This means now you can take advantage of the latest trend in Web Services. REST-based services allow you to participate in the API economy’.
Again, if you want a little more information on about the subject, then take a look at the blog entitled Why RESTful web services are the API you are looking for.
Apache web-server magic on IBM i
Alan Seiden
A subject matter expert on PHP, Zend and the IBM i, Seiden guides attendees through securing your Apache web server on the IBM i. He’ll also attendees how to ‘use Apache’s most useful features, including search engine optimisation, logging, and virtual hosts.’
Rapidly create first-rate mobile applications with BCD Solutions
GREG PATTERSON
Patterson is a senior sales engineer at BCD Software. This workshop looks at how ‘existing staff can rapidly develop first-rate mobile applications with BCD solutions’.
- Modernising and mobilising green screens with Presto
- Creating new PHP and RPG ILE mobile web applications with WebSmart
- The differences between mobile web applications and mobile apps
Speedy PHP on IBM i
ALAN SEIDEN
One of Seiden’s signature subjects, here he will show attendees how to configure Zend Server for performance, optimise DB2 and the IBM i toolkit, diagnose speed issues and leverage unique IBM i performance tools.
You can, of course, download our useful free guide on Tips for a happy Zend Server on i from our resources section.
Intro to Zend framework 2 on IBM i
Stephanie Rabbani
A senior web developer at Quadrant Software (now Fresche Solutions), Rabbani will guide attendees through the reasons why Zend Framework 2 is a great choice for larger PHP projects on IBM i.
Posted by Paul on 24th February 2016.