Saturday, December 12, 2020

Install and configure Cron Scheduling on IBM i

IBM just released a cron scheduler for IBM i. They released cron, via the 'cronie' RPM package with Anacron, too. If you're not familiar with cron, it's a scheduling mechanism for open source platforms such as Linux and now it's available for IBM i.

This package can be a good way to schedule your open source jobs or even your IBM i CL commands and jobs that need to run on a regular basis.

Check out my quick start tutorial on using cron with IBM i. Using Cron Scheduling with IBM i

Getting Started with MariaDB on IBM i

IBM recently released a current version of the MariaDB database to run natively in PASE on IBM i. The software installs in minutes on IBM i via the Yum-based Open Source Package Management process which is part of Access Client Solutions (ACS). This means that MySQL is once again being fully embraced as a valid IBM i database for storing data for PHP applications such as WordPress. No need to look elsewhere to host your PHP applications and MariaDB data.

If you're interested in using MariaDB on IBM i, check out the following tutorial I created on Github that can be used to quickly install and get started with MariaDB on IBM i. Install MariaDB on IBM i

Thursday, November 26, 2020

Document Your Business and Technical Processes with MkDocs

If you thought documenting your business processes and application code was too hard or tools were too expensive, you should check out the FREE Python based MKDocs offering.

What a great way to start documenting all your company's common business knowledge in one place.

MkDocs is an open source Python static site generator for creating documentation using simple Markdown based text documents. Simply edit your MarkDown content files and they are available to anyone in the company who has access to the site.

No database required.

This is a quick way to establish one or more departmental knowledgebases with shareable business and system process documentation.

An MkDocs project directory structure could also be turned into a git project if desired so the entire site would be versioned in a git repository.

I created a quick getting started guide for IBM i, but MkDocs works on any platform.