The RPG & DB2 Summit in Minneapolis showcased an array of delicious tidbits and I’m not just talking about this spread of desserts!  The schedule of events featured great speakers and great topics, to include Ian Jarmen at the opening session all the way to Susan Gantner on working with RSE/RDI/RDP (or whatever acronym you’d like to call it).

As a vendor with a table display in the exposition, I found the attendees to be interested and excited about the new enhancements IBM continues to make with the IBM i operating system.  With the launch of IBM i 7.1 TR7 next month, developers are anticipating the opportunity to work with free format RPG.  With this, the migration from SEU to RDI seems to be picking up speed.  So of course, our programmer utilities, namely DBU,  needs to be seamlessly integrated with the RDI environment to make our customer’s lives easier.  Our tech team continues to work on this functionality and will roll-out a solution!

SQL is also steamrolling on the System i.  Classes like ‘Demystifying SQL joins’ and ‘Embedded SQL-Beyond the Basics’ seemed well-attended by some of my visitors.  Once they saw our SQL Audit offering, the brochure flew out of my booth!  It really will help their SQL experience, as the before and after effect of their SQL statements against the actual data are logged and can be analyzed.  Now they need to get out to our website and download that product & play with it for 30 days while it’s all fresh in their minds.

Once again, our trip to the Summit made for a wonderful (and delicious) trip!  It’s time to get back to work and burn a few of those tasty calories!