Townsend Brings Modern Crypto Capabilities To Legacy RPG Apps

Townsend Brings Modern Crypto Capabilities To Legacy RPG Apps

Published: May 18, 2016

by Alex Woodie

The field-level encryption capability that IBM introduced with IBM i 7.1 is a powerful tool for securing sensitive data. However, IBM i shops that have not modernized their legacy RPG applications with SQL access methods find it difficult to use. That should change with new technology coming out of Townsend Security this week at the COMMON conference in New Orleans.

The DB2 field procedure exit point that IBM launched in 2010 helped a lot of IBM i shops to encrypt their data on a field-level. The capability to encrypt pieces of sensitive data residing in particular parts of their DB2 for i databases, while leaving other pieces of data untouched, was a blessing to companies in retail, healthcare, and financial services industries struggling to comply with tough new security mandates.

However, the FieldProc came with a catch. While it worked just fine if your IBM i application accessed data via SQL calls, it didn't work quite so well for older RPG applications using native I/O methods to access the database. The FieldProc method proved especially troublesome for companies that organized their databases in a particular way--when they built column-level indexes for sensitive data.

Patrick Townsend, the CEO and founder of Townsend Security, explains the significance. "Many--perhaps most--IBM i customers have not been able to leverage FieldProc automatic encryption because of the inherent limitations in legacy RPG I/O," he tells IT Jungle via email. "Encrypted indexes just don't work as expected with the older I/O model."

IBM's path forward for these IBM i shops entails re-engineering RPG applications to use the SQL Query Engine (SQE). "But this means a huge investment for most IBM i customers that provides little in the way of business improvement," Townsend adds. "So most IBM i customers have been on the sidelines."

So Townsend decided to do something about it, using another relatively recent piece of IBM technology: Rational Open Access: RPG Edition, which is sometimes called OAR, ROAR, or RPG OA.

Open Source and IBM i

Open Source and IBM i

Apr 12, 2016Tim RoweIBM Announcements1 Comment

With the latest IBM i 7.3 announce, the IBM i platform has continued down the path of transforming the ‘Art of the Possible’ when it comes to developing applications on IBM i for both today and on into the future. A significant part of this transformation is centered around open source. Not just the opportunity to run open source on IBM i but also how open source has been affecting all aspects of application development on IBM i.
One of the big concerns that I hear from many customers is about finding development resources both today and into the future. So what are we at IBM i doing to address this problem?

Modern RPG

RPG has been the primary language for IBM i since day one. It was created back in the day when punch cards roamed the earth. It has always been super at transactional processing and tight integration with the database. While punch cards have long since gone extinct, the need for transactional processing to run a business has not. For more than a decade we have been in the process of re-inventing the RPG language. With the announce of IBM i 7.3, the default for RPG on IBM i is a very modern variety. With the delivery of full free format a few years ago, the RPG language took a significant step forward towards the modern developer. With the latest new update, one of the last remnants of the punch card has been removed. RPG no longer has the an 80 column restriction. This is a significant step forward as now by leveraging fully free format RPG and storing your source in the IFS you have the opportunity to leverage a number of open source tools directly as part of your RPG development.
With fully free form support, embedded SQL, integrated XML processing and the latest in development tools with Rational Developer for i, you have the ability to leverage the skills of modern developers. You are no longer tied to only being able to hire an RPG Programmer. Modern developers can deal with many languages, and today’s RPG is no longer something that will be foreign to them.

PHP

PHP is our flag ship open source language on IBM i. We have had a great partnership with Zend over the years and we have huge numbers of IBM i customer that are leveraging PHP today to provide a modern front end to their business applications. We have many examples of customers that are innovating their business not just from a ‘pretty face’ perspective. By leveraging modern interfaces and moving the UI into the hands of the user, they are able to change business practices and in many cases save real money. With IBM i 7.3 we have updated the version of PHP that ships with the media and IBM i 7.3 supports the latest versions of PHP out of the box.
A little over a year ago now, the IBM i development lab delivered the new open source LPO – 5733OPS. This is our new open source delivery vehicle for IBM i. It shipped with 15 options, all but option 1 being empty to start. Well, in the past 15 months, we have significantly increased the number of options that have content. With the 7.3 announcement we are now up to 8, yes 8 options with all sorts of exciting new toys. Not only have we delivered new languages, but we have also looked at the entire picture. What are the other tools, utilities, and applications that are required to make the open source ecosystem on IBM i work.

Languages

• Node.JS – Option 1 of 5733OPS contains the V0.1 stream for the Node.JS language. Additionally we included a tool kit built on our XML Service engine to provide access to your IBM i native objects and business logic. We also have included a SQL based database connector to allow quick, safe and secure access to your IBM i DB2 data. With all the interest in Node.JS from the community, this language continues to rapidly change and be enhanced. To ensure seamless upgrades from the old to the new, we are shipping the latest version of Node.JS V4 in option 4 of OPS. In addition to the new language support, we are also making significant updates to our database connector. As you may know, Node.JS is an asynchronous language. The original DB2 connector worked in a synchronous manner. Well, the new driver has been enhanced to provide an asynchronous connection as well. We are excited to see the potential that this new DB connector can provide to Node.JS applications.
• Python – Last year we shipped Python V3.0 in Option 2 of OPS. We were pretty excited, with the latest version of Python figuring that was the correct choice. Well, in the Python community there happens to be a pretty big split. The V3.0 and the 2.7 crowd. Seems to be a pretty even split. So, we are now shipping Python V2.7 in option 5 of OPS. In addition to the integrated tool kit and the database driver that is included in both Python options, we are adding a new piece to the puzzle. We are including dJango. What the heck is dJango you ask ? It is a Web framework for Python that can simplify your task when creating Web applications with Python.

Ecosystem

• GCC & CHROOT – The first piece to the ecosystem puzzles was something we delivered late last year. GCC is the standard open source complier that most all open source projects makes use of. On IBM i we have a C complier, works great actually, even optimized for the Power processor, it’s the XLC complier. But when the open source world uses GCC, often compiling code with a different complier can cause ‘interesting’ results. The CHROOT support is a way for you as, open source developers on IBM i, to create your own safe ‘sandbox’ for developing open source projects. You can update things in your environment and not effect the rest of the system.
• GIT – The next piece of the open source puzzle that was announced with 7.3 was the GIT runtime. Git is the engine that powers the source control management software used widely in the open source community. It is the engine that Powers GitHub. Now with Git on IBM i, you can create your own ‘on prem’ source control library that leverages the latest open source support. Not only can you use it for all your open source projects, with modern RPG where the source is located in the IFS, you can also leverage GIT to control your RPG projects! There is even a GIT plugin that fits in nicely to your RDi development environment. GIT is being delivered in Option 6 of OPS.
• Tools – Yea, I know, a real original name. But it is pretty descriptive. This option is intended to be a set of basic tools that every open source developer needs. Its going to start out pretty small, but I can see this growing over time as our IBM i community identifies additional ‘must have’ tools and utilities. The first to make the list are .zip and .unzip. Now we will have an easy to install .zip tool on IBM i!!! Just put on a PTF and you are done. Yea, we have been needing this one for a very long time. Additionally we are including the bash shell environment. These tools are being packaged in option 7 of OPS.
• Orion – sounds like we have been gazing at the stars. Orion is a web based development environment. It’s a modern editor for writing open source applications. It has plugins for Node, Python and other open source languages. Yea, I know many developers have just used their own favorite editor from the community, but we felt that it was just not an integrated solution without this key tool. The other thing about Orion on IBM i, we have included a basic RPG syntax verifier! Again, leveraging Modern RPG and storing your source in the IFS, you can actually leverage Orion for simple RPG program updates. Orion is not intended to be a full feature/function IDE like RDi, but it is great for doing those quick simple updates. Orion will be included in Option 8 of OPS.

As you can see, with the announce of our latest IBM i operating system level, the IBM i continues to transform itself, by re-inventing pieces to insure that our platform can be successful today and into the future.