• Crazy Idea # 542: Port IBM i To The Mainframe

  September 18, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In case you didn’t know it, and why would you care, IBM launched the new System z14 mainframe back in June, was talking about the new z14 motors it uses in August, and has just last week launched the LinuxOne “Emperor II” Linux-only mainframe variant of that platform. The machine, as always, has some impressive engineering. And it got me to thinking. Which is always dangerous.

  Here is a crazy idea. No, this is really crazy, unlike some of my other inspirations, which of course make perfect sense. Maybe IBM should converge the Power Systems and System z lines, and …

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• More Database Tools Highlight Latest IBM i Access Client

  September 18, 2017 Dan Burger

  Remember IBM i Access for Windows? Many IBM i advocates do because they never stopped using it, despite its replacement by IBM i Access Client Solutions more than four years ago. Access for Windows hasn’t seen an enhancement since ACS arrived and ACS is on a continual enhancement schedule. The most recent round of upgrades arrived in mid-July without much fanfare, which is the way IBM seems to prefer.

  SQL developers and database engineers (those that have the title and those that only have the responsibility) are among the professionals benefiting the most from the expanding ACS toolset that usually …

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• Guru: Consuming A REST Web Service Using SQL And GET

  September 18, 2017 Mike Larsen

  The use of web services in the industry continues to grow, and sometimes it can be challenging to find information on how to work with them on IBM i. So, what is a web service? In a nutshell, web services allow systems to communicate via the web using file formats such as JSON and XML.

  This article demonstrates how to consume a REST web service using SQL. The example I’m working with uses the ‘GET’ verb to retrieve information from an Amazon Web Service (AWS). I created a simple REST Amazon Web Service that retrieves information about a pet from …

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• Three Lessons IBM i Shops Can Learn From The Equifax Hack

  September 18, 2017 Alex Woodie

  The recent Equifax data breach exposed extremely sensitive data of 143 million consumers, putting more than half of Americans at risk. While an IBM i server was likely not involved here, Equifax’s actions – and more importantly, its inactions – can teach IBM i shops something about data security.

  Just when you thought the string of major data breaches couldn’t get any worse, Equifax happened. The number of people impacted by the hack is relatively small, as these things go. When you consider that Yahoo’s 2014 breach exposed the data of 1.5 billion people, and that Adult Friend Finder’s 2016 …

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• The State Of Systems In The Second Quarter

  September 18, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The server refresh cycle that we have all been expecting in 2017 is well under way, and in fact, it looks like it is better than expected by some measures.

  The box counters at IDC said in releasing their server shipment and revenue numbers for the second quarter of 2017 that they had been undercounting the number of machines made by original design manufacturers (ODMs) and sold directly to the big hyperscalers and cloud builders to the tune of an average of $1 billion per quarter since 2013. Looking back a year, to the second quarter of 2016, the amount …

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• IBM i’s TCO Advantage Widens, According to Reports

  September 13, 2017 Alex Woodie

  IBM recently published a new report that claims the total cost of ownership (TCO) of an IBM i server over three years is dramatically lower than the equivalent Windows or Linux setups. It’s not the first such study IBM has done over the years, but what’s interesting is the gap appears to have widened considerably compared to a similar study six years ago.

  In the latest TCO study, research and management consulting firm Quark + Lepton measured how much it would take hypothetical businesses to buy and manage three sets of servers: a Power Systems server running IBM i 7.3 …

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• How SAP Complexity Impacts Performance on IBM i

  September 13, 2017 Alex Woodie

  The IBM i server and SAP’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is a powerful combination that propels thousands of businesses around the world. The duo’s success is apparent to those who pay attention, even if it’s not widely acknowledged. But ensuring smooth SAP operations on IBM i is not always as straightforward as it could be, especially for those uninitiated with the complexity of this setup.

  The fact that SAP has its own way of doing things is nothing new. Ever since a group of five former IBMers from Germany led by Hasso Plattner formed up to create the …

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• Symtrax Compleo Diversifies Document Management Evolution

  September 13, 2017 Dan Burger

  Ask anyone who’s been researching document management software: This is no longer a conversation about forms printing or how to access spool files and convert them to Excel spreadsheets. It’s much more than that. It’s about integration with multiple systems, multiple delivery channels, and multiple workflow processes. It’s not just about spool files anymore.

  Symtrax, a company that’s cultivated an IBM midrange business for more than 25 years, has evolved much like the AS/400 has evolved into the IBM i. “Our evolution is still on the IBM i platform,” says Kirk Fackre, director of enterprise solutions at Symtrax, “but it …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, September 13

  September 13, 2017 Dan Burger

  Earlier this year, at the COMMON Annual Meeting and Expo, we started to hear what Watson could do when integrated with IBM i. People are still asking questions and more information is being made available. Cognitive computing, with its analytic capabilities, is bringing change to traditional enterprise application development. You don’t have to be smarter than Watson. You just need to be smart enough to know about Watson.

  Also in Monitor this week: IBM and MIT partner on cognitive computing research; the right and wrong of agile development; and an IBM internship program for re-entering women in their tech careers. …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 36

  September 13, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  Hello IBM i shops, it is always important to keep your system up to date, which is why we provide the IBM i PTF Guide. But just to keep perspective here, for those companies and personnel dealing with Hurricanes Harvey and Irma or the impending Hurricane Jose, and for those who are dealing with the Western part of this country being on fire, the fixes below can probably wait a day or so. Be safe!

  This week in the guide we have HIPERs, DB2, and Defective fixes for all three releases:

  IBM i 7.3 HIPER group and PSP - 

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• The Chatter About Future Power9 Servers

  September 11, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In late July, the first of the Power9 systems, the one code-named “Witherspoon” that was designed explicitly to be installed in the “Summit” and “Sierra” clustered supercomputers installed at Oak Ridge National Laboratories and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, respectively, started rolling off the production line at Big Blue and into those HPC centers that are funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. It is the beginning, however quiet, of what we expect will be a rolling thunder rollout of Power9 systems in late 2017 and through early 2018.

  Because there have been so many processor announcements in the past …

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• Lack Of Available RPG Skills Not A Hard Problem To Fix

  September 11, 2017 Dan Burger

  Running an IT department can be a grind. The reliability and manageability of your hardware and software certainly influences how hard the grind becomes, but the job becomes so much easier when you have a staff that removes much of your burden. Successfully developing that staff and creating a positive culture while dealing with turnover and “do more with less” imperatives has a huge impact on whether the CIO or IT director manages the grind or gets ground up. And once in a while, a new addition to the staff comes with a surprisingly positive impact. That leads me into …

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• Guru: Remove Unwanted Trailing Blanks With LPEX

  September 11, 2017 Ted Holt

  Giving up RDi and going back to developing with PDM and SEU would appeal to me as much as giving up electricity and running water and moving into a pup tent. RDi has so many nice features that enrich my life. However, RDi does have its quirks, and occasionally I run into one of them.

  One of the nice features is the ability to comment and uncomment blocks of code in one fell swoop. In case you’ve forgotten (or didn’t know about) those shortcuts, Ctrl+/ comments out a line or block and Ctrl+\ removes the comment markers. I recommend you …

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• As I See It: The Power Of Pizza

  September 11, 2017 Victor Rozek

  When you become the richest man in the world, if only for a few hours by virtue of stock market fluctuations, you nonetheless acquire an additional layer of gravitas. Suddenly, everything you say or do has added significance. Small actions are credited with great meaning. The trivial becomes transcendent.

  Which is probably why, the day after the New York Times announced that Jeff Bezos had toppled Bill Gates from his golden throne as the world’s richest man, the usually sober Business Insider gushed about his managerial prowess. The article appeared under the preposterous headline: “The ‘two pizza rule’ is a …

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• IBM Flashes the Cache On External Storage

  September 11, 2017 Alex Woodie

  IBM put more a little flash in its storage, specifically its high-end DS8000 arrays, which got new solid state drive options that will boost raw flash storage close to 3 petabytes in a single installation. Big Blue also cached in with its Storwize V7000, which now features up to 256 GB of RAM, among other new features.

  Let’s begin the news with the Storwize V7000, which is an X86-based storage system that’s becoming increasingly popular among midsize and large IBM i shops that are looking to consolidate storage but who can’t justify the added expense and complexity of the high-end …

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• IBM i Salaries Drop Vs. Other Platforms, But It’s Not All Bad

  September 6, 2017 Alex Woodie

  Time was, working on IBM i and its predecessors earned you a premium on your salary compared to other platforms. That’s not the case in 2017, as equivalent jobs on the Linux, Unix, Windows (LUW) front delivers better pay. But the news on the job front is not all doom and gloom, according IBM i staffing expert Bob Langieri, who keeps a close watch on this sort of thing.

  Across the board, IBM i professionals earned lower salaries than their LUW colleagues for various IT positions, with a few exceptions. That’s according to an analysis of IBM i salary data …

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• ARCAD Magnifies The i In Its Multi-Platform Array

  September 6, 2017 Dan Burger

  While RDi development gets some help from one IBM i vendor, another vendor is enhancing its RDi-specific software. ARCAD Software, makers of ARCAD Pack for i, has enhanced its IBM UrbanCode Deploy and improved support for deployment to IBM i.

  IBM’s UrbanCode is a tool for automating application deployments by expediting user feedback, and for providing audit trails and the approvals process. UrbanCode is being used primarily by large companies to deploy multi-platform code from a central point. It provides standardized tools and methodologies for managing all sources–including IBM i, z/OS, AIX and other Unix OSes, and all the …

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• IBM i Vulns Spotted in Node, BIND and HTTP Server

  September 6, 2017 Alex Woodie

  IBM last month moved to patch several critical security vulnerabilities related to the BIND service in IBM i that could allow attackers unauthorized access to IBM i servers running any release of the OS from IBM 6.1 to 7.3. Security glitches were also patched for the IBM i implementation of Node.js, the HTTP Server bundled with IBM i, the hardware management console (HMC), and WebSphere.

  Both ISC BIND vulnerabilities work in a similar way and enabled similar paths into affected systems – namely by allowing an attacker to craft a specially crafted request packet to bypass authentication and therefore gain …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, September 6

  September 6, 2017 Dan Burger

  Two app dev strategies are fighting for supremacy. DevOps is a cultural and organizational shift that empowers enterprise software teams to deliver better software quicker – in particular, hand-coded software. Low-Code platforms, in contrast, provide a technology platform and visual tooling that deliver better software quicker – with little or no hand-coding required.

  The continued success of RPG depends on several factors. Maintaining the status quo is not one of them. See what it takes to build an RPG future in this week’s Monitor. Also discover the latest move by Vision Solutions’ new owner, and why BI and analytics …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 35

  September 6, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  Welcome to the IBM i PTF Guide, which was designed to help you figure out what patches to apply to your releases so you can keep current and therefore keep optimal in terms of performance, stability, and security. This should be  your own personal IBM i Patch Wednesday, and frankly, with the Labor Day holiday in the United States, there was not a lot going on this week.

  The Recommended PTFs for all functional areas were updated, and summary lists for all three current IBM i releases were updated in *SF97VRM). ERP giant and in-memory processing upstart SAP also …

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