• Rebuilding The Bottom Of The Pyramid

  March 25, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In last week’s issue of The Four Hundred, we told you about how Big Blue had extended the life of the Power8-based entry Power S812 Mini, announced on Valentine’s Day last year specifically to give entry IBM i shops a cheaper alternative than buying the Power S814 or Power S824. It seems to me that IBM needs to do some rejiggering of the way it bundles and prices this entry machine to get the installed base of customers using vintage hardware and operating systems to get current and stay there.

  We are under the impression that the number … “Rebuilding The Bottom Of The Pyramid”

  Read more

• Five Skills You Don’t Need To Manage IBM i (And Two You Do)

  March 25, 2019 Tom Huntington

  (Sponsored Content) Much has been said to debunk the myth of an IBM i skills shortage or decry it as a disappearing act. Yet, year after year, respondents to the annual IBM i Marketplace Survey by HelpSystems list IBM i skills as a top concern. The results also show that organizations are addressing these concerns by adding automation, modernizing development, and getting rid of obsolete technology that breeds the dreaded word: legacy.

  But why do we on IBM i continue to carry the perception that so-called “IBM i skills” are scarce? Is it because the keywords in … “Five Skills You Don’t Need To Manage IBM i (And Two You Do)”

  Read more

• Guru: Why A Function Was There But Could Not Be Found

  March 25, 2019 Ted Holt

  Hey, Ted:

  I am stuck on trying to create a function in RPG to use in SQL. I based it on your FMTDATE function, which I successfully installed and is working great! I have been trying to get this function working for five hours and I am at my wits’ end. Hopefully, you will notice something right away.

  –Andrew

  The message that Andrew was receiving was SQL0204 (HISFUNCT in *LIBL type *N not found). (I have replaced the name of Andrew’s function with HISFUNC.) Yet the function existed and the service program existed. There was nothing wrong with Andrew’s RPG … “Guru: Why A Function Was There But Could Not Be Found”

  Read more

• A HATS For Many Occasions

  March 25, 2019 Alex Woodie

  IBM gives customers plenty of options when it comes to its Rational Host Access Transformation software, including several modes of operation, different runtime options, and support for different operating systems in screen modernization engagements. With last week’s launch of HATS version 9.7, the development and deployment options got even wider.

  Regardless of which downstream options a HATS customer ultimately chooses, it all starts out basically the same on the front side of the sausage machine: Customers come to HATS because they have a 5250 (or 3270 or VT100) application that they want to transform, but they don’t want to go … “A HATS For Many Occasions”

  Read more

• What Are Your Application Priorities?

  March 25, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Money is a proxy for intent, but the amount that companies budget for any particular application, whether it is homegrown or bought off the shelf, is not necessarily a good indicator of the value that they will ultimately derive from that investment. Still, every IT budget is a reflection of both necessity and hope. Some things you simply have to do to even be in business, and other things you do to improve the business. Most of the time it works, sometimes it ends up being a sunk cost with very little benefit.

  The analysts at Gartner were kind enough … “What Are Your Application Priorities?”

  Read more

• Assessing IBM i’s Role In Digital Transformation

  March 20, 2019 Alex Woodie

  There comes a time in every application’s life when its owner must take a hard look at its continued viability and ask the tough question: Will the application continue to meet the business’s evolving needs, or should the whole thing be scrapped for something new? These business and technology assessments can be especially tough when the software runs on the IBM i server.

  Many companies these days are looking to modernize their aging IT systems in the hopes of gaining more agility and flexibility. Whether you call it digital transformation or application modernization, the goals are often similar: Simplify the … “Assessing IBM i’s Role In Digital Transformation”

  Read more

• Midnight Commander Comes To IBM i

  March 20, 2019 Alex Woodie

  IBM i professionals who work extensively with files in the IFS will be happy to hear a new software utility has been ported to the IBM i PASE environment that could save them a bunch of time. The open source software, called Midnight Commander, gives developers and administrators a handy command line experience that can help speed up tasks, especially when giving commands to large number of files stored on remote machines.

  Midnight Commander was originally developed in 1994 as a file utility for UNIX, which was beginning to emerge from software labs to challenge minicomputer platforms of the day, … “Midnight Commander Comes To IBM i”

  Read more

• BMC Touches Clouds with Job Scheduler

  March 20, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Clouds are growing quickly as IT executives look to find more flexibility and cut costs by adopting cloud and software as a service (SaaS) applications. But most enterprises aren’t getting rid of all their on-premise systems, which means somebody needs to connect those cloud and on-premise systems. One of those “somebodies” is BMC Software.

  You might not remember it, but BMC Software still actively supports the IBM i environment with enterprise job scheduler, called CONTROL-M. The Houston, Texas, company has supported the IBM midrange server for years, and continues to do so with the 19th version of CONTROL-M, which the … “BMC Touches Clouds with Job Scheduler”

  Read more

• Four Hundred Monitor, March 20

  March 20, 2019 Jenny Thomas

  Did you know today, March 20, is considered the first day of spring? At least in the Northern Hemisphere it is. Also known as the spring equinox, today the length of the day is nearly equal in all parts of the world. While those of us on the Northern side of the globe start to enjoy longer, sunnier days, we can all enjoy the latest news from in and around our IBM i ecosystem. Be sure to check out our calendar at the bottom section for travel opportunities – a trip to COMMON in Southern California sounds like a great … “Four Hundred Monitor, March 20”

  Read more

• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 21, Number 11

  March 20, 2019 Doug Bidwell

  Enjoy the quiet while you can, there are no new cumes or groups for any release this week. However, regarding updating QMGTOOLS, here is the command that checks for and pulls down the update if necessary, then installs it:

  QMGTOOLS/CMPVER NOPROMPT(Y)
  

  You might want to think about putting this command into your scheduler for every Sunday morning.

  There are no new defectives this week, but once again here is the most recent defective PTF rundown (The last defective for each release):

  	Defect		Defective	APAR	Fixing
  	Date		PTF			PTF
  	--------	--------	-------	-------
  7.3	03/05/19		MF65608	MA47478	MF65690 (Available!)
  			MF65603
  			MF65584
  			

  … “IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 21, Number 11” Read more

• Entry Power S812 Gets A New – But Still Short – Lease On Life

  March 18, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Despite the fact that Moore’s Law increases in performance in CPUs have been slowing for years, for many customers, the growth in the throughput performance of processors as more cores and threads are added to a Power9 chip have outstripped the capacity growth requirements for many IBM i shops. For many of these customers, a single core Power7, Power7+, or even Power8 processor did the trick just fine, and is better suited to their needs than an entry Power9 machine with just one core running IBM i.

  We would argue – and have argued many times – that what IBM … “Entry Power S812 Gets A New – But Still Short – Lease On Life”

  Read more

• Wanted: Exciting New Publicist For Boring Old Server

  March 18, 2019 Alex Woodie

  You don’t need a marketing guru to tell you the IBM i server has a publicity problem. Outside the cloistered midrange community, nobody knows that it even exists. Even some of the companies that run their businesses on it don’t know it exists. Unicorns and leprechauns, which don’t exist, have a greater mindshare than the IBM i server. And the funny thing is, that’s exactly how it was all designed.

  According to industry analyst Rob Enderle, the IBM i server is a world leader in one computing category: boredom.

  “You put it in, you leave it alone, and it just … “Wanted: Exciting New Publicist For Boring Old Server”

  Read more

• Guru: When Playing With SQL

  March 18, 2019 Paul Tuohy

  One of the questions I have been asked a lot at conferences is “How do you figure out x in SQL?” In this article, I will discuss four things I use a lot when playing with SQL in Run SQL Scripts: VALUES, SYSIBM.SYSDUMMY1, global variables, and the system catalog.

  VALUES

  When I am trying to figure out how an SQL function works, my first port of call is the VALUES statement. VALUES derives a result directly from an expression. For example, the following statement:

  values upper('paul');
  

  Would generate the following result set:

  

  You can specify more than one value in … “Guru: When Playing With SQL”

  Read more

• As I See It: The Useless Class

  March 18, 2019 Victor Rozek

  My father-in-law recently had a cancerous lobe removed from his lung. As surgeries go, it was relatively serious, but also relatively common. In an age of organ transplants, a lobe removal is no longer particularly noteworthy. What is notable, however, is that the procedure was performed by a robot.

  Robotics is part of the so-called fourth industrial revolution that includes companionable fields such as AI and biotech. In aggregate, they are poised to radically transform the economy. But although the word “transformation” has become a new-age descriptor for optimistic change, its consequences are purely contextual. For every automated medical procedure, … “As I See It: The Useless Class”

  Read more

• Are You Experienced? IBM i Users Weigh In

  March 18, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We spend a lot of time here at The Four Hundred thinking about the vintage of the hardware, operating systems, and applications running on the IBM i platform and its forbears. But we are also concerned, as you know, with the vintage of the people who are running and programming the systems out there in the IBM midrange installed base.

  It is hard to get any quantifiable data on the people out there running the platforms – and we thank you, as loyal readers of this publication for several decades now for being in this market for even more decades … “Are You Experienced? IBM i Users Weigh In”

  Read more

• Building Out The .NET Stack Around Mono for IBM i

  March 13, 2019 Alex Woodie

  The first release of a Mono .NET port to IBM i was issued last year. Since then, the IBM i open source community has been busy building many of the other middleware components that will make it easier for developers to build IBM i applications using Microsoft tooling.

  Mono was ported to AIX and IBM i (via the PASE AIX runtime) last year, which gave IBM i and AIX shops the capability to run the open source .NET runtime on Power Systems servers, thus opening the door to allowing Microsoft‘s highly regarded suite of development tools to be … “Building Out The .NET Stack Around Mono for IBM i”

  Read more

• Supreme Court Weighs In On Oracle Vs. Rimini Street

  March 13, 2019 Alex Woodie

  The United States Supreme Court last week ruled against Oracle in its ongoing copyright infringement case against Rimini Street, handing the provider of third-party support services for JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, and Siebel ERP and CRM software a legal victory in the nation’s highest court.

  It’s not often that lawsuits involving enterprise software and services make their way up to the Supreme Court. In this case, the nine justices were asked to rule on a relatively narrow disagreement between the two parties over what legal costs can be recovered. Oracle already prevailed in its copyright infringement case against Rimini Street, which … “Supreme Court Weighs In On Oracle Vs. Rimini Street”

  Read more

• Five Acquisitions You May Have Missed

  March 13, 2019 Alex Woodie

  The New Year has started off with some wheeling and dealing, as some software company owners look to bulk up while others look to hand off responsibility to somebody else. Those operating in the IBM i marketplace aren’t alone in making acquisitions. Here are five under-the-radar deals in the midrange that you may have missed.

  Attunity‘s line of real-time data integration software will now be sold through Qlik, which acquired the publicly traded company in a $560-million in late February. It was a natural enough move for Qlik, the well-regarded BI vendor that was acquired by private equity … “Five Acquisitions You May Have Missed”

  Read more

• Four Hundred Monitor, March 13

  March 13, 2019 Jenny Thomas

  This week, our own ITJ editor extraordinaire Alex Woodie takes on the omnipresent dinosaur perception that, even with so much new and exciting tech happening, the IBM i just can’t shake. It all began with a story about the city of San Francisco and the tax property assessment tool it run on “a Cobol-based system called AS-400.” That quote might make you cringe, but Alex points out “the problem isn’t so much the platform, but the applications that run on it.” You can find the links to both articles below and have your own debate, as well as find links … “Four Hundred Monitor, March 13”

  Read more

• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 21, Number 10

  March 13, 2019 Doug Bidwell

  All you people looking for some PTF action, you have some stuff to keep you busy this week. So grab the coffee and let’s get going. First of all, there are new HIPERs for IBM i 7.2 and IBM i 7.3, as well as Database group PTFs for IBM i 7.3. And don’t forget to check the defectives below.

  As for new links in the IBM i PTF Guide sheet this week, try these on for size:

  • System: IBM Administration Runtime Expert (ARE) for i
  • PTF: Temporary Storage PTFs – All Releases

  And now, for your weekly tip: Before there … “IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 21, Number 10”

  Read more

Previous Articles