• IBM Gives A Peek Of The Future At POWERUp 2019

  May 20, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It would not be a COMMON, or even a POWERUp, conference without some glimpse into the future by IBM to give customers of its Power Systems line a sense of what lies ahead near the horizon. By doing so, Big Blue can provide comfort to customers that it is working on future technologies and services without revealing its hand too much to competitors.

  Steve Sibley, vice president of offerings for the Cognitive Systems division, which is the part of IBM that makes and sells Power Systems iron, participated in the opening session of the POWERUp 2019 conference in Anaheim on …

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• Why i Reason #87: Eschewing Performance for Its Own Sake

  May 20, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Make no mistake about it: IBM’s Power Systems server can flat out fly. The two biggest supercomputers on the planet right now – Summit and Sierra – are Power9 machines, although much of the computational oomph comes from Nvidia GPUs. But one thing that sets the IBM i server apart from its hardware compatriots is that it avoids the celebrity of performance.

  Performance is “in” right now in the IT space (it never really went out of style). Industry standard server makers (i.e., those who make X86 servers) fight over who has the fastest systems. Public cloud platforms battle to …

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• Guru: Application Tracing With The QTRC APIs

  May 20, 2019 Dawn May

  The IBM i operating system is extensively instrumented for diagnostic purposes to help IBM resolve issues should they arise. Instrumenting your application for diagnostics is also possible in a manner very similar to what IBM has done in the operating system.

  STRTRC and the QTRC APIs

  The operating system includes a trace facility called QTRC. This trace facility is a set of APIs (QTRC APIs) that allow you to instrument your application to collect trace data.  This trace data can be whatever you may find helpful for debugging applications in a production environment, where using a debugger is …

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• Do These Four Things to Avoid ERP Project Failure

  May 20, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Nobody wants to be part of an ERP project failure, but the fact is that these implementations rarely go perfectly smooth. There’s a wide spectrum of things that can go wrong in these massive projects, ranging from taking a little too long and going a smidgen over budget, to serious operational issues and even outright failure. It’s also the topic that the folks at Third Stage Consulting analyzed in a recent study.

  What makes The 2019 Digital Transportation, HCM, and ERP Report different from other reports on enterprise software implementations is the data-driven approach to understanding the deployments from quantitative …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 21, Number 20

  May 20, 2019 Doug Bidwell

  It has been a busy week out there in the PTF generation factory at IBM, with a new cume for IBM i 7.2 (following a week after the new cume for IBM i 7.3) as well as a new HIPER Group and a new Web Query Group for all three current releases (that’s IBM i 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3).

  In this week’s issue, there are a few new or updated links in the Guide, as follows:

  • LDAP — IBM Directory Server for IBM i (LDAP)
  • SMTP — Configuring SSL Between IBM i and Remote Mail Router WITHOUT Authentication

  And …

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• These POWERUp Sessions Are About the Recent IBM i Announcement

  May 15, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Disneyland didn’t complete construction of Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge in time for next week’s POWERUp conference. But luckily for you, IBM did finalize its IBM i announcement soon enough for COMMON’s annual extravaganza, making next week’s show in Anaheim, California, a great chance for you to learn about the new releases of the operating system, including IBM i 7.4 and 7.3 TR6.

  According to COMMON’s online session guide, there are at least 16 sessions at POWERUp 19 having to do with IBM i 7.4, IBM i 7.3 Technology Refresh 6 (TR6), or the new software that will arrive with …

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• IBM Bolsters ACS with Database and Administrative Goodies

  May 15, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Amid the many enhancements that IBM has delivered with IBM i 7.4 and IBM i 7.3 TR6 is a new release of Access Client Solutions (ACS), which has become the go-to client interface that many IBM i professionals use to access the system for a variety of tasks. Database engineers and system administrators are the big winners with this release.

  There’s no denying that IBM delivered a whopper of release with IBM i 7.4 and its sidekick, IBM i 7.3 TR6. There’s been so much news – starting with the availability and security enhancements in Db2 Mirror and Authority Collection …

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• Raz-Lee Offloads Virus Scanning from IBM i with ICAP

  May 15, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Raz-Lee Security is providing IBM i shops another option when it comes to anti-virus software by offering an ICAP client that offloads CPU-intensive virus scanning activities to an external server. The new solution is being sold as an extension to Raz-Lee’s existing Anti-Virus solution.

  While the IBM i operating system is essentially immune to PC viruses, they still pose a threat to IBM i shops, which typically have a smattering of Windows desktops and servers on the network. The problem is that Windows viruses (and assorted other malware) can infect the IBM i server’s Windows-like Integrated File System (IFS), where …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, May 15

  May 15, 2019 Jenny Thomas

  This weekend, the IT Jungle team will head to Anaheim to cover POWERUp 2019. It’s always good to get out of our chairs and get our feet on the ground for some face time with our IBM i community. We hope to see you around the House of the Mouse but if you can’t make it out to the conference being held at the Disneyland resort, just stay tuned. We will be bringing you all of the latest news and happenings directly from the show floor. Until then, check out all the latest news and happenings around our industry at …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 21, Number 19

  May 15, 2019 Doug Bidwell

  So, here’s the deal: There is a new IBM i 7.3 Cume! 19116! C9116730! Have fun with the latest cumulative release on the newest shipping variant of IBM i, all rolled up and ready to rock. Also, SAP on i PTF links have been added to each release and, by the way, I installed Technology Refresh 6 for IBM i 7.3 earlier this week at a customer site and there were no issues, which is a good thing indeed. There is also a new DB2 Group for IBM i 7.3.

  Be sure to check out the SAP on i Blog, …

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• IBM Bolsters RPG And COBOL Development

  May 13, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Amid the many and varied enhancements that IBM rolled out last month for its IBM i operating system was a collection of improvements for its core development tooling, including the Eclipse-based Rational Developer for i (RDi) as well as Rational Development Studio for i, which contains the RPG and COBOL compilers.

  Let’s start with the RPG and COBOL compilers in Rational Development Studio for i, since updates to these strategic pieces are more infrequent than the updates to RDi, which shares a common base with integrated development environments (IDEs) for other operating systems and therefore updated more frequently.

  The biggest …

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• NodeRun Is Node.js For Everyone

  May 13, 2019 Brian May

  (Sponsored Content) Working for a software development company like Profound Logic, I have the privilege of working on very interesting and exciting projects, both internally and with my customers. My days are filled with both the mundane and the exciting, but luckily, I have more of the latter than the former. I want to take a few minutes of your time to tell you about a project that has me as excited as I have been in quite a while.

  Have you wanted to experiment with learning Node.js on IBM i, or any other platform? Have you …

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• Guru: Emulate Control Break Reporting With DB2 For i SQL

  May 13, 2019 Michael Sansoterra

  When generating ad hoc user reports, it’s often the case that developers don’t have the time or luxury to write a high-level language program or to use a reporting tool such as DB2 Web Query or Crystal Reports to format the data appropriately. But when a user is given a raw dump of a SELECT statement’s result set in Excel, it can be quite ugly to wade through and format.

  The user may have to do things like add total rows or remove duplicate values, which can be quite time consuming. Thankfully, DB2 for i SQL offers a way to …

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• Evermore A Community Of Common Interest

  May 13, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  When you write as much as I do, and for as long as I have, you can accidentally get caught in a path of your own making that you have forgotten you have cut through the woods before. With the POWERUp 2019 conference coming up next week, formerly known as COMMON, I have a lot of things on my mind, particularly with the passing last month of Hesh Wiener, the founding editor of The Four Hundred, and of the passing last August of Dan Burger, our executive managing editor.

  It is not a coincidence that the opening …

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• Retranslation Could Boost Performance

  May 13, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  There are so many kinds of genius embedded into the IBM midrange line that it is hard to know where to begin when discussing all of these interconnected ideas and layers. But perhaps the simplest way to encapsulate them all is that the System/38 and AS/400 minicomputers and their follow-ons sought to abstract away and mask some of the more complex aspects of a modern system so that programmers could focus on business logic and system administrators could focus at a much higher level, too.

  One of the key differentiators of these IBM midrange platforms, and one of the hallmarks …

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• Does Db2 Mirror Kill The Market for Third Party HA?

  May 6, 2019 Alex Woodie

  IBM launched Db2 Mirror for i two weeks ago to great acclaim, as the clustering technology puts IBM i on par with how most other major systems provide continuous availability. But will Db2 Mirror destroy the platform’s heritage of high availability solutions? IT Jungle asked IBM and the biggest providers of logical replication solutions, and the answer is no. Here’s why.

  The first thing to understand about Db2 Mirror is that, at heart, it’s a database clustering technology. IBM figured out a way to make a single instance of Db2 for i run on two separate systems, in an active-active …

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• Drilling Down Into Db2 Mirror for IBM i

  May 6, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We did our initial coverage of the new Db2 Mirror for the IBM i operating system’s integrated database two weeks ago, and now it is time to dig in a little deeper. Elsewhere in this week’s issue of The Four Hundred, we have gotten feedback from the suppliers of high availability clustering and disaster recovery software for the IBM i platform as to how Db2 Mirror compete with as well as complements their wares. And in this story, we will be digging a little deeper into Db2 Mirror itself.

  As we explained, Db2 Mirror creates an active-active database …

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• Guru: Open Access To The Rescue – The Next Step

  May 6, 2019 Jon Paris

  I recently wrote a tip on using an Open Access handler to enable the creation of flat files in the IFS. In that version of the handler I generated a generic file name and used hard-coded record delimiters and code page settings. I mentioned at the time that I would normally supply these values at run time. In this follow-on tip I describe how the handler can be modified to use the Open Access User Parameter to facilitate this.

  The User Parameter is simply specified as a second parameter to the HANDLER keyword. It can be a simple variable or, …

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• As I See It: A Taxing Situation

  May 6, 2019 Victor Rozek

  A few weeks ago, millions of us took a deep, resentment-laden breath before signing our name to a check and sending it off to the federal government. Taxes, the eternal pebble in the workingperson’s shoe, are as unpopular as they are necessary, and remain the subject of endless debate over who should pay and how much.

  In a system rigged to favor those with money-wielding lobbyists, IT professionals are part of that vast pool of middle-class dupes who neither make so little as to be exempt from taxes, nor so much as to be able to avoid paying them altogether. …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 21, Number 18

  May 6, 2019 Doug Bidwell

  In this iteration of the IBM i PTF Guide, you will find that there is a new set of PTF patches for the TCP/IP Group for both IBM i 7.2 and IBM i 7.3, and also new HIPER and Security Groups for the big three current release, which are of course IBM i 7.1, IBM i 7.2, and IBM i 7.3. IBM i 7.4 won’t be here until the AS/400’s 31st birthday on June 21.

  Here are the new or updated links in the Guide this week:

  • System IBM i Home Page
  • System IBM i License Topics
  • Open Source Midnight

  … Read more

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