• Digging Into the Latest IBM i TRs

  October 23, 2019 Alex Woodie

  The fall batch of Technology Refreshes (TRs) have been revealed, and as expected, there’s a bit of new functionality available for customers who use IBM i 7.3 and 7.4. In this story, we’ll tackle enhancements in open source, systems management and monitoring, and development, which means we’ll dive deeper into other areas, like database and HA/DR, in a future story.

  Let’s start with the fun stuff: open source. With IBM i 7.3 TR7 and 7.4 TR1, IBM has brought support for two prominent open source projects, including ZeroMQ and Redis.

  ZeroMQ is a universal messaging library that allows users to …

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• Java License Fallout Continues Impacting IBM i Shops

  October 23, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Oracle’s decision to restrict the previously free distribution of Java version 8 tools and runtimes is impacting the entire IT industry. In our little neck of the woods, the decision to charge businesses for using Oracle’s Java has forced IBM i shops to take a hard look at the technology platform, and in some cases look for alternative solutions.

  Oracle ruffled feathers in the Java community in 2017, when it made substantial changes to its Java roadmap. The company announced that Java Standard Edition (SE) version 8, which is a legacy version of Java but is still in widespread use, …

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• Data Protection in the New Regulated Era

  October 23, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Companies must protect their data from all sorts of threats these days, including power outages, failed servers, and drive crashes. But one of the most important aspects of data protection today is ensuring the security and privacy of data, which is mandated by a slew of emerging data regulations.

  In May 2018, the European Union enacted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a far-reaching new law that gave people sweeping new rights over their data. While GDPR ostensibly just impacts EU citizens, many large companies in the U.S. and other countries adopted new security and privacy processes to ensure consistence …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, October 23

  October 23, 2019 Jenny Thomas

  The news of the week seems to be heavily focused on two different topics: quantum computing and ransomware. IBM is looking to establish itself as a quantum computing superpower, and is ready to go to the mat with Google over its claims that Google researchers are leading the pack. And then there are the omnipresent reports of ransomware attacks, which we continue to point out in hopes it reminds our readers to make data protection a high priority. You can find links to some of the highlights (or lowlights in the case of cyberattacks) for both topics below.

  Top Stories

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 21, Number 42

  October 23, 2019 Doug Bidwell

  Some weeks are slow, and some weeks we have lots to share. This is one of those busy weeks in PTF Land. First up, we have the following message to share: APAR MA47979 – INCORROUT – HLIC – 94XXDASD – HIPER. This Hard Disk drive code has a bug! You can read this link for details. It’s not on cume yet, but see the following fixing PTFs:

  • R710 MF66663
  • R720 MF66664
  • R730 MF66665
  • R740 MF66666

  We also learned at TechU there are new announcements with a planned Availability Date of November 16, so stay tuned.

  A Security Bulletin has popped …

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• After Seven Quarters Of Growth, Power Systems Declines

  October 21, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The tough compares have hit home on IBM’s Power Systems business, but the good news is that this has happened after seven consecutive quarters of growth for the Power-based server business that Big Blue owns lock, stock, and barrel. Even with this decline, which was quite steep because of the triple whammy of tough compares (more on that in a moment), there is still a healthy underlying Power Systems business that is much better off than the last time it was hit by similar declines.

  Let’s take a look at the numbers for IBM’s Power Systems division and then work …

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• Staying On Top Of High Availability At HelpSystems

  October 21, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  (Sponsored Content) HelpSystems got its start in systems management and automation software and has expanded its solution portfolio over the years to include cybersecurity, business intelligence, document management, robotic process automation, capacity management, and more. More recently, HelpSystems entered the IBM i high availability (HA) arena with their Bug Busters acquisition in 2016. I recently checked in with Tom Huntington, executive vice president of technical solutions at HelpSystems, and Tim Woodfield, director of development, to get an update on the company’s HA offering.

  “HelpSystems does a good job of listening to the things our customers like and …

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• Guru: Debugging Common Table Expressions

  October 21, 2019 Ted Holt

  I cannot say enough good things about common table expressions. Words like wonderful and marvelous don’t begin to describe them. However, CTEs do add a bit of complexity to an SQL query, and when the result set doesn’t contain the correct results, any common table expression can be the culprit. Fortunately, debugging queries with common table expressions is not difficult.

  To illustrate what I mean, let’s assume we have a query that retrieves shipment information for one day. It involves a few tables:

  • a one-row table containing a shipment date
  • a table of shipment header information
  • a customer master table

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• Unperspective: Get Over Yourself

  October 21, 2019 Trevor Perry

  Some days I am a moron. And not just an average moron, but a complete moron.

  This week, I was speaking at a technology conference. As the momentary “expert” on the topic, I felt I was teaching well, and the audience was learning well.

  First, moron behavior. I read my reviews immediately before my next session. The majority were constructive, however, one stood out. It said that the “speaker was combative” and “derogatory to the audience.” I walked into that next session in a daze.

  My immediate reaction was defensive. I realized that the one person who kept challenging me …

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• IBM i Badges Reward You For Community Participation

  October 20, 2019 Alex Woodie

  If you are proficient on the IBM i platform and active in the IBM i community, then you might be interested in the new IBM i Community Badge Program sponsored by Big Blue that rewards IBM i professionals with digital certificates for actively engaging with the community. Nearly 100 badges have already been handed out, so don’t be surprised when they start popping up on the Web.

  The IBM i Community Badge Program officially debuted last Tuesday, October 8 – the same day that IBM launched the latest Technology Refreshes (TRs) for IBM i 7.3 and 7.4. The program, which …

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• HelpSystems Gets New Investors, CEO

  October 16, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Change is in the air in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, as HelpSystems recently announced that it has a pair of new investors, as well as a new CEO. The software company has also made strides in the security space with a pair of new offerings, including one that supports IBM i.

  Let’s start with the man – or should we say, the woman – at the top. Kate Bolseth, who was most recently the COO, has taken over the top job at HelpSystems. Bolseth was the general manager of cross platform products at HelpSystems when IT Jungle interviewed her last …

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• Thoroughly Modern: What To Pack For The Digital Transformation Journey

  October 16, 2019 Emmanuel Tzinevrakis

  Welcome to a new column called Thoroughly Modern. The name is meant to convey the idea that we need to define the desired – if ever-evolving – end state of our businesses and the people, processes, and programs that encapsulate how everything works when we get there.

  It is a given that everyone understands that digital transformation is sweeping every industry, with incumbents being challenged by upstarts – and each other – as they try to create new and better ways to provide products and services to customers in a modern, digital world. We accept this as a first …

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• Syncsort Expands IBM i Integration with ServiceNow

  October 16, 2019 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that want to take full advantage of cloud-based IT management services may be interested in hearing about a new offering unveiled by Syncsort last week. With the new release of its Ironstream for ServiceNow product, Syncsort is making it easier for companies to push IBM i and mainframe event data into ServiceNow Event Management.

  ServiceNow is barely five years old, but the company has already made a big mark in the burgeoning fields of IT service management and AIOps. With $2.6 billion in revenue and more than, 5,000 software as a service (SaaS) subscribers, the publicly traded …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, October 16

  October 16, 2019 Jenny Thomas

  It’s a big day for IBM. Big Blue will be reporting its Q3 earnings this afternoon and there are a lot of expectations on what results may, or may not, be seen from the Red Hat acquisition, among other possibilities. Of course, you can expect to see some slicing and dicing of IBM’s numbers, as well as what it may mean for our IBM i ecosystem, in future issues of The Four Hundred, but until then, please read on to check out what’s been happening around IT this past week.

  Top Stories From Outside The Jungle

  (Barron’s) IBM will …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 21, Number 41

  October 16, 2019 Doug Bidwell

  We were busy at IBM Systems Technology University in Las Vegas last week and also had to chew through the Technology Refreshes for IBM i 7.3 and IBM i 7.4, so we are not our normal chatty selves here at the IBM i PTF Guide. Please do forgive.

  So what’s new, you ask? There are new HIPER groups on all four releases. Yes, even IBM i 7.1, with MF66663, which deals with hard disk issues. That’s enough excitement for one week, really.

  New (or Updated) Links this week: None this week, busily gleaning useful tidbits from TechU calls material! …

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• Monoliths, Microservices, and IBM i Modernization: Part 2

  October 14, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Microservices are the future, right? After reading part one of this series, you can be excused for thinking that. Breaking up applications into smaller components brings clear benefits to both the development and operations staff, and clearly is an architectural approach that has a lot of momentum. But it turns out there might be practical limits to how far the microservices approach can take us.

  “Loosely coupled, yet tightly integrated.” That phrase became something of a running joke at an Infor conference attended by this reporter several years ago. The company at the time was betting heavily on its ION …

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• Need Help Approving A Modernization Project? Try A Business-Led Approach

  October 14, 2019 Ajay Gomez

  (Sponsored Content) Getting momentum and buy-in for a modernization project can be tough. I’ve lived through this and fought the battle many times. What makes it difficult is that the problem is not obvious and needs to be explained to people outside of IT. For example, it’s not obvious to a business leader that RPG II code should be modernized to RPG ILE. In fact, if we were to modernize the underlying code without telling them, they wouldn’t notice a difference. The business doesn’t see the effects of modernization unless it’s UI modernization, which is why it’s tough …

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• Guru: Move Objects with Access Client Solutions

  October 14, 2019 Dawn May

  Sending objects from one IBM i partition to another is a common task. Access Client Solutions’ IFS task makes it simple to copy or send objects. The IFS task was introduced in ACS in July 2016, so this is not a new development, but it may not be widely known.

  Perhaps you need to send a save file to another IBM i partition. There are several ways to do this. FTP and Secure FTP are often used, but using FTP to transfer IBM i objects involves all sorts of complications. The IBM i Knowledge Center dedicates an entire section on …

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• An 11-Core Power9 Makes The Rounds, And Other Hardware Enhancements

  October 14, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Those of us who go way back in the IBM midrange are used to rhythm in hardware announcements. In the early days, there were several announcements per year as new processors were rolled out across the product line and new peripherals for various kinds of storage and networking were rolled out. The pace was brisk back in the day, with nearly annual processor upgrades and associated updates to systems.

  These days, systems are really updated every three years or so, but still, there is the vestigial spring/fall announcement cadence when Big Blue now does Technology Refreshes for the IBM i …

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• Systems Software Stack Tweaked For Power Systems

  October 14, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As part of the October Power Systems announcements, IBM has made some minor tweaks to the systems software stack that runs underneath IBM i, AIX, and Linux on its Power-based systems.

  In announcement letter 219-451, IBM reveals enhancements to its PowerVM server virtualization hypervisor, the PowerVC implementation of the OpenStack cloud controller (which presumably has a pretty short life now that IBM owns Red Hat), and its Virtual HMC (vHMC) hardware management console for Power iron.

  The details are a bit thin, but IBM has made improvements with PowerVM V3.1.1 so Live Partition Mobility live migration of logical partitions …

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