The IT Jungle

RPG, Java, And The Future Of Infor’s IBM i ERP Suites

October 17, 2018 Alex Woodie

Infor is in the midst of a multi-year overhaul of its three RPG-based ERP suites for manufacturers, which include LX, XA, and System 21. When the overhaul is complete, the products will still run on the time-tested IBM i server, but the code behind the products will look significantly different.

In response to changing technology and customer expectations, Infor essentially is rewriting all three ERP suites using something called the Infor Development Framework. The IDF was originally developed to help transition the bulk of the Infor ERP XA product (MAPICS) from RPG to Java, and now it’s being used for …
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CM First Removes IBM i Requirement From ALM

October 17, 2018 Alex Woodie

Companies that are adopting the application lifecycle management (ALM) software from CM First no longer need an IBM i server, the company announced recently. The move with CM MatchPoint is intended to widen the deployment options for CM First’s targeted customer base, which is CA Plex and 2E users.

CM MatchPoint is used to automate the development of CA Plex and CA 2E environments, particularly among large development teams that are geographically dispersed. The software manages several aspects of Plex and 2E development, from user-submitted change requests and workflow to version control and deployment.

With the delivery of CM MatchPoint …
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Legacy Apps Kept Alive Just for Data, Survey Suggests

October 17, 2018 Alex Woodie

A good percentage of IBM i shops are keeping legacy applications running after their “use by” dates have expired for no other reason except the data they hold still has value, despite the security and privacy risks that those old systems pose to the organization, according to a new survey released by SoftLanding Systems yesterday.

SoftLanding Systems surveyed several dozen IT professionals at recent industry events, including International i-Power 2018 and PowerUP18, and concluded that 63 percent of IBM i shops are maintaining a legacy application just to access the data.

Asked why the organizations had not migrated the data …
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Four Hundred Monitor, October 17

October 17, 2018 Jenny Thomas

As we breathlessly await the news out of COMMON, which is happening this week in Pittsburgh, we turn to what else is happening in the world of IT. When it comes to IBM, it seems when we aren’t talking about Artificial Intelligence, we are talking about the cloud, and then we circle back again. This week is no different. IBM CEO and president Ginni Rometty kicked off the Gartner conference with a keynote that focused on AI, while Big Blue launched its Multicloud Manager. After you catch up on the news, be sure to help make some by weighing in …
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IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 20, Number 41

October 17, 2018 Doug Bidwell

The PTF Guide at IT Jungle has been keeping IBM i users up-to-date on Individual, Group, and Cumulative PTFs for many, many years. But this guide is only helpful if you use it, so please take the time to make sure you are current on your PTFs. The PTFs on this page go back over two years, which is hopefully a lot further back you’re you would need to go. OK, lecture over. Now for what’s new! This week was saw a Security Bulletin for Vulnerability CVE-2018-11763 in the IBM i HTTP Server that affects IBM i. However there were …
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New Open Source ERP Suite Written In ILE RPG

October 15, 2018 Alex Woodie

There’s something quite novel being introduced today at the Fall COMMON conference in Pittsburgh: An open source ERP package written in free-form RPG. Dubbed intERPprise, the software project is intended to harness core IBM i strengths – its integrated database and ILE environment – but above all, provide an example for what modern and native open source software can look like on IBM i.

The intERPrise project (www.i-nterprise.org) was spearheaded by a group of IBM i advocates, including Chris Hird and Marinus van Sandwyk, who wanted to demonstrate what a modern business application would look like – and …
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Sundry Power Systems Enhancements Round Out The Year

October 15, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

It is the fall – autumn if you speak formally as my British friends do – and that means Big Blue has some peripheral announcements to make to finish up the 2018 season.

In announcement letter 218-346, perhaps the most important development is that the PowerVM server virtualization hypervisor has a new update, V3.1, that supports the Power9 processor. We would have thought that this had happened already, way back when the first Power9 iron was announced back in February, but go figure. It may be that this release of PowerVM is the first one that is tuned to …
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Guru: A More Efficient Way To Merge With SQL

October 15, 2018 Mike Larsen

Lately, I’ve been using the merge statement in my programs to insert or update rows in a table. I recently came across a situation where a program using merge was running every few minutes and performing updates to thousands of rows each time it ran. Since this table was journaled, it was obvious some re-design was necessary.

For those unfamiliar with the merge statement, it is sometimes referred to as an “upsert.” That means it will either perform an update or an insert. In RPG terms, I like to compare it to a chain operation. With a chain, you check …
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No Room For Cloudy Thinking When Moving To The Cloud

October 15, 2018 Doug Mewmaw

With new IT innovation, comes new IT thinking. That’s the way it’s always been.

Right now, that new shiny IT toy that everyone must have is the cloud. In fact, the global market for managed services will grow from $107 billion in 2014 to $193 billion by 2019. As a result, Managed Services Providers (MSPs) are trying to convince CIOs to not only outsource their data center administration, but to trust them that they can manage their entire IT enterprise cheaper and more efficiently.

Unfortunately, they both may just have their head in the clouds. You see, I’ve been here …
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The Power8 Era Is Drawing To A Close

October 15, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

They have had a good, long run, perhaps longer than anyone would have thought except that with Moore’s Law losing steam, the gap between processor generations is stretching out further and further. The entry Power8-based Power Systems machines – the ones that are most commonly used by IBM i shops – made their debut in April 2014. And now they are getting reading to make their exit.

Big Blue likes to give customers a warning when things are ripped out of the product catalog, to its great credit, giving its channel partners and end users a chance to adjust …
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Infor Elaborates on Coleman, IBM i Strategy

October 10, 2018 Alex Woodie

When Infor held its annual Inforum conference two weeks ago, the new AI bot Coleman played a big part, but nary an IBM i word was muttered publically. But that shouldn’t come as a concern to the thousands of companies that rely on the company’s IBM i software to run their businesses, Infor’s IBM i strategy Ross Freeman leader says.

“We heard the same from Syteline customers. They didn’t hear much about Syteline,” says Freeman, who heads up IBM i strategy for the LX, XA, and System 21 ERP product lines. “We have 235 products and we’re all following the …
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Kisco Bolsters Network Socket Security

October 10, 2018 Alex Woodie

IBM i shops that are serious about security should monitor all potential ingress routes into their computer systems, including network socket connections. Now Kisco Information Systems is supporting the latest network socket technology in IBM i 7.2 with its network security tool, SafeNet/i.

The Internet is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the network itself and its array of supporting technologies allow companies to connect with customers on the other side of the world in powerful and potentially lucrative new ways. But on the other hand, the Internet also allow intruders on the other side of the world to …
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Bain Buys Rocket for $2 Billion

October 10, 2018 Alex Woodie

Rocket Software announced yesterday that Bain Capital Private Equity has agreed to acquire a majority stake in the company for $2 billion. The company’s management team will remain intact following the transaction, which is expected to be completed this quarter.

Rumors have been swirling in recent months that Rocket had put itself on the market and was looking to sell itself or its products. The investment by Bain Capital should put an end to the speculation, as Rocket CEO and president Andy Youniss says the company is embarking upon its fourth decade of growth.

“This new relationship will allow us …
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Four Hundred Monitor, October 10

October 10, 2018 Jenny Thomas

With Fall COMMON conference right around the corner in Steel City beginning on October 15, now seems like a good time to remind ourselves why it is important to stay on top of new technology and use your voice to participate in our IBM i ecosystem. Without the opportunity to learn from experts and trade ideas, any industry runs the risk of fading away. While COMMON offers all sorts of hands-on sessions and group discussion panels to feed your IBM i needs, travel isn’t always plausible due to things like work, money, and family obligations. Even if you can’t get …
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IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 20, Number 40

October 10, 2018 Doug Bidwell

There’s been some action on the PTF front with HIPERs and Security Groups for all releases this week. We also see that MGTools is updating again, with new stuff every week or two there. Again, there were no new links this week, but keep checking our handy guide to make sure you are staying up to date.

Quick sidebar on some interesting messages you’ll hear when you call IBM Service for support. It seems there won’t be any phone support for Sev2 and lower after October 15. We’re guessing that will result in an uptick in number of Sev 1, …
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Riding The Upgrade Cycle

October 8, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

In an ideal world, all servers would always be new and all operating systems and applications would be patched and running in optimal form. But we don’t live in that world. And that means for many customers that don’t have bales of money sitting around, sometimes the IBM i platform starts to get a little long in the tooth.

That is certainly the case for parts of the IBM i installed base. There are still a lot of Power5 and Power5+ customers out there who have resisted the temptation to upgrade their systems for the past five or six generations, …
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Modern Lessons From A Fresh IBM i Developer

October 8, 2018 Alex Woodie

Application modernization is a big nut to crack on IBM i. That is to say, there are many ways to tackle the problem, from the code and business logic to the databases and user interfaces. But when it comes to the type of developers you should look for and how they should spend their time, Kody Robinson has a few pointers that may be worth keeping in mind.

Robinson was a member of the first batch of “Fresh Faces” that IBM put forward in 2017 to showcase the fact that young people are building careers on the platform, and that …
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Guru: Learn %PARMS! Solve Two CL Problems!

October 8, 2018 Ted Holt

Those wonderful people at IBM have done it yet again! They have gladdened my existence with new CL functionality that solves two problems, and I will never have to face those problems again. Let me tell you about the new %PARMS built-in function.

The %PARMS function returns the number of parameters that are passed into a CL procedure (i.e. a CL program or a CL module). In the past, I have monitored for message MCH3061. That works in some situations, but not in all. The %PARMS function gives me an unambiguous way to know whether a parameter was passed or …
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As I See It: How Can You Think That?

October 8, 2018 Victor Rozek

While Congress, by constitutional fiat, may not abridge your right to free speech; your employer can and does. Of necessity, corporations worry about being accused of tolerating or, worse, promoting a hostile work environment. And because harassment laws draw no practical distinctions between sexual innuendo and pornography, or religious advocacy and political endorsement, or insults and threats, or jokes, cartoons, or any other form of expression for that matter, corporations generally wish you’d just shut the hell up.

Legally, corporations are liable for the aggregate of all their employees’ speech.

Even something seemingly benign, if repeated often enough by enough …
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The Cloud Changes Things, But Not Everything

October 8, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

One of the slowest things in the world is the pace at which risk averse enterprises change their information technology. We have been talking about computing on demand and utility computing for more than two decades, and Amazon Web Services made the cloud a real thing with the launch of its Elastic Compute Cloud, or EC2, service back in March 2006. Fast forward 12 years, and EC2 is the foundation of a vast business that made $21.2 billion in sales in the past 12 months, and it has utterly transformed the way people want to configure IT infrastructure so it …
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