• DB2 For i Support Now Offered by Rimini Street

  June 26, 2017 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops now have another option for obtaining technical support and maintenance services in support their DB2 for i environment: Rimini Street. And in some cases, owing to the uniquely integrated nature of this platform, the vendor will even provide support for the IBM i operating system as well.

  Earlier this month, the Las Vegas, Nevada, company announced that it’s now offering third-party support services for all three versions of IBM‘s DB2 database – DB2 for i, DB2 for z/OS, and DB2 for Linux, Unix, and Windows (a.k.a. “Cousin LUWy”), in addition to the SQL Server database from …

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• Rocketing Ahead With An API Engine

  June 26, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The history of computing is governed by a plethora of opposing forces, with the polar opposites interweaving and interleaving to create more general trends that undulate and cause the waves we ride on top of or get swamped by. There is a tendency toward abstraction and the desire to get closer to the iron to wring the absolute most performance out of a specific system, for instance. Humans don’t think in binary or assembler – well most humans don’t but there are always a few genius weirdos – so the speed of execution is sacrificed for the speed of the …

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• Guru: Storing Images In An SQL Table, Part 1

  June 26, 2017 Mike Larsen

  In the first part of this series, we’ll look at how we can store images (or other media) in an SQL table on the IBM i. To accomplish this goal, we’ll write an RPG program that reads a table that has the name and location of the images from a folder in the IFS, and writes those images to a table.

  The images will be stored in a column that is defined as a BLOB data type. ‘BLOB’ stands for ‘Binary Large Object’, and is a collection of binary data that is stored as a single entity in a database. …

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• IT Budgets Partly Sunny Thanks To The Cloud

  June 26, 2017 Dan Burger

  Lowering costs is not the only thing to scrutinize when noodling the idea of moving selected IT workloads to the cloud. But people do tend to focus on that and wonder if the cloud saves money or if the costs just get moved around like the pea under the shell in the old carnival game.

  Computer Economics, in its latest report on IT spending, presents data that credits cloud for the continued success of do-more-with-less strategies in IT departments of all shapes and sizes. The report backs that up by unearthing a five-year pattern of IT spending reductions figured …

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• How Far We Have Come

  June 26, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  When the AS/400 turned 29 last week – and yes, I know the stack is called IBM i and I know that it now runs on what IBM calls Cognitive Systems based on Power processors – I happened to be on an airplane coming back from Frankfurt, Germany, after attending the International Supercomputing Conference. As it turns out, the Power9 processor married to Nvidia’s Tesla coprocessors using its “Volta” GPUs was one of the hot topics of conversation, and so was the coherent, shared memory architecture that will lash CPUs and GPUs into a shared memory space of sorts that …

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• Seven Bright Spots To Ponder On The AS/400’s 29th Birthday

  June 21, 2017 Alex Woodie

  Today is the 29th birthday of the AS/400. If the box was a person, it would be pondering the big three-oh coming next year, and perhaps taking one last year to bask in the glory of youth. While the IBM i platform is no youngster, it’s far from the grave.

  Here are seven bright spots that could potentially illuminate the platform’s path forward into middle age:

  All About Those Apps, Apps, Apps

  IT decision makers typical don’t start using a particular computer platform because of the platform itself, but because of the applications. Applications drive server sales.

  The IBM i …

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• IBM i, Watson & Bluemix: The REST Of The Story

  June 21, 2017 Dan Burger

  Integrated Web Services is nothing new for IBM i. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing new in Web services. A couple of years ago, IBM introduced Bluemix, an integration framework that, among other things, allows applications on other systems to connect with business logic running on i. The Bluemix tooling was designed to consume REST APIs, which can be used to connect Watson and IBM i. That’s where the newness is evident.

  The plumbing that’s necessary to make these things happen is being built by the IBM i development team led by Tim Rowe, business architect for IBM i …

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• Dell EMC Revs All-Flash Arrays

  June 21, 2017 Alex Woodie

  Dell EMC shipped new releases of its VMAX All-Flash array last month that supports IBM i and other platforms. Specifically, the computer giant rolled out a new entry-level array that stores up to 1 petabyte, as well as a 4 PB monster designed for the most demanding operational and analytic workloads.

  Dell EMC has a long history of providing enterprise-class storage for the IBM i server and its predecessors, starting with the old EMC Symmetrix arrays and continuing with today’s flagship VMAX All Flash frames. In fact, Dell EMC is the only other provider of native storage for IBM i …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, June 21

  June 21, 2017 Dan Burger

  If you’re on top of your game, you see this coming. But even the best prepared are sometimes surprised. When the time comes for a platform evaluation at your organization, can you defend what you do and why you are doing it? Before you get caught with your pants down, read this advice from someone who knows how to cover his technology assets.

  This week’s Monitor also includes articles on accurately accessing emerging technology while facing a hurricane of hyperbole, measuring your Digital IQ (the results won’t be made public), and what’s behind the Oracle to DB2 database migrations. We …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 24

  June 21, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  It is interesting to note in this week’s IBM i PTF Guide that support for Samba Windows-style System Message Block (SMB) file serving has been added (in 5733-OPS, Option 11) and that it is being patched as needed. The Security PTF is because the Samba project has added bug and security fixes into the Samba 3.6 source that need to be included in the IBM i PASE package.

  Additionally, the HIPER and Security Group PTFs are being updated on V7R3 and V7R2, and the HIPERs on V7R1. As always, its recommended you stay as current as possible on at least …

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• Ought To Be Committed

  June 19, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Reassurance is a paradoxical phenomenon. If we are secure about something, we don’t look to be reassured about someone’s commitment to that thing; if we have our doubts, reassurance can help calm our nerves and soothe our fears, but ironically, the very act of reassurance can, in a way, undermine our confidence even as it helps reinforce it.

  Funny, isn’t it?

  It is with this irony in mind that we ponder some recent statements by IBM concerning its commitment to the RPG and COBOL compilers and Rational for i development tools for the IBM i platform. To be specific, back …

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• Will AI Replace ERP?

  June 19, 2017 Alex Woodie

  Programmers in the midrange space are used to coding IBM i applications, like ERP, supply chain, and retail management systems, using RPG, Java, and COBOL. It’s simply what they do. But what happens when machines program themselves and react to events in real time? One impact, according to prominent members of the software industry, is the end of the enterprise software business as we know it.

  Led by Web giants like Google and Facebook, the computing industry is making rapid advances in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). The advent of deep learning techniques, such as convolutional neural networks, …

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• Guru: How Do You Do That With RDi? Part 3: Complex Compiles

  June 19, 2017 Susan Gantner

  In an earlier tip I tried to convince RDi users to give up compiling in PDM because the RDi compile interface has the time-saving Error List to offer. I offered some tips that help me with my compiles in RDi. Here I’ll continue my “Compile in RDi” campaign by offering some additional ideas for those who have more complex compile processes.

  There are two common issues I hear that keep people returning to PDM for their compiles. One is that their library lists aren’t set up correctly for the compile and the other is that they need to do something …

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• Mad Dog 21/21: Nervous Nellies

  June 19, 2017 Hesh Wiener

  IBM has about 375,000 employees. Five years ago, the company’s payroll covered roughly 430,000 employees, some 55,000 or around 15 percent more than today’s estimates. IBM didn’t simply trim its workforce. Rather, IBM dismissed tens of thousands but also hired many others. The corporate headcount numbers reflect the net impact. Meanwhile, in every single quarter since 2012, IBM’s revenue declined compared to the year earlier period. So, to cut costs, IBM may continue to pare its payroll. Many IBM employees are worried. Yet they may be the lucky ones: They still have their jobs.

  The potential for sweeping layoffs at …

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• A Fresche Emphasis On Services

  June 19, 2017 Dan Burger

  How does your organization plan its IT roadmap? If that roadmap includes implementing new technologies and modernizing legacy systems while staffing has been set at maintenance mode levels, your choices are to hire additional staff, admit the roadmap goal is unattainable, or contract the work to be done by a company with experience helping organizations meet their needs with expertise for hire.

  The decision is not an easy one regardless of how easy it may seem to offload your problem onto someone else’s shoulders. Trusting a professional service provider with specific experience in what you need may seem like an …

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• IBM i Picks Up The Slack

  June 14, 2017 Alex Woodie

  Have you heard about this new thing called Slack? While it may sound like something your least productive programmers might do, Slack is actually one of the hottest new productivity apps in the land. And now it’s coming to the IBM i, thanks to BVS Tools.

  Brad Stone’s BVS Tools recently rolled out a new application called GreenTools for Slack, or G4SLK. The product is an extension of Stone’s existing communication tools that integrates the IBM i server with Slack.

  Slack, if you’re not aware, is a free Web-based service designed to help companies communicate and collaborate more effectively. …

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• Maxava iFoundation Grants Available; IBM i Community Benefits

  June 14, 2017 Dan Burger

  When it comes to investments in the IBM i community, the leading-by-example philanthropy of Maxava, now in its seventh year, has hit the target of making meaningful change. The company’s iFoundation has put funds in the hands of local user groups where it encourages IBM i professionals to become active in the community and get people thinking and moving and becoming more connected and more engaged.

  Maxava just confirmed another $50,000 to fund foundation grants to local user groups that promote training and education in IBM i technology. This program reminds me that change is better served by good …

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• A New Data Connection From IBM i To Watson Analytics

  June 14, 2017 Alex Woodie

  Big data analytics is everywhere these days. It simply can’t be helped. And now that IBM is supporting the capability to load DB2 for i data directly into the Watson analytics service, it could be worth your IBM i time to check out what IBM has cooking in Cognitive.

  IT Jungle recently checked in with Steve Sibley, IBM’s vice president and business line executive in charge of systems, to talk about the latest developments with Watson, including the new DB2 for IBM i Connect tile on BlueMix.

  The new tile “is designed to make it easier for our clients to …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, June 14

  June 14, 2017 Dan Burger

  An IT strategy is often a major resource strategy. Where to allocate resources and how much to allocate is a big part of it. When you are the chief architect for IBM i, you set your priorities beginning with the DB2 for i database and work from there. There are competitive strategies to take into account and collaborative strategies as well. In this article, Steve Will talks mostly about the need for collaborative strategies.

  You could say open source is an important collaborative strategy for IBM i. There’s a legitimate emphasis in that direction. Building skills and increasing the IBM …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 23

  June 14, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  The only group updated this week was the SF99706 High Availability for V7R1 group. It has approximately 30 fixes, dealing with everything from missing disks to security breaches. It is well worth putting this HA group on your system if you are in a PowerHA world, or dealing with iASPs. For fun, we have listed a few of the PTFs in the group below:

  SI57128 - OSP-OTHER Fix Poodle vulnerability issue. The Poodle vulnerability issue was found in CIM. This has been fixed. Disable SSLv3, the RC4 and RSA Export ciphers in CIM.
  MF62562 - LIC-OTHER Additional Debug Support. Added 

  … Read more

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