• Talking Shop With Power Systems Chief Stephen Leonard

  May 10, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Whether or not you were aware of it, the Cognitive Systems division of IBM – what we still colloquially call Power Systems here at IT Jungle and what everyone else still calls it for the most part – has had a new general manager for quite some time and we had not yet had a chance to talk to the new chief. But recently we did hop on the Zoom with Stephen Leonard to get some insight about the Power Systems business and how it fits into the new and evolving IBM and the rapidly changing IT sector.

  Leonard dates …

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• Thoroughly Modern: IBM i Web Development Trends To Watch In the Second Half

  May 10, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It is hard to believe, but in terms of budgets and thinking, within six weeks we will be entering the second half of 2021, a turning point year if there ever was one, and perhaps an inflection point for 2021 itself and thus for the next decade or so.

  The need to modernize is not lost on most IBM i shops, but it seems like there’s a new web technology to learn each week. It’s no surprise that getting started with Web development is a stumbling block in itself. That’s why vendors like Fresche are working to demystify Web development …

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• Guru: Date Format Confusion

  May 10, 2021 Ted Holt

  Hey, Ted:

  I use the Copy to Import File (CPYTOIMPF) command to build a CSV file to be sent to a MySQL system. My colleagues are unable to import the file because of the format of a timestamp field. CPYTOIMPF puts a hyphen between the date and time (e.g. 2021-05-10-04.36.24.849555), but the other system wants a space between them. Other than writing a custom program do you know of another way to change the format of the timestamp output?

  — Richard

  You won’t need a custom program, Richard. There’s another way to handle this requirement.

  IBM has already very thoughtfully …

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• Precisely To Bolster Data Governance With Infogix Buy

  May 10, 2021 Alex Woodie

  The private equity groups that own Precisely (formerly Syncsort) last week announced a plan to acquire Infogix, a provider of data governance software and related tools designed to boost trust in data. While there is some overlap with Precisely’s current software, particularly in data quality, the company says Infogix’s offerings will bolster its overall data integrity story. For IT Jungle readers, the fact that Infogix has IBM i software may be of interest.

  Infogix has a long history in the IT business going back to 1982, when Madhaven Nayar founded the company in Naperville, Illinois as Unitech Systems. For decades, …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 23, Number 19

  May 10, 2021 Doug Bidwell

  As The Four Hundred reported last week, there is a major bug in Access Client Solutions 1.1.8.7. We originally said that IBM was pulling it and replacing it soon with ACS 1.1.8.8. We were expecting it last week, but it did not happen. Since this story ran, IBM has said that customers moving to ACS 1.1.8.7 should do so and then call into IBM and get a patch called TESTFIX_1.1.8.7  and apply it. Here is a link to the document that tells you how to do this and here is the link to the patch itself. This is …

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• RPG Gets the ‘Splits’ with Latest TRs

  May 5, 2021 Alex Woodie

  The latest batch of Technology Refreshes (TRs) for IBM i 7.4 and 7.3 wasn’t a barnburner by any means. But the twice-yearly update brought a little bit of new stuff for everybody, including RPG programmers, who gain three new built-in functions, one of which is called %SPLIT.

  RPG remains the most popular language on the IBM i platform, with a solid 87 percent share, according to the recent HelpSystems Marketplace Report, nearly twice the share of Java and over four times the share of COBOL. Good old Report Program Generator, for what it’s worth, is the closest thing to the …

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• Guardicore Extends Zero-Trust Security to IBM i

  May 5, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Guardicore, which is trying to shake up the firewall market with its “micro segmentation” security solution, recently announced that it has extended its “zero-trust” approach to the IBM i platform. The offering will help IBM i shops close blind spots in their security posture by monitoring the server for signs of problems, the company says.

  Guardicore develops a software-based security solution called Centra that uses a micro segmentation approach to protecting IT assets from evolving security threats. Micro segmentation is a relatively new approach to cybersecurity that revolves around the concept of breaking the network down into multiple segments or …

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• In Search of Multi-Modal Data Integration

  May 5, 2021 Alex Woodie

  As the number of data sources that companies use goes up, so too does the complexity of the data pipelines that bring it all together. Instead of using a mix of different tools and technologies for ETL, ELT, and batch integration, some users are seeking a single multi-modal data integration tool that can deliver multiple integration approaches.

  One company providing multi-modal data integration is Equalum. The company’s DataOps offering works in various methodologies, including capturing real-time database updates using change data capture (CDC) technology; batch-based extract, transform, and load (ETL) and ELT; and REST- and SOAP-based data integration using …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, May 5

  May 5, 2021 Jenny Thomas

  One of our favorite readers emailed recently to share the results of his Google alerts. He is on the lookout for mentions of the “IBM i” and we wanted to let us know it would be a pretty short list some days if it weren’t for IT Jungle. A compliment for sure because we are quite proud of the work we do here to keep you informed about our little ecosystem, but also a little sad since we would also like to see more voices talking about this robust and vibrant platform. For Monitor, we also have trouble finding other …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 23, Number 18

  May 5, 2021 Doug Bidwell

  As The Four Hundred reported earlier this week, there is a major bug in Access Client Solutions 1.1.8.7, and IBM is pulling it and replacing it this week with ACS 1.1.8.8. In the meantime, stick with ACS 1.1.8.6 until this shakes out.

  Also, there is updated microcode for Firmware 950 – and it is HIPER! Check it out at this link.

  There is another issue we need to tell you about: Installation of Java 8.0 SR6 FP20 on IBM i May Result in an “abort” Event Causing JVMs to Suddenly Terminate. Find out more at this link, …

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• A Cornucopia Of Compute

  May 3, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Ever since the advent of file servers in the 1980s, the rise of client/server system architectures in the early 1990s, and the commercialization of Internet networking in the middle 1990s, AS/400 shops and those using the progeny of that venerable IBM midrange computer have had hybrid computing platforms in the datacenter. Meaning, a mix of processor architectures and operating systems other than OS/400 or IBM i that was in some fashion associated with or actually doing mission critical work.

  In fact, as you all well know, there is in aggregate more raw compute in the X86 or RISC servers that …

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• Open Source Technology Stands On The Shoulders Of Legacy Applications

  May 3, 2021 Michael Killian

  From microservices to the cloud, executives often want to follow all the latest IT trends. Application developers are no different, except that they want to preserve all of the hard work they and their colleagues have done, while still meeting the new demands of the business. How can this be done? The answer could lie in employing open-source technologies, but in a manner that acknowledges that these technologies would never have been able to flourish without business-oriented languages such as RPG and the applications that millions of programmers have created and supported over more than four decades.

  RPG Gave Us

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• Guru: Customizing RDi Beyond Preferences

  May 3, 2021 Susan Gantner

  In my last tip , I covered a few of the preferences that I like to change to customize the way I use RDi. But there are a number of other customizations I use that aren’t implemented via the Preferences dialogs. I’ll continue the customization topic in this tip by covering some of those other options.

  Compile-Related Customizations

  I’ll start out with a couple of things I like to change related to compiling code. This includes customizing and creating new compile commands and modifying my compile Error List.

  I like to modify some of the parameters for the “ordinary” compile …

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• Will COVID Drive Long-Term Changes in Customer Interaction?

  May 3, 2021 Alex Woodie

  The COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing lockdowns shocked companies and economies all over the world. The unprecedented events of the past 14 months accelerated the digital transformation strategies of numerous organizations. But how long will those changes last? Maybe not very long at all, according to one survey.

  It’s hard to overstate the significance of the changes that the novel coronavirus has had on our way of life. Being in close proximity to other people – once a requirement for normal human functioning (not to mention commerce) –suddenly became a medical liability. Millions of businesses, schools, churches, and other organizations abruptly …

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• Major Bug In IBM i Access Client Solutions

  May 3, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Stop. Don’t click that mouse or hit Enter just yet. There is a major bug in Access Client Solutions 1.1.8.7. Here is the story that we got from one of the many Dougs we know in the IBM i Rebel Alliance, in this case J Douglas Robertson, who is a certified maintainer of IBM Power Systems and who ran into the issue when doing the upgrade.

  JD shares the workaround he figured out after the ACS console flew up its own port hole after the upgrade. These words are straight from his own mouth, in italics so you know JD …

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• ILEditor2: Satisfying The Need For Development Speed

  April 28, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Liam Allan doesn’t like anything to slow him down. “I’m impatient,” says the young IBM i phenom. So when he’s writing RPG or COBOL, the code editor had best keep up with him. That’s a problem using something like Rational Developer for IBM i (RDi), which Allan doesn’t particularly care for. And that is one of the primary reasons why Allan developed ILEditor, which is now in its second incarnation as ILEditor 2.

  Just over a year ago, Allan and his business partner, Connor Holyday, shipped the first release of ILEditor 2. The pair had just completed an extensive …

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• What’s New With BRMS, PowerHA, And Db2 Mirror

  April 28, 2021 Alex Woodie

  The latest IBM i Technology Refreshes (TRs) brought a number of enhancements to various parts of the operating system and related licensed products. That includes new stuff for its backup and recovery product, BRMS, as well as the two high availability offerings, PowerHA and Db2 Mirror.

  On the Backup and Recovery Media Services (BRMS) front, IBM added several new features with IBM i 7.4 TR4 and IBM i 7.3 TR10, including new SQL services that returns log information for BRMS activities. This new SQL service generates the same information that the Display Log for BRM (DSPLOGBRM) command does, but it …

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• On Your iRadar: Super Smart Chatbots

  April 28, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Don’t look now, but thanks to breakthroughs in natural language processing (NLP), we’re on the cusp of having chatbots that can provide human-like question-answering capabilities. Within a matter of years, according to experts, basic communication between companies and their customers will be handled by AI, leaving humans to handle tougher cases and VIPs.

  The key breakthrough driving advances in NLP are large language models, specifically a class of language model called a transformer network. These transformer networks use deep learning methods to essentially learn the right sequence for words to go together. The order of words has been one of …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, April 28

  April 28, 2021 Jenny Thomas

  The winds of change are blowing. Well, it might be more correct to call is a slight breeze, but the fact is that we are starting to see a slow rebound from the pandemic. This week, our own Alex Woodie reported on tech conferences happening around the IBM i. Virtual elements still remain, but the return to in-person conferencing is underway and coming to a city near you. Get more details in the Top Story below and then stay in the loop on what’s happening in your area (or on your computer) by checking out the Chats, Webinars, Seminars, Shows, …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 23, Number 17

  April 28, 2021 Doug Bidwell

  You may recall last week, when we were in PTF Guide Download Heaven. As wonderful as it was to have so much to report to all of you, we do owe an apology for the typo on the Cume release levels. With so much happening in one week, it was a case of a little too much excitement and not enough attention to detail. Please accept our sincere regret for the error. Let’s solider ahead with this week with some security bulletins, as well as the regular rundown of PTF Groups by IBM i release level.

  Security Bulletin: OpenSSL for …

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