Alex Woodie
Alex Woodie is Senior Editor at IT Jungle. He was previously editor of two of IT Jungle's main newsletters, Four Hundred Stuff and The Windows Observer. Prior to joining Midrange Server (as Guild Companies was formerly called) in October 2001, Alex was a products editor at now defunct publisher Midrange Computing, where he was first introduced to the AS/400 and covered hardware, software, and services for Midrange Technology SHOWCASE magazine. Before joining Midrange Computing, Alex was a staff writer for The Insurance Journal and a reporter and columnist with The Paradise Post newspaper. Woodie obtained his Bachelors of Arts degree in journalism from Humboldt State University in 1997. Upon graduation, Alex intended to make his way onto a major daily newspaper, but in 1999 he found himself drawn to the high-technology industry, where his background in science and engineering has suited him well. He lives in Northern San Diego County. When he is not writing next week's newsletters, Alex can be found in his favorite chair reading the day's paper, in the kitchen, or at the beach.
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Fall 2023 IBM i Tech Refresh Brings Something For Everyone
October 11, 2023 Alex Woodie
As expected, IBM yesterday unveiled its fall Technology Refresh (TR) for IBM i, with updates starting to become available on November 17. IBM announced no new products as part of the fall 2023 TR cycle, but it did spread the love around by giving just about everybody something to cheer about in IBM i 7.5 TR3 and 7.4 TR9.
Lots of different products that make up the IBM i environment will see some pretty meaningful enhancements with this release. If you spend a lot of time in Navigator for i or ACS, you will see new stuff. We haven’t had …
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Profound Bolsters Security, Authentication in Node.js Dev Tools
October 11, 2023 Alex Woodie
IBM i developers working with Profound Logic’s Node.js Web application and API development tools will be greeted with new security and authentication features when they move up to version 7, which was unveiled last month.
The new features are found in version 7 releases of Profound Logic’s Profound.js, which enables developer to create Node.js-based applications that run on IBM i, as well as Profound API, a variant of its Node.js tool for writing API-based applications that run on IBM i and access its database.
One of the changes that will greet users with Profound.js 7.0 is support for user-defined …
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IBM Releases Db2 For i Extensions For VS Code
October 9, 2023 Alex Woodie
Interested in developing new ILE applications in VS Code that utilize the Db2 for i database? Then you’re in luck, because IBM recently created and released vscode-db2i, an open source database extension for Code for IBM i, the uber popular development environment that enables ILE programming in VS Code.
It is tough to overstate the popularity of Code for IBM i, which Liam Allan created and released just over two years ago. The open source plug-in provides ILE functionality for Microsoft’s VS Code, enabling programmers to write and edit RPG, COBOL, C, and CL code in the lightweight, browser-based …
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Kisco Adds DUO Support to i2Pass, Okta Up Next
October 4, 2023 Alex Woodie
IBM i shops that desire multi-factor authentication (MFA) may be interested in the latest release of Kisco Systems’ MFA software, i2Pass, which adds support for the popular authenticator app from DUO. Support for Okta is coming next, the company says.
DUO Mobile is a popular authenticator app that runs on your smart phone and communicates with server-based MFA and two-factor authentication (2FA) systems to provide more assurance that the person asking for authentication is who they say they are. It was labeled the top 2FA product by the New York Times, which cited its simplicity.
DUO Mobile users can …
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Eradani Debuts DevOps Suite for IBM i
October 4, 2023 Alex Woodie
It’s been five years since Dan Magid, the former CEO of Aldon and an executive with Rocket Software, has been involved in the IBM i change management and DevOps business. But with next week’s launch of Eradani DevOps at COMMON’s NAViGATE conference, the longtime change management expert is getting back into the game. This time, however, Magid is taking a decidedly different approach.
What makes Eradani DevOps stand out from other change management tools on IBM i is its focus on open source tools. The folks at Eradani have realized that application developers in the mainstream IT world have pretty …
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API Dev Tool Delivers For Trucking Outfit
October 2, 2023 Alex Woodie
When the IT leaders at Ward Transport & Logistics set out to find a product that would allow them to call outbound APIs from their IBM i server for a new dynamic pricing system, they had an inkling of what they wanted. But when they looked for an API development tool in the IBM i market, they were surprised at what they found.
From its headquarters in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Ward Transport & Logistics provides less than truckload (LTL) service to customers throughout the region. The company’s 1,600 employees help Ward’s customers move freight with a fleet of 750 power units …
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Shield Builds on Success with Nagios for IBM i
September 27, 2023 Alex Woodie
Traditional system monitoring tools on IBM i are valuable, but they have one big downside: They often require an operator to sit there and stare at the screen to detect when things go wrong. “That gets old very quickly,” says Chris Hird, the Shield Advanced Solutions director who found an alternative approach in Nagios.
Nagios is unique among monitoring tools – at least in the IBM i world – in that it actively runs checks for a variety of systems on monitored machines on a continuous basis. It is constantly pinging target server (and network and storage devices) to check …
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Why You Should Be Concerned About the MGM ‘Vishing’ Attack
September 27, 2023 Alex Woodie
Las Vegas casino giant MGM Resorts International has lost millions of dollars this month and suffered damage to its brand as a result of a high-profile ransomware attack that is still ongoing across several of its properties. The hackers that infiltrated MGM’s computer systems are said to have used a low-tech social engineering technique dubbed “vishing” that just about any company is susceptible to, including IBM i shops.
The systems that hackers shut down on September 11 may or may not be IBM i servers or connected to them. MGM has been an IBM i user in the past, just …
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IBM Bolsters Database Security with Guardium 12.0
September 27, 2023 Alex Woodie
A new release of the Guardium database security software is expected to help customers detect insider threats faster and better comply with audit mandates, according to IBM. Guardium 12.0 also brings expanded support for databases and easier management in hybrid cloud environments, the company says.
IBM bought Guardium back in 2009 in order to improve its capability to monitor databases for possible security violations and SQL injection attacks. The security software helped to automate database security tasks by implementing a policy-based control layer for transactions as well as anomaly detection routines to single out potentially criminal behavior that would otherwise …
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Rocket DevOps Now Supports VS Code
September 25, 2023 Alex Woodie
IBM i developers who prefer to code within VS Code can now get all the goodness of automated change management and CI/CD with Rocket Software’s DevOps offering, which now supports the popular browser-based development environment, among other new features.
VS Code, which is short for Visual Studio Code, has rocketed to popularity in the IBM i community over the past couple of years. That popularity is due in large part to Code for IBM i, the Liam Allan-developed plug-in that brings ILE language support to Microsoft’s open source IDE.
Allan, who is known to despise IBM’s full-fledged Java-based IDE, …
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