Timothy Prickett Morgan
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Use SQL To Read IFS Directories
August 27, 2014 Ted Holt
… Read moreNote: The code accompanying this article is available for download here.
The Integrated File System (IFS) is marvelous, and without it this system I love so well would be history. Nevertheless, managing the files in the IFS is challenging. Recently I found myself wishing that I could use SQL to query an IFS directory. Since IBM had not provided me with that interface, I decided to build it myself. Here you are.
I didn’t start from scratch. Thanks to Bob Cozzi and Scott Klement, whose code I’ve appropriated over the years, I’ve written programs that access the IFS. Throwing
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IBM Gets The U.S. Nod To Sell System x Biz To Lenovo
August 25, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreThe deal is almost done, and IBM has nearly rid itself of an X86 market that it helped foster, sometimes unwillingly, and yet never could figure out how to dominate. Perhaps that was a good thing for computing as a whole, but it may not be a very good thing for International Business Machines, as we knew it, over the long haul.
I am talking about IBM’s $2.3 billion deal to sell off its entire System x business, including all of its X86 based systems and 7,500 employees who design, make, market, and sell its machines, to Chinese computing giant
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Reader Feedback On OpenVMS Spinout A Possible Prelude To An IBM i Future?
August 25, 2014 Hey, TPM
… Read moreNice article, well written and factual. I myself still work on OpenVMS because it “just works.” I too thought it would be a good idea to port OpenVMS to X86, ARM, and others–most of the knowledge in porting from VAX to Alpha made it easier to go from Alpha to Itanium.
Your article is one the only I’ve seen that mentions ARM and others or any reference to a comment about not limiting OpenVMS just to X86. I am assuming you are the only one who read everything that VMS Software said, then well done!
–No Name
Hello there. I
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Partners Need To Get Certified–For Power8 And IBM i
August 25, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreBusiness partners who resell Power Systems iron running the IBM i operating system have to jump through a lot of hoops to prove to Big Blue that they know what they are talking about when it comes to selling, installing, and configuring machinery. This is not a new thing to the IBM midrange, but rather the normal course of things since the days of the AS/400 and a natural consequence of selling a product through channel partners instead of a direct sales force. And that is precisely how all of us in the IBM i ecosystem want it to stay.
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IBM Bolsters Security Wares With Lighthouse, Crossideas Acquisitions
August 18, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreWith a few notable exceptions, IBM does not like to make big bang acquisitions. Rather, the company prefers to buy smaller companies that are onto a niche and are poised to grow and could use the help of Big Blue’s 140-country reach and massive salesforce and partner channel. The company has made two such small acquisitions in the security field in recent weeks.
At the end of July, IBM bought a small security software company based in Rome, Italy called Crossideas, which was founded in 2011 and which sells a suite of identity management software called Ideas. The Ideas
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Dell, HP Chase Upgrades From Windows Server 2003; Whither IBM?
August 18, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIt is less than a year before Microsoft pulls the plug on Windows Server 2003. Why should IBM i shops care? Because most of them are Windows shops, too, as it turns out. And many of them are likely running old releases of Windows.
Microsoft is pulling support for Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 R2 in July 2015, and frankly, now is even a little late for a lot of IBM i shops to start planning for the transition to Windows Server 2012, which presumably is the jump that most customers will make. According to Dell, Microsoft
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Power8 Packs More Punch Than Expected
August 18, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreHere is something you don’t see every day in the systems business. IBM is getting even better performance out of the new Power8 processors that were launched back in April than it anticipated. Systems performance engineer Alex Mericas, who works in IBM’s Systems and Technology Group, gave a presentation at the Hot Chips 26 conference in Silicon Valley last week, revealing that that the Power8 was delivering a little more oomph than expected.
As The Four Hundred previously reported, IBM revealed a lot of the details around the Power8 chip about a year ago at the Hot Chips 25
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Admin Alert: More On Porting User Profiles Between IBM i Partitions
August 13, 2014 Joe Hertvik
… Read moreAfter receiving reader email about my recent tip on how to port IBM i user profiles from one partition to another, I found there were two items that deserved more explanation and correction: 1) Restoring user profiles for multiple users; and 2) related parameters and objects that a restored profile needs. Here are some corrections and additional information that fill in the gaps that were missing from my previous article.
Correcting How To Use RSTAUT For Multiple Restored User Profiles
Reader David Miller asked me to clarify what I meant when I said the following about restoring private authorities for
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The Geezer’s Guide to Free-Form RPG, Part 5: File Definitions
August 13, 2014 Jon Paris
… Read moreWhile the changes in data definition introduced by the new free-form RPG support are great, I have to admit that it was probably the free-form file specifications that raised the biggest cheer from me. Let me tell you why.
I have always hated F-specs. Those nasty little single column codes drove me crazy. I could never remember what went where. I know I’m not the only one. All of the programmers we have taught RPG to over the last few years have also had similar problems coming to grips with with F-specs.
I am reminded of this almost every time
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IBM Tweaks Power8 CPU And Memory Prices Up
August 11, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIt looks like IBM was not happy with some of the initial prices it set for memory and processing capacity on the new Power8 systems that were launched back in April.
In announcement letter 314-088, IBM raised the price of the core activation on the EPXH feature card. This card has a 12-core Power8 processor (really two half Power8 chips slipped into the same socket) that plugs into the Power S824, which is a two-socket machine that can run IBM i, AIX, or Linux. Its clock speed is set at 3.52 GHz. Back in April, when the machine debuted,