Timothy Prickett Morgan
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Sundry Power Systems And PureSystems Announcements
September 30, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIt is the fall, and in fact, this is the end of the third quarter, so if there is going to be some wheeling and dealing so IBM can turn in a good finish to 2013, I would expect that to start this week. That said, Big Blue tweaked a few things here and there that you should be aware of before the fourth quarter push gets underway.
First, in announcement letter 213-434, you will see that IBM has updated the PureApplication System W1500 machines, which are clusters based on Intel‘s Xeon processors, and the W1700 machines, which
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Reader Feedback On The Possibilities With IBM i Entry Systems Sporting Power8
September 30, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreGreat article Tim, you are definitely on the right track . . . but, I believe, you need to take it one step further.
We need to develop the successor to the IBM i operating system. (No, Linux is not the answer.) While incorporating all the truly wonderful aspects of i, (single level storage, SLIC, etc.), it needs to be designed from the ground up as a 2D and 3D graphical system. Likewise, we need a new event-based, object-oriented programming language. (No, not Java). ASNA‘s Visual RPG would make a fine starting point. Then, if done right, instead
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Power8 And The Potential Oomph In Midrange And Big Boxes
September 30, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIn last week’s issue of The Four Hundred, I did a little thought experiment about how the Power8 processors from IBM would affect the entry part of the Power Systems market. I also talked about how a 12-core processor spinning in excess of 4 GHz was a lot of machine for an entry IBM i shop running a database and ERP applications. But, the good news is that IBM wants to sell Power-based systems more effectively against X86 machinery, and that means the performance is going up and the price per unit of performance is coming down.
But what
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Cleaning Up Excessive Job Logs On Your IBM i System
September 25, 2013 Hey, Joe
… Read moreThanks for the article on managing IBM i spooled files. We often find it useful to examine user job logs to see exactly where a problem is. But lately, we’ve been getting too many spooled files in QEZJOBLOG. We’re getting 17,000 QZSHSH and QP0ZSPWP job logs each day from website jobs. Any ideas on how to make these useless job logs go away?
–Dale
Preventing A Job Log From Being Generated
My first thought is to see where these jobs are coming from. If you can find the CL program, job scheduler, or submit jobs statement that launches these
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CPYFRMIMPF And Fixed Data
September 25, 2013 Ted Holt
… Read moreIt seems that every time I see Copy from Import File (CPYFRMIMPF) mentioned in a Web forum, the question concerns CSV files. CPYFRMIMPF also handles files of fixed-length fields. Such files have certain advantages over CSV files, and there’s more to using them than the IBM documentation tells you.
Don’t get me wrong. CSV files are great. I use them often. But consider that fixed-length data has its advantages. Two that come to mind are:
- Fixed-length character fields may contain any character without the nuisance of special treatment. In CSV files, character fields require special handling of the characters used
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Create A Generic Auditing Trigger With SQL
September 25, 2013 Hey, Mike
… Read moreNote: The document accompanying this article is available for download here.
I am writing a trigger receiver program using RPG with embedded SQL that will go through the before and after record images and create an audit record in an audit file for each field that was changed on an update operation.
I am developing a “shell” trigger program that I’d like to be able to modify slightly, and use the shell as a basis to write these audit records for each file with a trigger on it.
Instead of writing multiple (IF this field changed THEN DO…) for
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Reader Feedback On One Power 750 Matches Two Xeon Servers On SAP BW Test
September 23, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreYou write:
“The database IBM tested had 500 million records, which could fit into a machine with 32 cores; I am guessing here, but it would probably take a 64-core machine to do 1 billion records as HP tested with its pair of ProLiant DL580 G7 servers.”
What does the number of DB records have to do with the number of cores required? I’m not aware of any correlation between the two. Perhaps you were thinking of a correlation between DB records and RAM (only applies to in-memory databases; not IBM i).
“The HANA database has data compression and columnar
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IBM i To Ride The Coattails Of Linux On Power
September 23, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreI have said it before, and I will say it again. And probably again after that. Anything that makes the Power Systems business stronger lets the IBM i platform live a lot longer. And it is with that spirit that we should all greet IBM‘s announcement last week that it will be pumping $1 billion in investments in the Linux operating system running on Power processors.
It is always hard to tease out details on such big pronouncements from any vendor, but Jim Wasko, who is director of the Linux Technology Center in IBM’s Systems and Technology Group, says
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The Possibilities With IBM i Entry Systems Sporting Power8
September 23, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreAt the end of August, IBM‘s top techies from the Austin Power processor development labs showed off the features and functions of the forthcoming 12-core Power8 chip at the Hot Chips conference at Stanford University. As The Four Hundred pointed out in its coverage of the divulged specifications at the time, this processor will pack a serious punch. Perhaps way too much for most entry IBM i shops, in fact.
Or, perhaps not. Depending on how you want to make use of the substantial performance that Big Blue intends to cram into the Power8 chip, which is up and
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IBM Sells Off BPO Services Biz To Synnex For $505 Million
September 16, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreBig Blue is always rebalancing its workforce, which is a euphemism for layoffs at the company, and it is also looking to add to its portfolio of products through acquisitions or internal development as well as divesting itself of products it no longer feels are core to its business. Last week, IBM’s Global Services did a divestiture, something we don’t see very often.
Specifically, IBM sold off its business process outsourcing services business to a company called Concentrix, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Synnex. According to Synnex, this business generates more than $1.2 billion providing customer