Timothy Prickett Morgan
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IBM Cuts Core And Memory Pricing On Entry Power Iron
November 14, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreWe are always trying to get IBM to do more to promote the IBM i platform and the Power Systems hardware that comprises the physical part of that platform. In days gone by, Big Blue used to make very public and loud pronouncements regarding its ability to bring customers more value for the dollar, often above and beyond the Moore’s Law capacity increases that are just part of the chip business and usually at the tail end of the product cycle as we are now with the Power8 machines that have been shipping since April 2014.
IBM is not as
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The Hybrid Cloud Questions IBM i Shops Should Be Asking
November 7, 2016 Lief Morin
… Read moreWhen companies speak with service providers about hybrid cloud technology, many of them want to know right off the bat how much money they can save. That’s the wrong question to ask. The first questions should be: What business challenges do we face? Can the cloud help to address these challenges? And to what extent should we be using the cloud?
A transition to the cloud or a hybrid environment can provide companies with many benefits aside from cost savings, such as a broader set of services, a highly resilient architecture and the addition of a professional organization that manages
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Sundry Fall Power Systems Peripheral Enhancements
November 7, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreWe are still chewing through the October 11 Power Systems announcements, and this week we drill down into a variety of peripheral enhancements related to the IBM i platform. We may not have gotten new Power8+ processors for entry machines, and would have been expected sometime this year, but IBM is doing a bunch of things to make the existing Power8 machines more appealing and less costly to tide itself and its customers over until the Power9 processors ship sometime in the second half of next year.
The midrange and high-end of the Power8 product line have already seen their
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Beyond Hello With Node.js
November 1, 2016 Aaron Bartell
… Read moreIn Why Node.js? we discussed Node.js and how to get up to speed with “hello world” from a program, the Node.js REPL (Read, Eval, Print, and Loop), and a web application. Now we will build on that knowledge by actually creating an application to show your team.
A gent by the name of Rainer Ross recently posted a link to the IBM i Professionals LinkedIn group declaring the benefits of the new Webix framework. (Webix.com is freemium software. There are free versions and paid versions. Please adhere to the licensing.) Because of my comments on his post I received an
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SQL PL–The FOR Loop
November 1, 2016 Ted Holt
… Read moreSQL PL has four looping structures. The most useful one, to my way of thinking, is the FOR structure. It is different from–and more powerful than–the RPG FOR op code, and it’s easy to learn and use. Here’s how it works.
FOR iterates over a read-only result set and terminates when there are no more rows to process. Think of a FOR loop as a read-only cursor without the messiness of OPEN, FETCH, and CLOSE. Let me illustrate with a stored procedure.
create or replace Procedure Billing (in p_BillingCycle dec(3)) for One_Customer as select c.AccountNumber from customers as c where -
IBM i Access Client Solutions For Database
November 1, 2016 Paul Tuohy
… Read moreIf you are an SQL user, you need to get your hands on IBM i Access Client Solutions. After some false starts, it looks as if IBM is heading in the right direction again when it comes to providing tools to help us develop and use SQL. I want to take you through some of the highlights of the database functions of IBM i Access Client Solutions.
Some Background
Over the last few years, trying to find the right tools for the SQL developer has been quite a challenge. There were Run SQL Scripts in System i Navigator, the
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IBM’s Power Systems Stalls A Bit As Power8 Wanes
October 31, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreWith the Power9 chips slated for some time in the second half of next year, and the Power8 systems not being upgraded with a formal Power8+ variant, it is not surprise to us that sales of Power Systems iron based on the Power8 chip that launched in April 2014 are waning. It is the nature of every product cycle to have its ramp, its peak, and its slide. The slide is just a way to extract profits, with the ease of sales and improving yields on chips compensating for the fact that Big Blue has to discount more to move
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IBM Opens Up Coherent Protocols For Power Chips
October 24, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIn case you did not get the memo, IBM is dead serious about promoting the Power architecture as a credible alternative to the Xeon architecture from Intel and the various upstarts that want to take a piece of the processing action in the datacenter. The OpenPower Foundation, formed a little more than three years ago, is the center of gravity for the Power push, but Big Blue has aspirations for some of its technology that go well beyond its own chips.
That is why IBM is forming the OpenCAPI Consortium, a group of like-minded IT suppliers and customers who
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SQL PL Conditional Structures
October 18, 2016 Ted Holt
… Read moreRecently I gave a brief introduction to the SQL Procedures Language, or SQL PL, a procedural language that works with the DB2 family of database management systems. Today I present the conditional structures, IF and CASE. If you so choose, you will master them in minutes.
But first, I need to clear up one matter. In my previous article, I referred to SQL PL as a proprietary language. Mike Cain, of the DB2 for i Center of Excellence, emailed to correct my error. Mike pointed out that SQL PL is based on SQL/Persistent Stored Modules (SQL/PSM), which is an
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A Style Guide for Modern RPG and ILE, Part 2
October 18, 2016 Paul Tuohy
… Read moreOne of the basic principles of programming is that coding conventions (guidelines and standards) improve the readability of source code and make software maintenance easier. Coding conventions provide the foundation for developing applications that are easy to maintain and modify. This article completes the style guide to coding RPG programs using free-form RPG in an ILE environment started in A Style Guide For Modern RPG And ILE, Part 1.
Older Functions
When using free-form RPG (and nothing but free-form RPG), a lot of the old RPG “functionality” is no longer available (e.g., operation codes such as MOVE, MOVEL, GOTO,