Timothy Prickett Morgan
-
Keeping Firmware Up To Date
October 6, 2015 Pete Massiello
… Read moreLast month, Larry Bolhuis discussed PTFs and keeping them current. This is extremely important, and I want to continue along on that theme of staying current. So, this month we will discuss determining the level of firmware of your Flexible Service Processor (FSP). If you don’t know what level it is currently running, you won’t know if it is up to date or not. It’s just as important to keep this up to date as your PTFs, your release of IBM i, or your Hardware Management Console (HMC) firmware. In all my travels, it seems people aren’t keeping their
-
More iSphere Goodies
September 29, 2015 Susan Gantner
… Read moreBefore I proceed with this latest installment on the features of the iSphere toolset that plugs into RDi, I want to first update a few items I’ve covered in earlier tips in this series.
First of all, in my first iSphere tip, I neglected to give credit to one of the primary contributors to the iSphere toolset. I had mentioned the team at TaskForce IT, but failed to acknowledge the significant work done by Thomas Raddatz of Tools400. My apologies to Thomas for that omission.
Second, thanks to continued development efforts, a new version of the iSphere plug-in is
-
Easy Conversion To ASCII
September 29, 2015 Ted Holt
… Read moreThe system we love so well has a long love affair with the EBCDIC collating sequence, but most of the world runs on ASCII and Unicode. Dealing with ASCII data has not been a trivial experience for RPG programmers, but IBM i 7.2 adds a feature that helps immensely.
In ancient days, RPG programmers would call the QDCXLATE API, which uses a translation table, to convert EBCDIC to ASCII. This is probably not a good solution. IBM’s translation tables were good for their time, but times have changed.
A modern solution is the iconv family of code conversion APIs, which
-
Auditing Object Changes In A Production Environment
September 29, 2015 Ron Adams
… Read moreLike many business environments today, my shop consists of just one person wearing many hats to support the IBM i system. This makes for a tight, controlled environment with that one person managing the system very efficiently. However, most auditors aren’t too pleased with this setup as it opens the door for potential violations with established compliance guidelines. Even though we are a small shop with minimal budget, we were able to easily develop a solution to satisfy the auditors. Here’s what we did.
Most environments like ours are run by individuals with high integrity and dedication to their jobs
-
Can OpenPower Take A Bite Out Of The Datacenter?
September 28, 2015 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIt is not often that I give readers of The Four Hundred reading assignments outside of this publication, but from time to time, in the course of the other work I do in other parts of the IT industry, I run across things that are relevant to adjacent markets that ultimately have some bearing on the Power Systems-IBM i platform. Such is the case with a presentation that the chief for IBM‘s Systems Group gave to Wall Street recently.
Tom Rosamilia, who has been general manager of the System z and Power Systems division in his long career at
-
IBM Issues HiPER And Security Patches For V5R4
September 21, 2015 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreHere is a weird one. Last week, IBM released PTF patches for OS/400 V5R4, also known as i5/OS 5.4, the venerable release of OS/400 that came out in February 2006 and that was withdrawn from marketing in May 2011 and had its standard Software Maintenance ended in September 2013. Extended maintenance is still running for those customers who pay for it, and will continue to do so until September 30, 2016.
While this Program Support Extension (PSE) support does offer tech support for the V5R4 stack on Power Systems and earlier machines, it has always been my understanding that Big
-
IBM Gearing Up For October Power Announcements
September 21, 2015 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreThe word on the street is that Big Blue is getting ready to make some announcements for the Power Systems platform in October, so brace yourself for more stuff. We are not sure exactly what IBM is gearing up to do, but we have heard some rumblings that will affect the IBM i customer base tangentially and perhaps, if we have our way, directly.
IBM likes to tie announcements to specific events, and personally, I would like for the new hardware, software, and services to be launched at the Power Systems and System Storage Technical University in Cannes, France, which
-
EXTOL Helps IBM i Shop with Web Services . . . m-Power Delivers In-Memory Analytics . . . VAULT400 Racks Up Another Win
September 16, 2015 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read more
EXTOL Helps IBM i Shop with Web Services
CURT Manufacturing has been using the EXTOL EDI Integrator for i software from EXTOL International for over a decade. But when the tow-hitch manufacturer decided to expand its business on the Web, it needed something to accelerate its new ordering processes.
That’s when it tapped another product from the Pottsville, Pennsylvania, software company: EXTOL Business Integrator (EBI) Web Services. With EBI Web Services installed on the company’s Power Systems server, CURT Manufacturing found the solution it needed.
It’s all about ensuring that CURT’s back-end processes could deliver faster response times to requests
-
Another Reason To Use Unrequired Correlation Names
September 15, 2015 Ted Holt
… Read moreAlmost eight years ago I gave you two good reasons to use a correlation name when SQL did not require one. A recent experience revealed to me another good reason to use an unnecessary correlation name, and I am happy to be able to share that information with you today!
A colleague of mine had an SQL query that ran to completion but produced the wrong results. He asked me to take a look at it, and I’m glad he did, because the experience taught me something. Let me set up the situation for you.
Assume two tables: a table
-
A First Look At SQL Descriptors
September 15, 2015 Paul Tuohy
… Read moreSQL descriptors allow for incredible flexibility when it comes to constructing dynamic SQL statements and/or processing the results of a dynamic SQL statement. But, since this is an introduction, let’s look at how they can be used in constructing dynamic SQL statements and leave their use in processing results for a later article.
Assume we want to embed the following SQL statement in an RPG program:
select workDept, empno, firstname, lastname from employee where workDept = ? and hireDate >= ? and birthDate >= ? order by workDept, empnoThe difficulty we have is that comparison values may or may