Timothy Prickett Morgan
-
Reader Feedback On A Hypothetical Future IBM i System
September 14, 2015 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreOver the past several issues of The Four Hundred, I have been talking about the gap between the impressive performance that IBM delivers with each successive generation of Power processors and the amount of capacity that the vast majority of customers need. Or, more precisely, the capacity that they don’t seem to need to run their core IBM i workloads, much to the chagrin of Big Blue, its reseller and ISV partners, and the rest of the IBM i ecosystem that is trying to make a living.
In addition to outlining that performance gap, with the help of
-
Taking The Power Systems Pulse With GM Doug Balog
September 14, 2015 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIt is hard to believe, but we are most of the way through the third quarter and looking ahead to the final quarter of the year. There is a pretty big lag in time between the last bit of business that is done in every 13-week period and when large companies like IBM actually know how well or poorly they have done. In the case of the Power Systems division within Systems Group, and particularly with the IBM i portion of that business, Big Blue says as little as possible to quantify and qualify how the business is doing. But
-
How Do I Join Tables? Let Me Count The Ways
September 1, 2015 Ted Holt
… Read moreNormalization is the process of making sure that each datum is stored in the proper table. Storing data in the wrong place gives rise to anomalies, a fancy word for problems, and you have enough problems already. To make sense of normalized data requires that tables be joined. Do you know the methods to code a join with SQL and the advantages and disadvantages of each one?
Method 1: WHERE
When I first learned SQL, joining was done in the WHERE clause of the SELECT statement. Here’s an example.
select h.*, d.* from SalesOrderHeaders as h, SalesOrderLines as d where -
The Path To XML-INTO Happiness, Part 3
September 1, 2015 Jon Paris
… Read moreNote: The code accompanying this article is available for download here.
In part 1 and part 2 of my XML series, I introduced you to the basics of using RPG’s XML support. In this tip we begin to explore some of the challenges that you may face when processing commercial XML documents, and the support RPG offers to handle them.
Take a look at the snippet of an XML document below:
<ItemsXRef > <Header RefId="xxxxx" TimeStamp="2011-11-30T00:06:06.643Z"> <to id="nnnnnn" name="nnnnnn"/> <from id="nnnn" name="A Company in Canada"/> <TransactionType>ItemXref</TransactionType> </Header> <Items> <SKU> <SKUID>10050322</SKUID> <UPC>6866261486</UPC> <WIN>30269675</WIN> <StatusCode>A</StatusCode> </SKU> <SKU> ... <snip> ... </SKU> -
A Hypothetical Future IBM i System
August 31, 2015 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreA few weeks ago, in the main story in this newsletter, I showed you the Power processor roadmap running out past the Power10 chip in 2020 and later and talked about the contrast between the huge amount of processing capacity that IBM is delivering in its Power Systems line and the relatively modest amount of oomph that the vast majority of IBM i shops need to do their daily work to make their daily bread. The gap, as I showed, is quite large, and it will continue to be so if current trends for usage growth and capacity growth continue.
-
Set Your Library List From A Job Description
August 18, 2015 Ted Holt
… Read moreNote: The code accompanying this article is available for download here.
On August 4, 2015, I asserted that the proper residence of a library list is a job description. Talk is cheap. Now it’s time for me to put my money where my mouth is. I have a utility that gives me easy access to the library lists in job descriptions. I wrote this utility last year, and now I use it daily with great results. Today I make that utility freely available for you to use in your shop.
If I were to follow IBM’s naming convention, I
-
An Introduction to Processing XML With RPG, Part 2
August 18, 2015 Jon Paris
… Read moreNote: The code accompanying this article is available for download here.
In the first part of this series I introduced you to the basics of using RPG’s XML-INTO op-code. In that tip I showed how the provision of a count provided by RPG in the PSDS can be used to determine how many of a repeating element were processed.
However, as I noted at the time, this can only be used when handling a repeating outer element. But what if there is a repeating element within each of those outer elements? In this second part of the series we
-
Magic Software Rises Despite Devaluing U.S. Dollar
August 17, 2015 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreHot on the heels of its announcement of enhancements to an in-memory data grid for its Magic xpa application development environment that will eventually support the IBM i platform, Magic Software turned in pretty good numbers in its most recent quarter despite the compressing effects of current fluctuations that are affecting all global IT suppliers.
In the second quarter ended in June, Magic said that it had increased revenues by 4.6 percent to $42.5 million. Gross profits were down 4.4 percent to $15 million, but the revenue bump was large enough to cover the gap and net income actually rose
-
What Will IBM i Do With A Power10 Processor?
August 17, 2015 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreThe gap between what is needed and what is provided has been growing and growing for years, and we don’t talk about that very much in the IBM i base. As someone who loves big iron with lots of horsepower, I tend to look on each new Power chip rollout as a chance for the IBM i platform to capture more and more work. While this happens at a number of shops that mix IBM i and Linux workloads–and sometimes AIX, too–for the most part, the IBM i platform is a silo in the datacenter even if other applications tickle
-
The IBM i Market Is Not Economics 101
August 10, 2015 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIt is a time of transition for the Power Systems line, and that is one of the reasons why sales have been picking up in recent quarters. The full Power8 product line has been rounded out and is shipping in volume, from the smallest single-socket box up to the biggest, baddest 16-socket server. The Power7+ processors have been in midrange machines since October 2012 and came to entry machines in February 2013 and are winding down in the channel. With IBM i 5.4 sunsetted and IBM i 6.1 saddling up for its ride to the west, this is when we