• What’s Cooking In Code For IBM i?

  July 15, 2024 Alex Woodie

  With IBM beginning to pull back on green screen development tools for IBM i, the importance of Code for IBM i to the IBM i development community has never been greater. The good news is that there’s a lot of development activity at the moment around the Visual Studio Code plug-in, with new features to replace some of the outgoing greenscreen functionality.

  IBM announced that it was killing off some of the green screen development tools in its Application Development Toolset (ADTS) as part of its Technology Refresh (TR) for IBM i 7.4 and 7.5 in early May. Among the …

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• Fans Revving Like Crazy On Your Power10? Check The Firmware

  July 15, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It doesn’t happen very often, but sometimes a patch to firmware for Power Systems is defective, and when it does happen, we like to point it out.

  Defective PTFs happen fairly regularly with IBM i, as defective patches happen for other operating systems. Sometimes the effects of defective PTF patches are dramatic, sometimes they are just weird. Sometimes they are in between.

  Both IBM i 7.4 and IBM i 7.5 have a defective patch in the firmware for Power10 systems, and to be super precise it affects machine types 9105-22A (Power S1022), 9105-22B (Power S1022s), 9105-41B (Power S1014), 9105-42A (Power …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 26, Number 27

  July 15, 2024 Doug Bidwell

  Get your PTF patching fingers all cracked and stretched because you will be doing some typing this week. There are a three security issues you need to cope with and a slew of patches that run the gamut of subsystems on the platform. As usual, let’s start with the security vulnerabilities.

  First, we have Security Bulletin: IBM Java SDK and IBM Java Runtime for IBM i are vulnerable to a denial of service and bypassing security restrictions due to multiple vulnerabilities, which you can find out more about here. The patches for this issue, by IBM i release level, …

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• IBM Begins the Purge of Old Greenscreen Utilities

  July 10, 2024 Alex Woodie

  IBM is prepping the IBM i community to prepare to adapt to some substantial changes that are coming with the next release of IBM i, including the end of support for a large swath of the Application Development ToolSet (ADTS) that ships with Rational Development Studio (RDS). Source Entry Utility (SEU) and Programming Development Manager (PDM) are not among the ADTS tools getting the boot, but that’s not stopping midrange professionals from speculating that their time in IBM i is limited, too.

  As part of its May 7 Technology Refresh for IBM i 7.4 and 7.5, IBM issued a “software …

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• Where Do RPG Programmers Come From? And Other IBM i Questions

  July 10, 2024 Alex Woodie

  The IBM i community has faced a skills crunch off and on for the past decade or longer, as Baby Boomers retire and IBM i shops struggle to find replacements. One big reason for the hiring gap is that the old ways of finding new RPG programmers and other IBM i professionals no longer work like they used to, according to IBM i educator Jim Buck.

  “What they did for years was they just stole from the guys down the road,” said Buck, who is the president and CEO of IBM i training company imPower Technologies. ‘“I’ll go to …

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• IBM Bolsters Data and App Integration with webMethods, StreamSets Acquisitions

  July 10, 2024 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops are among the customers that could benefit from IBM’s completion of its acquisition of webMethods and StreamSets, which it announced last week.

  In mid-December, IBM announced an agreement had been reached with Software AG and Silver Lake, the private equity firm that owned a majority of Software AG, to acquire webMethods and StreamSets for €2.13 billion, or $2.32 billion per the conversation rate at the time.

  The two deals significantly bolster IBM offerings in the fields of data and application integration, which are areas of growing concern due to the rising popularity of artificial intelligence and the …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, July 10

  July 10, 2024 Jenny Thomas

  “The artificial intelligence boom across all industries has fueled anxiety in the workforce, with employees fearing ethical usage, legal risks and job displacement,” according to a recent report from Ernst & Young. AI remains at the top of the news cycle across many industries, and, of course, our IBM i ecosystem is no exception. And that means the people who work on and around the IBM i are also no exception to being concerned. Find out what the biggest AI worries are for employees in our Top Story this week, and then read on to get the round up from …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 26, Number 26

  July 10, 2024 Doug Bidwell

  After a pretty busy few weeks, you are getting a bit of a break, with only one security vulnerability this week. You can read about it in Security Bulletin: IBM Managed System Services for i and IBM System Management for i are vulnerable to a local user gaining elevated privilege due to unqualified library calls (CVE-2024-38330), with details at this link.

  The IBM i PTF numbers for 5770-MG1 and 5770-SM1 contain the fixes for the vulnerability, as follows:

  IBM i Release	5770-MG1	PTF Number
  7.4			SJ01170
  7.3			SJ01174
  7.2			SJ01175
  	5770-SM1	PTF Number
  7.4			SJ01325
  7.3			SJ01324
  7.2			SJ01323
  

  …

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• Big Blue Working On Replacement For Global Solutions Directory For IBM i

  July 8, 2024 Alex Woodie

  IBM is developing a website to replace the Global Solutions Directory, which it recently killed off. The new site should allow customers to search through a comprehensive list of IBM i applications serving specific industries, just like they could with the Global Solutions Directory.

  For years, IBM’s Global Solutions Directory served as the go-to mechanism for researching the wide breadth of IBM i software products available around the world. If you needed to know what kind of banking solutions existed on IBM i version 6.1 for midsized American credit unions, or what the market looked like for Indonesian construction equipment …

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• Thoroughly Modern: The Synon Transformation Journey, From Legacy To Modern Java Solutions

  July 8, 2024 Chris Koppe

  In today’s evolving tech landscape, companies that run CA 2E (Synon) on IBM i face significant challenges hindering progress and sustainability. Synon represents a fraction of the market share in IBM i environments, far behind RPG and COBOL, and IBM’s recent announcement to cease PL/I support in future OS versions will impact compliance for SOX-regulated and other industries.

  Moreover, shifts in ownership – from Computer Associates to Broadcom – cast doubt on Synon’s long-term viability and continued support. A dwindling pool of Synon developers, brittle applications that are difficult to integrate with modern technologies, and cryptic database structures further add …

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