• IBM i Scalability Stays The Same With 7.3

  April 25, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  All operating systems are not created equal, at least not when it comes to NUMA scalability. For a long time now, the IBM i operating system has trailed the scalability of its peers, AIX and Linux, on Power processors when it comes to spanning the large number of cores and threads that IBM forges into its Power machinery. Back in the dawn of time, and many of you were there with me, it was a very exciting thing to even be able to have a two-processor, two-thread machine like the AS/400-D80, which made its debut in April 1991 and which

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• Sundry April Power Systems Announcements

  April 18, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As we reported last week in discussing IBM‘s Power processor roadmap for the next five-plus years, there is not going to be a Power8+ revamp of existing Power Systems machines. Instead, IBM has rejiggered the Power8 chip to create a variant aimed at supercomputing and deep learning workloads that allows for high-speed NVLink coupling between Nvidia “Pascal” Tesla GPU coprocessors and the Power8 chip. That means there is no performance boost or list price cut (or both) that is normally expected and delivered with a “plus” variant of the Power chips. But as we expected, IBM has made a

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• IBM i Strategy And Roadmap Loses Business Focus

  April 18, 2016 Dan Burger

  A white paper is supposed to help readers understand challenges and provide an objective discussion of problems and solutions. It should not be a thinly disguised image enhancement device. Do that once and it rains on all your subsequent white papers. We all would like to see IBM sell more IBM i servers. But after reading the latest white paper on IBM i, it misses the mark of a real white paper. Let me start by giving you a link where you can download this document titled the IBM i Strategy and Roadmap. I recommend everyone read it. It

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• DB2 Web Query For i Now Supports External Databases

  April 18, 2016 Alex Woodie

  New OLAP and temporal data capabilities in DB2 headlined the launch of IBM i 7.3. But those weren’t the only analytic functions delivered last week by IBM. Tucked inside the announcements was a new release of DB2 Web Query for i that will make it easier to bring data from outside databases into an IBM i-based data warehouse. IBM is including new data adapters with DB2 Web Query for i Standard Edition version 2.2 that support PostgreSQL, MariaDB, and MySQL. The new release also includes support for generic Type 4 JDBC drivers, which will make it easier to get

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• As I See It: He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not

  April 18, 2016 Victor Rozek

  The sheer magnitude of the math first caught my attention. It was an article I came across called 19 Signs Your Employer Doesn’t Care About You. Nineteen, mind you! Not the usual 3 or 7 or even the venerable Top 10; someone actually dredged up 19 different indications that a stranger–who they only glimpse professionally–may not be their most ardent admirer. OK. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they don’t dislike you. But let’s face it, you have to break a sweat to think up 19 tells that prove someone doesn’t give a rat’s thumb drive about you. Most

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• We Can Just Barely See RPG In i 7.3

  April 18, 2016 Dan Burger

  Just another day in RPG paradise. No place we’d rather be. Kicked the old fixed-format habit and have gone free. Embedded SQL and integrated XML. Got RDi wired. You’re totally modern, so what’s next? Well . . . if you’re looking for RPG fun in i 7.3, you’ll be mostly disappointed. The IBM shopping cart isn’t empty, but that loaf of bread and a package of baloney isn’t the rib-eye steak we were hoping for. In case you missed it, the steak was delivered with the IBM i 7.2 TR 1 release in the fall of 2014, which was also

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• Inside the New Analytic Functions of IBM i 7.3

  April 13, 2016 Alex Woodie

  If you’ve been waiting for new analytic functions to come to IBM i, your wait is about over. The new release of the IBM i OS that will ship Friday brings several new analytic features to the DB2 for i database–including the capability to do time-based queries and several new OLAP functions–that customers have been asking IBM to add for several years. Temporal Queries The new temporal features in DB2 for i will allow users to perform time-based queries, which could be used for business intelligence reasons, as well as for security and auditing reasons. Mark Anderson, the chief architect

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• Why WebSocket Apps Are In Your IBM i Future

  April 13, 2016 Alex Woodie

  Do you pine for the simpler days of the AS/400, when RPG was king and data was served through super-efficient 5250 interfaces? If so, you’re not alone–the relentless crush of modern technologies takes a toll on all of us. But while the world isn’t likely to go back to RPG and 5250, you might find something that works in a similar way in a new technology called WebSockets. KrengelTech‘s Aaron Bartell had a great description of WebSocket during a recent BCD webinar on Node.JS and other open source technologies for IBM i. “It’s basically full duplex communication from client

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• How InterForm Simplifies XML Document Handling for IBM i

  April 13, 2016 Alex Woodie

  At the turn of the century, extensible markup language (XML) promised to simplify many data interchange tasks for IT professionals. Sixteen years later, XML is firmly part of the technological menagerie in the United States, but nowhere near a universal standard. However, over in Europe, XML is a much bigger deal, which is why InterForm added significant new XML capabilities in the latest release of its IBM i-based forms package. Supporting XML isn’t just a good idea for companies who deal with clients in Europe. In many cases, it’s the law, says InterForm CEO Peter Sørensen. “In Europe almost every

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• WOW Makes a Good Database Story

  April 13, 2016 Dan Burger

  Those who do more with less get rewarded. Sometimes the incentive is a raise or a bonus. Sometimes it’s just being able to keep your job. Either way, you could be surprised what can be accomplished in terms of business intelligence, graphical presentations, and modernization with a relatively unknown product called WOW, which is the name of the Web application development tool from PlanetJ. WOW, an abbreviation for Web Object Wizard, was designed to extract data in real time from relational databases, including DB2 for i and all the other enterprise databases of note, while generating the kinds of

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