TFH Volume: 27 Issue: 12 Archives

Security Awareness: Eight More Patches For IBM i Vulns

February 27, 2017 Alex Woodie

National security awareness month isn’t until October, but that didn’t stop IBM from issuing a torrent of patches this month to address all kinds of security problems in its products. For IBM i specifically, Big Blue patched eight flaws found across the OpenSSH and OpenSSL libraries for the three IBM i OSes under support. The Power HMC also received numerous security patches, as did dozens of other IBM products.

OpenSSL and OpenSSH have been the source of numerous security vulnerabilities over the past three years, ever since the Heartbleed flaw was found in OpenSSL. As more flaws are found in …
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IBM i Community To Get Closer Look At Watson

February 27, 2017 Dan Burger

The cogs in cognitive are turning. And there are indications that IBM is ready to go beyond the story of how it works to stories about it is working. The messengers remain somewhat tight lipped, but we can expect cognitive to be a celebrated technology at the COMMON conference in early May.

Watson, the face of IBM cognitive computing, is highly recognizable. Bluemix, IBM’s cloud platform for building, running, and managing apps and services, including Watson, is getting more attention. And the number of APIs that pull this together with integration points for all platforms, including IBM i, …
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Guru: Eliminate The Legitimate Use Of GOTO, Take Two

February 27, 2017 Ted Holt

I was annoyed that IBM chose not to support GOTO and TAG in free-form RPG calculations. I rarely used those opcodes, but when I did, it was in disciplined situations when nothing else would do. Besides, I didn’t want to be treated like a baby. Now it’s a non-issue. IBM finally provided an alternative to the last legitimate use of GOTO.

Almost five years ago, I wrote about a situation that I come across from time to time, namely the need to execute a clean-up routine before exiting an RPG subprocedure. Since nothing forbids a subprocedure to have multiple …
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As I See It: Expanding Reach And Shrinking Intelligence

February 27, 2017 Victor Rozek

For those of us accustomed to ingesting information in scraps, the Lincoln-Douglas debates would have been a month’s worth of forced-feeding. Lincoln, the challenger, and Douglas, the Senate incumbent from Illinois, jousted seven times in seven cities adhering to a format that would shrivel today’s sound bite-spouting politicians, and overwhelm voters with truncated attention spans.

The first candidate would speak for a solid hour, followed by a 90-minute rebuttal, topped-off by a 30-minute rejoinder from the first speaker. Three hours of political debate; three hours of issues and remedies, analysis and inspiration, with speakers erudite enough to keep audiences engaged …
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What’s Wrong With Modern RPG?

February 27, 2017 Dan Burger

IBM continues to enhance RPG. If it wasn’t being improved on a regular basis, there would be cause for concern, but some people find cause for concern in everything. Satisfaction is on the other side of the fence, even after they’ve crossed the fence. That’s not an endorsement for “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” There’s always room for constructive criticism and honest assessments of the circumstances.

That brings us to the RPG enhancements in the recently announced Technology Refresh identified as IBM i 7.2 TR 6 and IBM i 7.3 TR …
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Security Awareness: Eight More Patches For IBM i Vulns

IBM i Community To Get Closer Look At Watson

Guru: Eliminate The Legitimate Use Of GOTO, Take Two

As I See It: Expanding Reach And Shrinking Intelligence

What’s Wrong With Modern RPG?

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