TFH Volume: 27 Issue: 71 Archives

IBM Wheels And Deals For Power Linux, But Where Is IBM i?

October 30, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

The whole point of the convergence of the RS/6000 and the AS/400 families of systems – including pSeries and iSeries and System p and System i – was not only to get a common, converged hardware platform that made IBM’s life easier, but to also – or so we have always believed – give a consistent deal to customers using AIX or OS/400-i5/OS-IBM i.

“A foolish consistency is,” as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, “the hobgoblin of little minds.” While that may be true, a smart consistency is the Spider-Man of great minds. Or at least those that think alike. …
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Navigator For IBM i On A Zigzag Journey

October 30, 2017 Dan Burger

Navigator for IBM i provides system administrators with tools that prevent them from losing their marbles, or at least delaying that outcome until the boss mentions that grounds maintenance and window washing have been added to the list of sys admin responsibilities.

Navigator continues to receive updates and enhancements, mostly based on filling in holes in the features and functionality that the product it replaced already possessed. IBM also takes requests from current users, which also find their way into future enhancement. But for the unskilled user trying to climb the learning curve, Navigator can be a frustrating stumble from …
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Guru: Logging SQL Errors And Warnings

October 30, 2017 Birgitta Hauser

If something goes wrong with an embedded SQL statement or an SQL routine (a trigger, stored procedure or user-defined function), the system does not crash. Instead, DB2 returns a negative SQL code and an SQL state that starts with something other than 00, 01, or 02. If the routine does not handle the error, the program continues to run.

It is good practice to log errors to a table, especially unexpected ones. Before you can log any errors, you need to know how an SQL error can be trapped and handled. You need to know how to write a condition …
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IT Horror Stories

October 30, 2017 Alex Woodie

Let’s face it: IT can be downright scary. From unpatched servers and failed ERP implementations to clueless CIOs and that clown in the server room, information technology is a business fraught with danger. Here are a few IT tales that could keep you up at night.

Are hackers lurking in your system? It’s more likely if you haven’t kept up on your patches. That’s the horrific lesson learned by Equifax, which recently disclosed that it lost sensitive data for 143 million consumers after bad guys worked their way into the system through a vulnerability in some open source middleware that …
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More Power7 And Power8 Features To Bite The Rust

October 30, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

The Power Systems catalog just keeps getting skinnier as the Power9 systems launch in early 2018 keeps getting closer. Ironically, as IBM pulls the plug on older Power Systems machines and their features, it is a good indication that Big Blue really is preparing the way for Power9. It is also a way to get customers who have no intention of spending on Power9 iron to buy something on their older gear before the features go away.

I saw a new abbreviation in announcement letter 917-177, which came out on October 24, and that was LTB – short for …
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IBM Wheels And Deals For Power Linux, But Where Is IBM i?

Navigator For IBM i On A Zigzag Journey

Guru: Logging SQL Errors And Warnings

IT Horror Stories

More Power7 And Power8 Features To Bite The Rust

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