TFH Volume: 27 Issue: 79 Archives

Service Extension Outlined For IBM i 7.1 And PowerHA 7.1

December 4, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Operating system suppliers do not like to support too many releases of their code at the same time. It stands to reason because software support costs have people as a foundation, and people only get more expensive, not less so. And the companies that make operating systems have newer code with more features and better security and reliability that they want their customers to move to.

IBM i 7.1 has been a well-regarded instance of Big Blue’s proprietary midrange operating systems, a line that arguably stretches all the way back to the first release of Control Program Facility (CPF) for …
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Is The ‘Golden Age’ of Computing Leaving IBM i Behind?

December 4, 2017 Alex Woodie

About 50,000 people descended upon Las Vegas last week for AWS re:Invent, the biggest cloud computing conference in the industry. And AWS didn’t disappoint, rolling out dozens of new services, including automated machine learning, a multi-master NoSQL database, and even a graph database for finding hidden connections among billions of data points. With all the innovation going on at AWS, it’s worth wondering whether cloud innovation is leaving IBM i customers behind.

AWS CEO Andy Jassy didn’t mince words in describing what he views as the current computing revolution. “We are going through the biggest transformation of technology in our …
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Guru: A Handy Function for Unit Testing

December 4, 2017 Paul Tuohy

I would like to share a technique I use for dealing with lists in an RPG unit test program. According to Wikipedia, “. . . unit testing is a software testing method by which individual units of source code, sets of one or more computer program modules together with associated control data, usage procedures, and operating procedures, are tested to determine whether they are fit for use.”

In the world of modern RPG, this translates to writing “test” programs to test a specific piece of code. For example, when I write a subprocedure, I will write a test program that …
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Fresche Plan: Guidance Leads To Growth

December 4, 2017 Dan Burger

Without wings, an airplane has no chance to fly. A legacy-based IBM i shop is like an airplane without wings. During the past few years, more companies have recognized that IT modernization is necessary. It’s a complex problem with many moving parts and deserves a strategic approach for best results. At the same time, the transition has become an easier problem to solve.

Tools have evolved and much of the manual labor that was once required has been automated. And service providers have stepped up to handle work that companies are ill-equipped to take on themselves. Companies that are quick …
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The Tipping Point For Power9

December 4, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

The server market is booming as 2017 comes to a close, and IBM is looking to try to catch the tailwind and lift its Power Systems business from the doldrums and get it rising again on the IBM i, AIX, and Linux fronts. The word on the street is that the first commercial Power9 machines, the ones aimed at HPC and AI workloads, will ship sometime before the end of the year, with a fairly quick ramp of Power9 systems for more generic workloads.

It can’t come a moment too soon, and while we wish IBM had started shipping Power9 …
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Service Extension Outlined For IBM i 7.1 And PowerHA 7.1

Is The ‘Golden Age’ of Computing Leaving IBM i Behind?

Guru: A Handy Function for Unit Testing

Fresche Plan: Guidance Leads To Growth

The Tipping Point For Power9

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