• Investment In IBM i Leads To Innovation Award

  May 22, 2017 Dan Burger

  Running the company website on the IBM i is one of those ideas that demonstrates how people get in their own way by creating phantom obstacles. Without thinking much about it, the default website decision often is “put it on the Windows or Linux server.” Regrettably, the default setting doesn’t always yield the best results.

  Evidence to that effect is the work done by the Grand Rapids Association of Realtors. Migrating their website from a Windows server to their IBM i, on close examination, was a smart choice for several good reasons. Lower cost of operation, a content management system …

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• WannaCry: What IBM i Pros Need To Know

  May 17, 2017 Alex Woodie

  Last week’s epic WannaCry ransomware attack left hundreds of thousands of people around the world scrambling to recover their data, either by paying the cyber crooks or executing their disaster recovery plan. If you’re an IBM i professional, the question you should be asking yourself is: What if that were me?

  Companies in the United States escaped relatively unscathed from the ransomware attack, which exploited a known security vulnerability in the Windows operating system and was based on code that was “weaponized” by the National Security Agency and subsequently stolen by hackers.

  There are two main reasons for this. For …

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• ARCAD And GitHub Prepare For A Paradigm Shift

  May 17, 2017 Dan Burger

  One platform. One island. One epic story of survival. That may be over dramatizing the IBM i environment, but it makes a point about the dangers of single-platform thinking in a world that is multi-platform oriented. That thought occurred to me when I first heard that ARCAD Software, an IBM i vendor specializing in application development and DevOps, was partnering with GitHub, a collaboration-oriented software company focused on code sharing and reducing software delivery schedules.

  Until locking hands with ARCAD, GitHub was missing an IBM i integration point and ARCAD was relying on Rational Team Concert (RTC) for its …

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• Going Rogue with Open Source Support on IBM i

  May 17, 2017 Alex Woodie

  The number of IBM i shops adopting open source software (OSS) is on the uptick as companies strive to innovate more with fewer resources. However, the prospect of obtaining technical support for OSS tech looms as a major barrier to adoption. One potential option comes through custom support packages from Rogue Wave Software.

  While Rogue Wave Software isn’t strictly an OSS company, it’s no stranger to the paradigm either. Even before it its 2016 acquisition of Zend, which built a PHP business for IBM i shops, the company was quite active on the open source front. Considering that 70 percent …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, May 17

  May 17, 2017 Dan Burger

  For many IBM i local user groups, existence is hanging on by its fingertips. There are exceptions though and this week Monitor points you to an article highlighting a local user group success story. You’ve probably read the IT Jungle stories that have chronicled events surrounding the COMMON Annual Meeting and Exposition in Orlando, Florida, last week.

  And for those of you without a care in the world (We can pretend, can’t we?), we’ve included scary articles about bring your own device warnings and the loss of IT control nightmares.

  Top Stories From Outside The Jungle

  (IBM Systems Magazine) Most …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 19

  May 17, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  Every Wednesday, the IBM i PTF Guide is included in The Four Hundred to help system administrators figure out what patches to put onto your machines and what ones you can ignore. The IBM i PTF Guide is available in downloadable spreadsheet format, and we have taken the archive back about two and a half years for your convenience.

  We are, as always, thankful to Doug Bidwell, the owner of IBM i business partner DLB Systems Associates, who has been putting together a guide to help OS/400, i5/OS, and IBM i shops deal with patches for the past 19 years. …

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• Open Source On IBM i: Let It Grow

  May 15, 2017 Dan Burger

  The evaluation of open source software is nowhere near conclusive when it comes to enterprise grade application development. Decisions remain in the exploratory phases. Roadmaps are incomplete. Most are without clear routes to a destination. Some are without destinations. However, it would be wrong to assume roads are not being built.

  There is no way that the future of application development – on IBM i or anywhere else – can handle everything that is coming down the pike without open source. That’s not a mandate to jump on a band wagon. It’s an awareness wake-up call. The IBM i community …

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• HelpSystems Tackles IBM i Password Woes

  May 15, 2017 Alex Woodie

  Passwords, in many ways, are the bane of our digital existence. We can’t live with passwords, but we certainly can’t live without them either. HelpSystems is aware of the challenges posed by this necessary evil, and has plans to alleviate the password pain with a series of new products and enhancements to existing ones.

  Last week at the COMMON Annual Meeting and Expo in Orlando, Florida, HelpSystems Vice President of Technical Services Tom Huntington previewed for IT Jungle a new product the company plans to ship by the end of June.

  The new product is called Access Authenticator, and it’s …

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• Guru: How To Cancel A Bad SQL Update

  May 15, 2017 Ted Holt

  In Three Ways To Manage Unmatched Data I wrote about the use of the RAISE_ERROR function to force a SELECT statement to cancel when unmatched data is considered a fatal error. Another good use of RAISE_ERROR is to force an UPDATE statement to cancel when an invalid condition occurs.

  To illustrate, imagine that you and I work in a factory. All factories have inventory. The people we serve purchase some inventory items and manufacture others. Our job is to write a program that will allow certain people to zero out the inventory balance for certain types of purchased items.

  The …

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• COMMON Looking Youthful In 2017

  May 15, 2017 Dan Burger

  Professional organizations like COMMON exist to unite members, improve skills, provide information, encourage active participation, and promote professionalism. It takes more than meeting minimal requirements to stay on top of the fast-changing technology field and so agility is an attribute for COMMON.

  For the coming year, the association has a few new focus items, a new president, and two new board members. At the Annual Meeting last week in Orlando, Florida, out-going president Jeff Carey and executive director Manzoor Siddiqui discussed plans to improve COMMON and the benefits it offers its members.

  Personnel-wise Justin Porter is taking over as president. …

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