• Big Blue Moves Up Technology Refreshes For IBM i

  August 6, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We knew that IBM was getting ready to flesh out the Power9 server lineup with the “Cumulus” processors for scale-up systems, used in machines that span from four to 16 sockets in a single system image, and we told you all about that last week for an announcement that is expected to come to pass on August 7. This is fitting with all of the rumors we heard at the beginning of the year, which expected the big iron to come in the third quarter.

  Normally, we expect Technology Refresh updates for the current versions and releases of IBM i …

  Read more

• CIO Summit Brings Execs Up To Speed On IBM i

  August 6, 2018 Alex Woodie

  The IBM i server is mystery to many. Not only does it run on abnormal hardware – at least compared to “standards-based” X86 computers – but its programming languages, user interfaces, and administrative tasks can seem otherworldly to the uninitiated. For Alan Seiden, the organizer of an IBM i-focused executive get-together known as the CIO Summit, dispelling the platform’s mystery represents something of a personal challenge.

  The next CIO Summit is in about two months, and Seiden, who’s a well-known PHP on IBM i expert as well as the founder and principle of the Seiden Group, is looking forward …

  Read more

• Guru: Beefing Up The Job Log, Take Two

  August 6, 2018 Ted Holt

  In Tracing Routines Explain Why The Computer Did What It Did, I wrote about the usefulness of writing information about program execution to determine why a program run gave certain results. Today I want to present a simpler method than the tracing routines. The tracing routines are not obsolete, but they are powerful and I have found them at times to be overkill.

  Just a word about terminology. Since I wrote that article five and a half years ago, my reading has led me to a different understanding of the terms tracing and logging. I’ve since decided that …

  Read more

• As I See It: Just Bag IT

  August 6, 2018 Victor Rozek

  Only two days in, my stay in Lassen Volcanic National Park was cut short by vanishing stars. Evidently the “new normal” knows no boundaries and has no respect for vacationers. It seems that every year now, there are fires, terrible fires, consuming the West. In Redding, California, 50 miles west of the park, 966 homes and six people were lost. More are missing. Over 90,000 acres of drought-stressed brush remain ablaze. As of this writing, 38,000 residents may have to be evacuated as swirling winds are spreading flames in all directions.

  But in the distant mountains I knew nothing of …

  Read more

• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 20, Number 30

  August 6, 2018 Doug Bidwell

  It is summer, and it is the usual quiet time in PTF Land. This week, there are new PTF groups for HIPERs and HTTP server! There is good stuff in there. . . .

  The SAP required PTF lists were updated on July 20 for IBM i releases 7.2 and 7.3, on the July 16 they were updated for IBM i 7.1. If you are running SAP, you might check out their links on the links page.

  There are, as you know from reading The Four Hundred, new enterprise servers coming, and they are very powerful machines! And there …

  Read more

• Guru: A Bevy of BIFs – %Dec to the Rescue

  August 1, 2018 Susan Gantner

  Author’s Note: This tip was first published back in 2009. I’ve updated the code examples here to use free format declarations. In addition I’ve added the potential use of %ScanRpl, which didn’t exist at the original publication date.

  More and more in RPG applications these days, it seems we need to process data that comes from “the dark side.” Translation: from a non-i system. This data could be coming from a browser screen via an RPG CGI program, from a CSV (comma-separated values) flat file, from an XML or JSON document, or myriad other ways. One thing these dark sources …

  Read more

• Guru: An Introduction to RPG’s XML-INTO, Part 1

  August 1, 2018 Jon Paris

  Author’s Note: The original version of this article was written in the V6 timeframe and included references to V5R4. References to the V5R4 limitations have been removed from this updated version. I have also updated the data definitions to take into account RPG’s ability for the direct coding of nested data structures rather than having to use LikeDS as before.

  RPG IV’s built-in XML support has been available for some time now, having been originally introduced with V5R4 back in 2006. However, it wasn’t until the advent of V6 with its removal of many of RPG’s size limits that it …

  Read more

• Guru: Getting The Message, Part 1

  August 1, 2018 Paul Tuohy

  Author’s Note: This article was originally published in October 2009. Since then I have worked on many modernization projects with many clients and, in every one of those projects, we have used some form of the contents of this (and the following) article. The content of the article has been updated for free form RPG and some of the coding enhancements that have been introduced, into RPG, since the original publication of this piece.

  When we look at modernizing applications (or writing new applications) one of the basic principles is to tier the application — i.e., separate the interface — …

  Read more

• IBM Readies Big Iron With “Cumulus” Power9 Chips

  July 30, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The Power Systems lineup has been updated top to bottom on single-socket and dual-socket machinery based on the “Nimbus” variants of the Power9 chip, which sport up to 24 cores per die and have up to four threads per core. These Nimbus chips are used in all kinds of machines, including those that can run IBM i, either alongside AIX or Linux using the PowerVM hypervisor or in what is made to look like a bare metal IBM i setup but which is really a PowerVM machine with one partition. (Shhhhh.) The Nimbus processors are also deployed in …

  Read more

• Syncsort Unveils MFA, Bolsters IBM i Security Suites

  July 30, 2018 Alex Woodie

  Syncsort last week unveiled new security and auditing capabilities for its IBM i user base, including a new multi-factor authentication (MFA) solution dubbed the Cilasoft Reinforced Authentication Manager for IBM i, as well as new releases of the Cilasoft and Enforcive security suites.

  Developing and selling security software has become one of the focuses for Syncsort, the Pearl River, New York, company that previously concentrated on developing mainframe data integration solutions and extract, transfer, and load (ETL) technology for distributed Hadoop clusters.

  Since it merged with IBM i high availability vendor Vision Solutions last year, Syncsort has acquired several …

  Read more

Previous Articles Next Articles