• Reckless or Riskless: Another IBM i App Dev Expert Talks Security

  February 7, 2018 Dan Burger

  Security at the application level was the topic of an article in the Monday edition of The Four Hundred. Subject matter experts Brendan Kay, Alex Roytman, Robin Tatam, and Jon Paris provided insights and advice on the topic, which should be part of every organization’s overall security strategy. An additional perspective, which just missed the deadline for the Monday story, is being added today. It comes from Paul Tuohy, who lives eight time zones east of me, making the deadline I gave him a wee bit tight.

  Although this contribution stands on its own, when added to the insights …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, February 7

  February 7, 2018 Dan Burger

  Feedback on something you have written and published can warm your heart or give you heartburn. When his blog sparks some discussion among readers, Steve Will welcomes the dialog. Probably not 100 percent of the time, but let’s say more often than not. On this occasion, the topics are RPG and modernization. The discussion is still open. This would be a good time to makes some points of your own.

  Peek inside Monitor to pick up advice on cross-generational hiring and finding RPG programmers, tips on second and third programming languages to put in your skills toolbox, and warning signs …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 20, Number 5

  February 7, 2018 Doug Bidwell

  Just a reminder, the Spectre and Meltdown speculative execution security vulnerabilities have been classified by IBM’s Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) as having a “High Severity” level. As far as the Spectre and Meltdown issues go, there is nothing new on the IBM i, Power Systems, or Hardware Management Console (HMC) front. It is what it is.

  The HIPER and Security groups for each release were re-released two weeks ago, but only the first of each set below is included in the Security group. So, if you order and download the latest HIPERs and Security groups, you only get …

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• IBM Readies Mainstream Power9 Iron For Launch

  February 5, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The natives are getting restless, as my parents used to say when we were getting hungry. And the IBM i and AIX bases are definitely getting restless to know what Power9 iron that will be able to run Big Blue’s own operating systems in conjunction with the PowerVM server virtualization hypervisor. They also want to know if IBM is going to give customers a big improvement in price/performance compared to Power7+ and Power8 machines that are still widely available in the channel.

  In short, they want to plan their future, and after four years of waiting, it is time.

  IBM …

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• Reckless or Riskless: IBM i App Dev Experts Talk Security

  February 5, 2018 Dan Burger

  It is safe to say that your most sensitive and most valuable data is not safe. The threat of stolen data is a reoccurring nightmare for executive management who are mystified and somewhat dumbfounded by the number of vulnerabilities in their IT systems. Not all of them worry about the same things or are hearing the same strategies from their IT experts.

  Most can agree that what’s been done in the past isn’t going to cut it in the present, much less the future. One of the holes in the wall that protects data is at the application level. Existing …

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• Guru: Three Suboptimal I/O Practices

  February 5, 2018 Ted Holt

  I have on numerous occasions looked at source code that I had written in previous years and asked myself, “Why on earth did I do that? What could I have been thinking?” We live and learn, or at least we hope we learn. Today I share three database practices that I see from time to time that can be simplified. Maybe there’s something for you to learn today.

  Before I share the three examples, let me say that I do not consider the more cumbersome code to be wrong. To my way of thinking, any code that produces the correct …

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• Will Blockchain Impact IBM i?

  February 5, 2018 Alex Woodie

  Lately there’s been a lot of talk about blockchain, in both the IT press and the mainstream media, which is telling. Most of this talk centers around digital currencies like bitcoin that are based on blockchain technology. But because of the media-fueled speculative bubble that’s pushed digital currency values through the roof, it’s tough for a rational being to separate the incredible hype from the underlying reality.

  What’s interesting about the whole blockchain-bitcoin discussion, however, is how many smart technology folks have come out and basically said that while the digital currencies are interesting but not ground-breaking, the underlying blockchain …

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• The Persistence Of The IBM i Platform

  February 5, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Talking about switching platforms is one thing, and it is relatively easy if you are talking about moving from Unix infrastructure servers based on RISC servers to machines that are going to run essentially the same workloads on Linux systems based on X86 processors. Leaving the IBM i fold, particularly for customers who have created their own applications, is another matter entirely.

  That, in a nutshell, is one of the main reasons why the IBM i platform, in its many different incarnations in the past 30 years, has persisted. The database is the stickiest piece of software in the datacenter, …

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• Overdue Upgrades Perplex IBM i Shops

  January 31, 2018 Dan Burger

  When decision makers describe their IT environments by saying the more we know, the less we understand, there’s a problem that needs to be solved. Maybe you have the brains on staff to figure out how to put heat-resistant handles on this steaming pot. Maybe not. But the problem isn’t going to solve itself and those who don’t search for an answer become part of the problem.

  This specific problem bubbles to the surface when organizations fall behind on unsupported versions of the operating system and unsupported software. It’s risky business and a gamble that has little chance of paying …

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• IBM i Gets More PTFs for Meltdown and Spectre

  January 31, 2018 Alex Woodie

  IBM on Friday issued a second set of program temporary fixes (PTFs) for the IBM i operating system that address the Meltdown and Spectre processor vulnerabilities that were disclosed earlier this month. Meanwhile, IBM i customers are beginning to wonder about the performance impact that the patches will bring to production workloads.

  At about 11 a.m. Eastern time on January 26, IBM posted a message to the PSIRT Blog to let customers know that “IBM i has released PTFs in response to the vulnerabilities known as Spectre and Meltdown.” (We’ll assume that the urgent nature of the message led to …

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