• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 21, Number 40

  October 9, 2019 Doug Bidwell

  It’s time once again to peruse and ponder the updates Big Blue is making to the IBM i stack. As we report elsewhere, the Technology Refreshes have been announced for IBM i 7.3 and 7.4, which are coming out in the middle of November. And as always, there are some things to check out inside the IBM i PTF Guide for other stuff that is going on – and in this case, this was stuff that happened before the TRs were announced on Tuesday concurrent with IBM Systems Technology University, or TechU, being held in Las Vegas.

  The big warning …

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• Sometimes Even DIYers Need A Little Help

  October 7, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  If there ever was a crowd that liked to do it themselves, it is the IBM midrange. Well, probably more like half to two-thirds of the IBM midrange. But you know what I mean.

  These companies started programming way back in the 1970s with one of Big Blue’s System/3 or System 32, or System/34 machines, and moved on to the System/38 or the System/36. The former launched in 1978, a decade after the System/3 that started it all in Rochester, Minnesota, and the latter came out in 1983, five years before the AS/400. The machines had sophisticated batch and interactive …

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• Monoliths, Microservices, And IBM i Modernization: Part 1

  October 7, 2019 Alex Woodie

  What’s the best approach for application modernization: Maintain the monolithic architecture, or break it into individual microservices? This is an important question, especially for IBM i shops that are looking to take their considerable investment in encoded business logic to the next level.

  At first blush, the answer seems obvious: Monolithic architectures are bad, and microservices are good. Monolithic architectures, which are still quite prevalent in the IBM i world, proliferated from the 1970s well to the 2000s thanks in part to the popularity of packaged ERP suites that automated a multitude of processes and also to the programming inclinations …

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• Guru: Edit Result Sets in Run SQL Scripts

  October 7, 2019 Paul Tuohy

  Before getting into the detail in this article, I want it to be clear that I do NOT (in any way) advocate the direct editing of data in a production database. But when it comes to a test database, then the ability to directly edit data is invaluable.

  Back in the days of System i Navigator, you could right click on a table, select the Edit option and a window would open containing the contents of the table. You could directly edit the contents of any cell. Rows could be inserted or deleted using the Rows option on the menu. …

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• Automation For The Masses – Here Come The Bots

  October 7, 2019 Richard Schoen

  Have you ever heard of using a robot to assist in completing your daily work? Or maybe the concept of eliminating redundant manual data entry and re-keying of info you didn’t think was possible? Let’s talk about bots, as these software robots are known, and how they are coming to an IBM i shop near you and how your IT and business teams can leverage this technology to get work done more efficiently.

  Many people in the IBM i world have never heard of the acronym: RPA. RPA stands for Robotic Process Automation, the current buzz word for implementing software …

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• Power7 And Power7+ Will Truly Be Dead At The End Of 2020

  October 7, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  There are five dates that define the life of a piece of software and hardware: When it is announced, when it is generally available, when it is withdrawn from marketing, when service is withdrawn on the product, and when extended service (which is limited and which costs a lot more money than regular service) is dropped and the product is truly done for.

  With software, IBM sometimes provides service, service extension, extended service extension, and even extended-extended service extension. I am not making this up, and yes it sounds like the Monty Python SPAM skit. Take a look:

  As you …

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• IBM i Clouds Proliferating At Rapid Clip

  October 2, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Summer has come to a close, but what a season it was for cloud computing and IBM i. We had two major public cloud vendors, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, delivering IBM i on Power Systems (although Azure’s IBM i service is delivered via Skytap), adding to IBM’s service, which was unveiled earlier in the year. But how much better will it get?

  IBM i customers who were frustrated at the lack of public IBM i cloud options a year ago now have three to choose from. In early September, Skytap and Microsoft Azure publicly announced their joint offering to …

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• Midrange Dynamics Dives Into REST With Acquisition

  October 2, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Change management specialist Midrange Dynamics this month announced that it has acquired Rest4i, the UK-based developer of a native IBM i framework for integrating RPG and SQL applications with REST-based APIs. The move positions Midrange Dynamics as a player in the rapidly evolving world of microservices.

  Rest4i was founded several years ago by Stuart Milligan, who headed up DB2 database modernization firm Databorough before selling it to Fresche Solutions (then Fresche Legacy) back in 2013. Milligan foresaw the coming wave of microservices and developed software to “turn the IBM i into a complete REST API server and the RPG developers …

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• LANSA Revs Low-Code, UI Modernization Tools

  October 2, 2019 Alex Woodie

  LANSA is under new ownership, but that doesn’t appear to be slowing down the delivery of software, as the company has shipped a pair of product updates for IBM i and other platforms in recent months. That includes a new release of Visual LANSA, its flagship low-code development environment, and aXes, its screen modernization tool for 5250 apps.

  In July, LANSA announced a new release of aXes, its tactical modernization tool for converting 5250 applications into Web interfaces. aXes, which LANSA acquired 10 years ago, provides a way for IBM i shops to convert 5250 screens on-the-fly without any …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, October 2

  October 2, 2019 Jenny Thomas

  Each week, it seems like we point to far too many articles about data breaches and other types of cybercrime. So this week it is nice to be able to direct your attention to some positive news on the cybercrime front. IBM has launched a program to help cities learn how to protect citizens and businesses from those criminals lurking in the interweb. In the first article below, you can read more about a new project IBM has started with the City of Los Angeles better prepare and defend against cyberattacks. It’s a step in the right direction for getting …

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