• No developerWorks Content Will Be Left Behind, IBM Promises

  November 25, 2019 Alex Woodie

  IBM faced a stiff backlash last month when it announced plans to shut down a popular developerWorks portal, leaving it up to content owners to find a new home for their content. Since then, the company has taken steps to reassure worried customers that no content will be lost as part of the move.

  IBM hasn’t significantly changed its plans, which call for the developerWorks Connections website and all developerWorks Connections applications to be taken offline or deactivated on December 31 of this year. All of the content that is hosted there – including thousands of blogs, files, forums, wikis, …

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• How Infor’s Coleman Strategy Is Evolving, and How IBM i Fits In

  November 20, 2019 Alex Woodie

  It’s been more than two years since Infor unveiled Coleman, the company’s AI platform which became generally available earlier this year. It’s not on the roadmap for IBM i just yet, according to Infor. That may not sound ideal for Infor’s IBM i customers, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing.

  Coleman was unveiled by ERP software giant Infor in 2017 primarily as a digital assistant, which is a fancy way of saying a chatbot. Just as Siri and Alexa can answer questions about the weather or sports, Coleman could answer basic questions about the business, and even handle some …

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• Latest TRs For IBM i Now Available

  November 20, 2019 Alex Woodie

  IBM last week delivered the latest IBM i operating system Technology Refreshes, giving good IBM i boys and girls around the world early Christmas presents in areas like programing, operations, database, and security. Here’s a quick recap of the new stuff in IBM i 7.4 TR1 and 7.3 TR7.

  There were several general enhancements with IBM i 7.4 TR1 and 7.3 TR7. For starters, administrators gained more control over resources available to the Integrated Web Server (the one powered by Apache) with the new capability to install it the Web server in a user-specified sub-system. Admins also get new functions …

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• Who’s Watching i? The Kisco, Kid

  November 20, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Administrators today don’t have the time to sit at their consoles, waiting for things to happen. That’s a luxury that few are afforded. Instead, admins want to be notified when something happens – good, bad, or otherwise. One of the tools that makes this happen is Kisco’s iEventMonitor, which was recently upgraded with several new watch functions.

  Kisco Information Systems launched iEventMonitor several years ago as an affordable utility for keeping an eye on IBM i job and message queues, as well as storage and CPU usage. When things start to go wrong on a monitored IBM i server, iEventMonitor …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, November 20

  November 20, 2019 Jenny Thomas

  Artificial intelligence is often a hot topic in the news, making it a regular item in the articles we feature here in Monitor. But in an interesting twist, Alain Bénichou, CEO of IBM’s Greater China business, said that in China, which is considered a world leader in AI, while AI adoption is higher than the global average, it is still not as high as expected. This is not to say AI, or the news about it, is going anywhere, but it does give some food for thought about the difference between innovation and real world application. Read on to see …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 21, Issue 46

  November 20, 2019 Doug Bidwell

  There have been plenty of weeks when there was not much to report in PTF Land. This is not one of those weeks. We have lots of new cumes to tell you about, as well as news on Db2 Mirror for i and other tidbits for you. Let’s start with the cumes.

  When going through this week’s guide, be on the lookout for a new cume for 7.4 (C9304740), new cume for 7.3 (C9311730), and a new cume for 7.2 (C9297720). Also, don’t miss the new DB2 for IBM i Group for 7.4 and 7.3, as well as the new …

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• Microsoft Wants to Migrate Your IBM i Code to Azure

  November 13, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Microsoft is executing a plan with its partner Skytap to bring IBM i into its Azure cloud, as we’ve previously told you about. But another group within the technology giant has plans of its own to migrate IBM i applications to languages that can run natively on X86 servers and integrate more easily with Azure services.

  We caught wind of this group’s code migration plan a month ago when one of the technical specialists in the Microsoft Azure Global Customer Advisory Team (CAT) wrote a blog entry about the work they do. IT Jungle followed up with the IBM i …

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• Remain Hooks Change Management System Into GitLab

  November 13, 2019 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that manage their code using Remain Software’s change management software just gained a slew of new ways to hook their system into GitLab, an independent Git-based provider of DevOps solutions. The new software, TD/OMS V12 Milestone 1, also brings better integration with unit testing and cross referencing, while a new release of Remain’s Gravity bolsters management of cross-platform development projects.

  With a steady cadence of quarterly updates and one big release per year, Remain Software is endearing itself to IBM i developers who like predictability and perseverance. IBM i technology may not be moving incredibly fast at …

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• Db2 Web Query Lives On (Just Not V2.1)

  November 13, 2019 Alex Woodie

  There have been some rumors that IBM is going to sunset Db2 Web Query for i, or replace it with Cognos. Neither of those rumors is true, according to IBM, which recently made some changes to Db2 Web Query support.

  Db2 Web Query for i, of course, is the OEM version of Information Builders flagship BI and analytics tool, WebFOCUS, that IBM brought to market in the 2007 timeframe. The Java-based tool enables users to write queries for the Db2 for i database (and other databases) and view the results in a variety of pre-canned and custom dashboards and reports. …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, November 13

  November 13, 2019 Jenny Thomas

  It may not be a question as old as time, but the debate will rage on for what seems like that long. Mac vs. PC, which is better? Essentially, a Mac is a PC because a PC is a personal computer, which is what a Mac is. But most people associate a PC as a computer that runs the Windows operating system, not the operating system made by Apple. Regardless, in our first story below, IBM’s CIO says Big Blue has found that its employees are happier using Mac devices in the workplace. It’s an interesting development and maybe the …

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