TFH Volume: 30 Issue: 17 Archives

How GraphQL Can Improve IBM i APIs

March 9, 2020 Alex Woodie

IBM i shops are embracing APIs as a method for accessing data and programs, just like the wider IT world. As RESTful Web services overtook SOAP-based ones in popularity, IBM i shops moved with them. Now a new approach to Web services, dubbed GraphQL, is gaining traction in the wider IT world, and leading IBM i developers are right there again.

GraphQL, if you’re not familiar, is a relatively new language and runtime for exposing and consuming APIs. The software, which was originally developed in 2015 by Facebook to streamline delivery of content in complex environments, essentially provides an abstraction …
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Thoroughly Modern: Giving IBM i Developers A Helping Hand

March 9, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

The good thing about the Moore’s Law improvements in compute, storage, and networking capacity is that the cost of a complete IT system more accurately reflects where the real value of that system was always really derived.

In decades gone by, the AS/400 hardware cost represented somewhere on the order of 85 percent of the cost of a server and its storage and the OS/400 systems software accounted for the remaining 15 percent or so. Over time, the hardware costs have dropped to about a third of the overall system cost as systems have also gotten incredibly more powerful. But …
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Guru: In Pursuit Of Reasonable Data

March 9, 2020 Ted Holt

My awareness of the indifference of computers toward the reasonableness of data dawned when I enrolled in the university. The band director told me to sign up for band and jazz band for zero semester hours. He said the stupid computer wouldn’t know that no one takes a course for zero hours, wouldn’t flag me to obtain permission from the dean to carry an overload, yet would grant me the credit. He was right.

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, we live with them, we learn to get around them when they limit us, and we deal with them when they …
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As I See It: In the Shadow of The West Wing

March 9, 2020 Victor Rozek

Twenty years ago, I developed an addiction. Not to one of the usual recreational substances, but to Aaron Sorkin’s writing. The West Wing was like no other show I had ever seen. It had gravitas. It explored issues of significance. The dialogue was crisp and quick. The characters had range, from funny and wise, to playful and profound. For the first time since I began watching television, I didn’t want to miss a single word.

It aired at a difficult time for the country. The Bush administration was in the process of orchestrating two major wars, the housing bubble, and …
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Big Blue Cuts Deals On Entry Power Systems Iron

March 9, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

With no new Power processors on the immediate horizon, except a kicker Power9’ that is aimed at supercomputer systems providing a testbed for future high bandwidth main memory technology that will debut with the Power10 chips in 2021, IBM has to do something to try to move some iron. Price cuts are always a good incentive.

And so, we see in announcement letter ZAEP0091B, which was quietly updated on March 5, when it came to our attention, after being announced on January 24, when we did not see in the IBM online announcement feed (because it wasn’t there, not …
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How GraphQL Can Improve IBM i APIs

Thoroughly Modern: Giving IBM i Developers A Helping Hand

Guru: In Pursuit Of Reasonable Data

As I See It: In the Shadow of The West Wing

Big Blue Cuts Deals On Entry Power Systems Iron

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