• ILEditor 2 Gives IBM i Shops A New Development Option

  May 6, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Liam Allan recently unveiled ILEditor 2, a new integrated development environment (IDE) for IBM i. The new IDE sports a fresher look and better performance compared to the first version of ILEditor, as well as an extensible plug-in system, which should also deliver better code coverage.

  For many years, members of the IBM i community have expressed frustration by the high price, size, and performance of Rational Developer for i (RDi), which is IBM’s flagship development tool for the IBM i community. While the IDE’s performance has improved in recent years, members of the community still bemoan the …

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• Confidence in IBM i Security Is Dropping, Syncsort Says

  May 6, 2020 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops were significantly less confident in their ability to prevent a security breach in 2019 than the previous two years, according to a new study by Syncsort. More than 40 percent of IBM i shops have suffered at least one security breach, according to the study, which also indicates that awareness of security regulations is growing, but not for the ones you might think.

  In 2019, 11 percent of respondents reported being somewhat or very unconfident in their ability to prevent a data breach at their organization, Syncsort concluded in its new study, which is titled “IBM i …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, May 6

  May 6, 2020 Jenny Thomas

  Depending on where you live, your life might be getting back to some semblance of normal . . . or the “new normal” as we all now commonly refer to life in a coronavirus world. Hopefully you have found new routines and as the weather improves as we head toward summer, we can all look forward to spending more time outside in the socially appropriate distance of others. Until then, rely on IT Jungle to keep you informed about the IBM i ecosystem and beyond. You can also find our COVID-19 Response section below for a recap on how our …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 22, Number 18

  May 6, 2020 Doug Bidwell

  Hello good people of IBM i Land. This week, there are updates for Rational Developer for i Version 9.6.0.8, for all releases of IBM i. This has been an on again/off again dance with IBM, and we are not sure why Big Blue posted it a few weeks ago, then unposted it, and then reposted it. However, the updates for RDi are for real – and available this week!

  Aside from that, it has been a pretty quiet week for PTFs in Lake Bugsbegone up in lovely Minnesota, the Land of Lakes, with no new groups for the two current …

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• Having Second Thoughts About New Power Systems Iron?

  May 4, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Back in the day, when midrange computers cost somewhat more than they do today (without adjusting for inflation, mind you) and the amount of processing, memory, storage, and networking capacity of the boxes was absolutely miniscule compared to what we can buy today (but sufficient to the task), customers looking to add more AS/400 or iSeries capacity to their datacenter didn’t have to shop around a current N generation or N-1 generation machine, but they could also look into the secondhand market for used N-1, N-2, and even N-3 generation machines and try to buy capacity on the …

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• Sharing Tape Libraries Across Partitions Without VIOS

  May 4, 2020 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops have a love-hate relationship when it comes to the Virtual I/O Server, or VIOS. With the latest IBM i Technology Refresh, IBM is giving the anti-VIOS group a feature they have been requesting: the capability to easily share a tape library among multiple logical partitions, or LPARs without involving VIOS, SANs, or multiple adapters.

  IBM is calling the new feature “IBM i Virtualization for Tape Libraries,” and it’s based on RFE (request for enhancement) number 127631. While the words “tape libraries” and “virtualization” are in there, this is not a virtual tape library (VTL) solution. That already …

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• Big Blue Makes Moves To Mainstream Db2 Mirror

  May 4, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  When IBM brought out its active-active Db2 for i database clustering extensions, called Db2 Mirror appropriately enough, almost exactly a year ago to improve the resiliency of databases and therefore the applications that run atop them on the IBM i platform, we had a few asks. As part of the April Technology Refresh announcements for IBM i 7.3 and 7.4, some of those asks are answered and it looks like another one might be in the works.

  The two most important things that we asked for are related, and it is all about making Db2 Mirror available and affordable for …

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• As I See It: When The Second Shoe Dropped

  May 4, 2020 Victor Rozek

  I got tested today. Four ordinary words infused with extraordinary dread. They’ve now become part of a new language of fear, along with “cough,” “fever,” and “difficulty breathing.” A persistent sore throat and a slight fever that flared briefly a few days later, was enough to concern my doctor. She told me to come in the same day I called to complain about my throat and did a drive-by swabbing. When I arrived, she was waiting by the curb, helmeted, gloved, and gowned, like something out of Andromeda Strain. Another masked doctor stood behind her at a safe distance counting …

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• Sundry Systems Software And CoD Power Systems Announcements

  May 4, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  There is a steady drumbeat of new stuff that always comes out of IBM for the Power Systems hardware platform, and sometimes it is Big Blue banging on the big kettle drum and sometimes it is using the brushes on the little snare drum.

  Now that IBM owns Red Hat, we can expect for IBM to be making a certain amount of noise every time a piece of Red Hat technology becomes available on Power and demonstrates that both Red Hat and IBM – which have two distinct cultures as well as announcement streams – are committed to the idea …

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• What’s New In Open Source With The Latest TRs

  April 27, 2020 Alex Woodie

  New technology is exciting. And when it can help you run your business more profitably or efficiently, well, it becomes very exciting. With IBM i, the open source community is arguably the biggest contributor of new technology to the platform. IT Jungle recently checked in Jesse Gorzinski, the IBM i open source architect, to hear how the open source story has improved with the recent technology refreshes.

  Arguably the biggest open source-related enhancement with IBM i 7.4 TR2 and 7.3 TR8 revolves around a change in RPM, the new delivery method that IBM adopted two years ago to distribute new …

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