• The IBM i Community Adapts To The New Normal

  March 30, 2020 Alex Woodie and Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As we enter the third week of the unprecedented coronavirus lockdown that has shut down large swaths of our country, IBM i shops are adapting to the “new normal” along with everybody else. For essential employees in certain industries, that means working in an uncertain and potentially hazardous environment, while for the rest of us, it means telecommuting from home.

  If you work in finance or insurance along the two coasts, chances are good your headquarters has been closed down and your colleagues sent home to work remotely from laptops, smartphones, and PCs. But if your company makes or moves …

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• Guru: Calling RPG Programs From Python, Part 1

  March 30, 2020 Mike Larsen

  In a prior article, I showed how to pass parameters to a Python script and execute the script from an RPG program. Based on feedback and my own curiosity, I wanted to see how I could pass parameters to an RPG program and call it from Python. After a bit of research, I found the Python interface itoolkit.

  itoolkit is an open source project provided by IBM as an interface to the XMLSERVICE toolkit, which allows us to call RPG programs, service programs, CL programs, and PASE Shell commands. itoolkit can be installed using an SSH terminal with …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, March 30

  March 30, 2020 Jenny Thomas

  There’s no hiding from the global pandemic so we’re facing COVID-19 head on just like many of the leaders around our IBM i ecosystem who have stepped up to protect their employees and assist other companies scrambling to adapt and survive. To that end, we have added a new section to Monitor called “COVID-19 Response Updates” where you can look every week to get the very latest news and solutions related to the coronavirus. Many of the vendors in our community are offering solutions free or at a reduced cost to assist others at this time of need so be …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 22, Number 13

  March 30, 2020 Doug Bidwell

  We hope everybody is keeping safe during the coronavirus outbreak. The PTFs are a-rolling again, and that means the IBM i PTF Guide is updated to keep you up to speed.

  The first new thing is that there is a Direct URL for Access to Digital Certificate Manager. For example: http://9.5.123.234:2001/QIBM/ICSS/Cert/Admin/qycucm1.ndm/main0.

  There are updates to the primary IBM i releases that still get patched, as follows:

  PTF Groups 7.4:

  • Java
  • Backup Recovery Solutions
  • WebSphere App Server V8.5
  • Content Manager OnDemand for i
  • SAP Support Required PTF List

  PTF Groups 7.3:

  • Java
  • Backup Recovery Solutions
  • WebSphere App Server V8.5
  • Content

  …

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• Love – And Business – In The Time Of Coronavirus

  March 23, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We are shaped by bad times as much as good ones. Maybe more.

  Some of my earliest memories as an aware young person are of the effects of recession on my parents when they were young people working in the factories of New Jersey. And when I say young, I mean we were all young at the time. Both of my parents lost their jobs in the recession of 1960 through 1970, and they lost them again during the much worse recession from 1973 through 1975. It was scary for me and my siblings, but obviously even scarier …

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• Coronavirus Takes Its Toll On The Midrange

  March 23, 2020 Alex Woodie

  The IBM i midrange community has lived through a lot: hurricanes, fires, global recessions, and even terrorist attacks. And now it can add “viral pandemic” to the list of external events impacting the day-to-day operations of IBM i shops around the world, not to mention the cancellation of nearly all in-person meetings and conferences for the next two months.

  As the national reels from the spread of the novel coronavirus and the pneumonia-like disease that it causes, the IBM i midrange community has been forced to make substantial changes to its daily operations. For many office workers, that means forgoing …

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• Guru: Maximum Number Of Jobs And Job Table Warning Customization

  March 23, 2020 Dawn May

  The QMAXJOB system value specifies the maximum number of jobs that can exist on your IBM i partition. The default value is 163,520, with the valid range being 32,000 through 970,000. If you reach the maximum number of jobs as defined by this system value, very bad things can happen to your system. You can always sign on to the console as the system reserves one job table entry for the console, but if you hit the limit on the maximum number of jobs, you will not be able to start any new jobs. In the worst case, it will …

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• COVID-19 Response: Fresche Donates Presto Licenses, Uncaps User Fees For Access To IBM i Apps

  March 23, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Web application development tools have suddenly become much more important in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, and Fresche Solutions, arguably the largest third-party software development tool provider in the IBM i market, wants to help companies with cope with remote workforces.

  Like other companies worldwide, Fresche has the majority of its employees working from home during the quarantines that are in effect to stop the spread of the coronavirus, and they are also capable of supporting customers whose end users, programmers, and system administrators are also working from home.

  But this is not enough, and Fresche knows this. To …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 22, Number 12

  March 23, 2020 Doug Bidwell

  It is a quiet in IBM i PTF Land this week, and that is to be expected with the coronavirus outbreak finally – and very regretfully but not unexpectedly – making its way around the global. But we will continue to put out the IBM i PTF Guide like clockwork because keeping mission critical systems up to date and humming along is more important than ever, even if the volume of business for most companies is, at this point with few exceptions, hard to guess.

  We are here to help, and if you run into trouble on your systems because …

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• Inside The ISV Revitalization Initiative For IBM i

  March 16, 2020 Alex Woodie

  The IBM i server’s strengths are well known: integration, ease of programming, ease of administration, security, resiliency, and a penchant for putting up with abuse. But aside from the platform’s attributes, another factor in IBM i’s favor is the community of independent software vendors (ISVs) who write business applications. To bolster this strength, IBM recently embarked upon an ISV revitalization initiative, and it wants IBM i ISVs to know all about it.

  In many ways, applications are the face of the platform. It was fairly common for companies to select a business application, such as MRP, ERP, supply chain execution, …

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