• The Mod Squad Comes Together to Modernize Old RPG

  October 6, 2021 Alex Woodie

  In the early 70s, a group of fictional social misfits joined up to solve crimes on the hit television series The Mod Squad. Now a group of real-life IBM i professionals of the same name are uniting to solve an equally pressing problem: modernizing old RPG code, including some that dates back to the 1970s.

  “You’ve heard of IBM‘s upward compatibility,” says Rich Ollari, an IBM i veteran who is one of the ringleaders of the new Mod Squad. “Code that ran back in the 80s, even the 70s, is still running today, and that’s what we’re fighting with. …

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• Every IBM i Shop Must Have An API Integration Strategy

  October 6, 2021 Daniel Magid

  I have had several very exciting conversations with IBM i users recently about new technology as they have reached out to Eradani for help in advancing their IBM i applications using APIs. More and more I hear how IBM i pros are learning new things and innovating to transform their IBM systems into examples of leading-edge computing. One of the cool things IBM i users are recognizing is that the value of APIs comes not just from making IBM i data available to other applications and outside users, but also from adding additional function to RPG applications by calling out …

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• Rocket Software Names New CEO

  October 6, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Rocket Software yesterday announced that Milan Shetti, currently the company’s president and a former Hewlett-Packard vice president, next month will take over the CEO position from Andy Youniss, who will step back from day-to-day operations but will remain with the company he co-founded more than 30 years ago.

  Youniss co-founded Rocket Software in 1990 in the garage of his home near Boston, Massachusetts with a  plan to develop and sell tools for IBM’s DB2 database, as it was then called (it only recently was renamed Db2, with the lowercase “b”). Its first product was a resource monitor for IBM’s …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, October 6

  October 6, 2021 Jenny Thomas

  October is a busy time for our IBM i ecosystem, with COMMON’s POWERUp conference wrapping up this week, and the final RPG & DB2 Summit coming up later this month, which you can find more details about in the Chats, Webinars, Seminars, Shows, and Other Happenings section. Of course, conference season has changed in the 18 months or so, but there are still opportunities to be had for online learning, although we look forward to the day when we can get back on the ground with all of you. Until then, read on for the news of the week.

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 23, Number 40

  October 6, 2021 Doug Bidwell

  The security vulnerabilities have calmed down for a week, and maybe the world was just being kind so we could all attend POWERUp 2021, which runs from Monday to Thursday this week and is only available online. Visit the COMMON user group website to find out the particulars.

  Here is the rundown of PTF Groups by IBM i release level:

  PTF Groups 7.4:

  • IBM HTTP Server for i
  • MQ for IBM i – v9.0.0/v9.1.0/V9.2.0
  • Db2 Web Query for i V2.3.0

  PTF Groups 7.3:

  • IBM HTTP Server for i
  • MQ for IBM i – v9.0.0/v9.1.0/V9.2.0
  • Db2 Web Query for i V2.3.0

  …

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• Fresche Buys Abacus To Integrate From IBM i To Cloud To Code

  October 4, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Last week, Fresche Solutions, arguably the largest provider of application development and modernization tools for the IBM i platform and its predecessors, acquired Abacus Solutions, a long-time provider of cloud and managed services for the same market, giving a new meaning to the word integration in the IBM i brand. Now, with the combination of Fresche and Abacus, we can add an adverb to the intransitive form of the verb: vertically integrated.

  Vertical integration is all the rage these days, at least among the hyperscalers and cloud builders that consume half of the IT gear in the world and …

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• Hit A Fiduciary Home Run With A Backup, DR, Cybersecurity Triple Play

  October 4, 2021 Jim Kandrac

  The old adage that the only secure computer is one that is not networked to anything has never been more true; however, it is also irrelevant even if it is funny. No computer can exist in a vacuum and is only useful if it is connected to other machines – and potentially lots of other machines. The level of malicious activity out there on the networks of the world has never been higher, and you had better get used to the idea that the situation is going to get worse every year, and the IBM i platform is absolutely …

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• Guru: Fall Brings New RPG Features (And So Did Spring!)

  October 4, 2021 Jon Paris

  When I first sat down to write this tip my focus was on introducing you to the new RPG features that were added alongside the latest September Technology Refresh (TR). However, when I tried to reference one of the enhancements from the spring enhancements, I quickly discovered that I had never written those up for the Guru column!

  Oooopppps! As a result, this “tip” will cover all the RPG enhancements added this year, both in the April and September announcements. It will be in two parts. This first part will cover the array-oriented features.

  RPG’s range of array-processing options has …

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• Db2 PTF Group Enhancements Target Web Services, Audit Journal

  October 4, 2021 Alex Woodie

  It is indisputable that the Db2 for i database is the beating heart of the IBM i platform. There were no earthshattering enhancements to this database in the latest batch of Technology Refreshes for IBM i 7.3 and 7.4 that IBM announced and shipped last month. But there were a few items worth mentioning that shipped in the Db2 PTF Group, including new HTTP commands for calling the database via REST and new SQL-based commands for querying the security audit journal.

  The top new Db2 for i feature arguably is the new set of functions for HTTP requests to consume …

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• For The Prices They Are A-Changin’

  October 4, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Back in the day, when IBM made any price changes to products, we would see these things in the weekly summary reports that its announcement system had compiled and sent out to us on a weekly basis for several decades. Somewhere along the way, either our profile changed without our knowledge or IBM changed something about this email blast system behind the scenes and we stopped seeing all of these Price Change announcements.

  Just for the heck of it on Friday, which was a quiet news day in IBM i Land, I logged into the Web front end of the …

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