• The IBM i Job Environment, It’s a Changin’

  September 15, 2021 Alex Woodie

  The IBM i job market ain’t what it used to be. Change is a constant in this world, but the rate of professional change during the current pandemic is of particular interest at the moment. From new technologies and enlarging salary requirements to work-from-home and pending retirements, you could say we’re experiencing a period of punctuated equilibrium when it comes to working in the IBM i ecosystem.

  Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, companies across many industries have adopted work-from-home mandates. IBM i shops, like all others who can, have moved strongly in that direction. Many have still not …

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• New Nav Puts SQL Services Within Reach

  September 15, 2021 Alex Woodie

  IBM delivered new Technology Refreshes (TRs) for IBM i 7.3 and 7.4 last week, and there’s a lot of good stuff in there. Arguably one of the biggest announcements is the overhaul of IBM i Navigator, which the folks at IBM have taken to calling “New Nav.” But what makes New Nav so special?

  IBM rewrote New Nav from the ground up in Angular, a JavaScript framework for building Web and mobile applications, and PrimeNG, a popular component library for Angular. The combination of these two technologies gives New Nav a fresh-looking interface that will appeal to users of all …

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• Eradani Drives Simplification with API Tool Update

  September 15, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Eradani has always sought to simplify the application programming interface (API) enablement process as much as possible for its IBM i customers. And with the launch of Eradani Connect version 4.1, which features a new GUI, pre-built templates of APIs, and a catalog for the REST-style Web services created with the tool, the Northern California company is taking the simplification mantra to new levels.

  The world is chock full of Web services. Whether it’s real-time weather data, a shipping services, an ecommerce application, or a tax calculator, somebody somewhere is providing information over the Internet. These external APIs generally are …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, September 15

  September 15, 2021 Jenny Thomas

  Does any conversation happen anymore without some reflection on life before the pandemic and how the world has changed since? Not to belabor the point, but it is hard to get around the fact that our workplaces have drastically changed. Zoom quickly became everyone’s go-to for business, and just to get to see the faces of family and friends. Even now, many companies prefer to continue remote work and we are all rapidly adapting to the idea that travel is as necessary as we once thought to exchange ideas (although it is certainly less fun). Our Top Story this week …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 23, Number 37

  September 15, 2021 Doug Bidwell

  Just a reminder to everyone to participate in POWERUp 2021, which runs from October 4 through 7. You can visit in person at Virginia Beach, or you can participate virtually. Visit the COMMON user group web site to find out the particulars. And we will see you there – virtually, at least!

  Let’s get started this week with the rundown of PTF Groups by IBM i release level:

  PTF Groups 7.4:

  • Latest Cumulative PTF Package 21238
  • Technology Refresh 5
  • HIPERs (High Impact/Pervasive)
  • Db2 for IBM i
  • IBM Db2 Mirror for i
  • Rational Developer for i

  PTF Groups 7.3:

  • Latest Cumulative

  …

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• Surprise! It’s IBM i Technology Refresh Time

  September 13, 2021 Alex Woodie

  IBM surprised the midrange world last week by announcing Technology Refreshes (TRs) for IBM i 7.3 and 7.4, which became generally available on Friday. The fall TRs, which typically are announced in October, brought support for the new Power10-based Power E1080 server in addition to a slew of enhancements to the operating system and surrounding IBM i products.

  The big piece of news with the new TRs – IBM i TR 7.3 TR11 and 7.4 TR5 – is support for servers based on IBM’s speedy new Power10 processor, which is the first Power chip based on its 7 nanometer …

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• Thoroughly Modern: Making The Case For Code And Database Transformation

  September 13, 2021 Robert Arce

  The last 18 months, we have seen many companies shift their IT plans and prioritize digital transformation around internal and external access to their systems. Some had started their modernization efforts which made the transition easier while many others who thought they had plenty of time had a rude awakening. So many ways of doing business have changed – and they have changed forever. In the face of such rapid changes, companies have realized that IBM i modernization is inevitable.

  

  Simply put, it is about figuring out:

  • How to enhance an application by applying best practices, creating resilient code and

  …

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• Guru: What Are Workload Groups And Why Should You Use Them?

  September 13, 2021 Dawn May

  Workload Groups appear to be a hidden gem of IBM i work management. In all my work with clients, I have only encountered one shop actively using workload groups. Introduced in 2010, they provide an additional control on CPU and can also be used to license software products to a fewer number of cores than are active on the partition.

  Workload groups are very simple entities; you add a workload group with the Add Workload Group (ADDWLCGRP) command. You just need to give it a name and how many processor cores, called the processor limit, can be used …

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• As I See It: The Misinformation Crisis

  September 13, 2021 Victor Rozek

  The person who invented the wheel was probably also the first person to run over his/her own toes. That’s just the nature of technology: it’s helpful, but not always friendly. From the wheel to social media, technology has served as both the engine of progress and an instrument of grief. And, paradoxically, there is perhaps no greater accelerant of progress and regress than computer technology.

  The name of Floyd Ray Roseberry is deservedly forgettable, but he recently managed to engineer his ten minutes of digital fame by live-streaming his imagined grievances on Facebook. As a remedy, he claimed to have …

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• The Cacophony Of Many Different Server Markets

  September 13, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Considering how skittery the global economy is, how wonky the world’s supply chains are, and how capricious spending by the big public clouds and the hyperscalers can be (and how much the top eight server buyers in the world make up of the overall market), the fact that the server market only had a 2.5 percent decline in the second quarter is not a surprise.

  It’s just the normal noise in the data, and perhaps, if IDC is right, a slight shift away from using two-socket servers with a modest number of cores to single-socket servers with a larger number …

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