• In Search Of Next Gen IBM i Apps

  June 28, 2021 Alex Woodie

  What will become of our RPG and COBOL applications? If IBM i chief architect Steve Will has his way, the core elements of them will evolve into what he calls “next gen” applications that can run in the cloud, if necessary.

  “We are not just focusing anymore on trying to help clients get past green screens to mobile interfaces or Web interfaces,” Will said during his recent COMMON NAViGATE session, titled IBM i PLUS Cloud is the Answer. “There are still clients and applications that need to get there. We understand that. But you can’t just stop there now. …

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• Final RPG & DB2 Summit Scheduled

  June 28, 2021 Alex Woodie

  With the return to in-person conferences taking longer than expected, the folks behind the RPG & DB2 Summit have decided to end the popular IBM i event. System i Developer will host the final event this fall, and it will take place online, as it has since the COVID-19 pandemic put an end to larger gatherings last year.

  Ending the conference was not an easy decision for the principals of System i Developer, Susan Gantner, Jon Paris, and Paul Tuohy, who have been holding the RPG & DB2 Summit twice a year since March 2007. Despite the headwinds posed …

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• Guru: Understanding Database Performance Using The Performance Data Investigator, Part 2

  June 28, 2021 Dawn May

  This is the second in a two-part series on how you can use the Performance Data Investigator (PDI) to investigate performance of Db2 for i. While the SQL Performance Center in Access Client Solutions is more commonly known than PDI, using both tools is a good way to analyze database performance.

  In Part 1, I reviewed the Database content package, focusing on the charts for I/O reads and writes, SQL CPU utilization, and database locks. In this tech tip, I continue by reviewing the charts related to SQL Cursor and Native DB Opens as well as the SQL Performance …

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• New Converged Archive System, Power Gear Withdrawals

  June 28, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Big Blue has all of the pieces to make an appliance for archiving all kinds of data, and so the company has done just that with the Converged Archive Solution announced last week.

  This box doesn’t run IBM i, but in keeping with the theme “anything that makes Power Systems stronger makes IBM i last longer” we are telling you about it. Also, just like many IBM i shops have deployed storage area networks (SANs) to create a unified, shared storage array for their IBM i, AIX, z/OS, Windows Server, and Linux machines to share for block storage and centralized …

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• Adding Depth To Your IBM i Security Bench

  June 28, 2021 Bill Hammond

  Carol Woodbury of DXR Security is fond of saying that the IBM i platform is “securable” but not necessarily always secure, and the difference between the two is what people do and don’t do to actually use security tools. But there is more to security than the IBM i operating system and its system software.

  As Woodbury will explain in a webcast being hosted on June 30, the most effective approach to cybersecurity is having multiple layers of defense mechanisms deployed to protect your systems. This is commonly referred to as “Defense in Depth.”

  Because your IBM i platform holds …

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• IBM i Business Bucks The COVID Trend, Will Says

  June 21, 2021 Alex Woodie

  The COVID pandemic has slammed American business and the American economy in many different ways, and it has taken its toll on server sales. But according to Steve Will, the IBM i chief architect, sales of IBM i systems have grown over the past three quarters. In response, IBM has enabled Rochester to go on a bit of a hiring spree to bolster the IBM i development team.

  “The IBM i business in 2021 is actually quite strong,” Will said during his presentation at the NAViGATE conference that COMMON held the week of May 24. “We had a very down …

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• Don’t Forget About The Co-Lo Alternative To Cloud

  June 21, 2021 Jim Kandrac

  Cloud is a consumption model, not a panacea. And for a lot of customers, moving some of their applications – or even all of them – to the cloud is something to consider. It might even possibly be the right move, right now. But for many customers who are committed to their applications and therefore to their IBM i platform, the best and lowest cost way to get infrastructure to support those applications is still to put machinery on premises or to have it installed in a co-location facility.

  The numbers bear this out, and as we pointed out before …

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• Guru: Understanding Database Performance Using The Performance Data Investigator, Part 1

  June 21, 2021 Dawn May

  This is a two-part series on how to use the Performance Data Investigator (PDI) for investigating performance of Db2 for i. While the SQL Performance Center in Access Client Solutions is the tool of choice for Db2 performance analysis, there is valuable information that you can get from using PDI. PDI is often a useful starting point to help guide you in the correct direction when trying to identify performance issues. In my experience, PDI is under-utilized for Db2 investigation. For those not familiar with PDI, you may want to read the article, Getting Started with the Performance Data Investigator …

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• The Long Play

  June 21, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Surprising things persist, and for good reasons. Around this time every year, when summer is officially beginning, I take a pause and think thankful thoughts about the AS/400 and its progeny, which trace back to the June 21, 1988, launch. I didn’t enter the market until a year later, as the cub reporter and one of the founding editors of The Four Hundred, my first real job out of college and one I still gladly hold.

  We have all been through a lot of change in 33 years, to be sure. The IT market is so different today from …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 23, Number 25

  June 21, 2021 Doug Bidwell

  It was a relatively quiet week from IBM on the PTF patching front, and so we have used to the time to do a whole lot of tweaks to the links in the IBM i PTF Guide, which have a bunch of new and updated links embedded in the Excel spreadsheet as you will see from the list below and from the sheet itself.

  But first, you know the order of operations that we stick to every week, so here is the rundown of PTF Groups by IBM i release level:

  PTF Groups 7.4:

  • MGTools

  PTF Groups 7.3:

  • MGTools

  …

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