• The Subscription Pricing For The IBM i Stack So Far

  September 18, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We have been following the transformation of the pricing and packaging of the IBM i operating system, its integrated database, and the suite of Licensed Program Products, or LPPs, that are commonly installed alongside of the operating system to create a mostly complete system software suite. Last week, we talked about how the machines in the P05 and P10 software tiers would be moving to all-subscription pricing, and this week we are following up with the pricing information we have been able to gather to date as well as talking to Big Blue about the changes.

  IBM has been clear …

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• Facing The Challenges Of Upgrading Old Systems With The Cloud

  September 18, 2023 Jason Hardy

  If you are one of the many IBM i shops that has always created its own applications and that has a long history of investing in the AS/400, iSeries, System i, and IBM i platforms over the past three and a half decades at reasonably regular intervals to keep the hardware and the systems software current, you have it relatively easy and we definitely want to talk to you about your move to the cloud and how we might help.

  But if you are one of the many OS/400 and IBM i shops that have, for myriad reasons, gotten stuck …

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• Guru: Generating XML Using SQL – The Easy Way

  September 18, 2023 Bob Cozzi

  There are many verbose methods of generating XML. You can:

  • Write your own RPG code
  • Using a free or third-party API
  • Use SQL iQuery OUTPUT(*XML) option
  • Use the built-in SQL XML functions such as XMLELEMENT

  I’m sure there are others, but these seem to be the most popular.

  For years I had been using the XMLELEMENT approach; a rather verbose set of XML function built into Db2 for i SQL. In fact, SQL iQuery’s OUTPUT(*XML) is based on that feature. It simply regenerates your SQL statement using XMLELEMENT statements for each output column/field name.

  But if you’re using something IBM …

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• Rocket Buys Data Integration Provider B.O.S.

  September 18, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Rocket Software has announced the acquisition of B.O.S., a German provider of data integration software. While the software company targets primarily the mainframe with its data integration solutions, Rocket says it’s considering broadening support to IBM i.

  B.O.S. was founded more than 30 years ago to develop data integration solutions that connect the IBM mainframe to other systems. It boasts more than 1,200 installations in 25 countries, including Fortune 50 firms as well as government organizations.

  The company’s flagship product, called tcVision, helps customers move data from their mainframe sources, such as Db2, IMS, VSAM files, ADABAS, and CA DATACOM, …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 37

  September 18, 2023 Doug Bidwell

  There are a few things you can count on in life. Death. Taxes. Coffee. Beer. The love of a good woman. And a seemingly endless barrage of security vulnerabilities for every computing platform on Earth. There are a bunch of the latter that are new to the IBM i platform this week.

  First, we have Security Bulletin: OpenSSL and OpenSSH for IBM i are vulnerable to arbitrary code execution, denial of service, and security restrictions bypass due to multiple vulnerabilities, which you can find out more about at this link. The IBM i PTF number for 5733-SC1 contains the …

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• IBM and Fujifilm Unveil 150 TB Tape Drive

  September 13, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Organizations will be able to store up to 150 TB of compressed data on a single cartridge when they select the new TS1170 IBM tape drive and 3592 JF tape cartridge developed by Fujifilm. The unveiling of the world’s most voluminous tape storage system two weeks ago shows that tape has a lot of life as a medium for mass data storage.

  The new TS1170 tape drive is the sixth generation of IBM’s high-end, enterprise-class tape technology, which is supported on IBM i and other enterprise servers. It’s capable of saving data to the new 3592 JF tape cartridge …

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• Merlin Subscriptions Picking Up, IBM and ARCAD Say

  September 13, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Hundreds of IBM i shops have adopted Merlin since it was released last year, according to IBM and ARCAD, which jointly developed the development and code management tool. The addition of a subscription offering in early 2023 significantly bolstered sales activity, the companies say.

  “In this last six months or so, we have really seen it tick up, which is exactly what we are expecting,” says IBM i Product Manager Alison Butterill, on the Merlin adoption curve.

  Sales were a bit slow coming out of the gate for Merlin, the novel, browser-based environment for application development and change management on …

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• New IBM i User Group For The US Midwest Formed

  September 13, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Here is something that we don’t see every day in IBM i Land: The formation of a new user group. But that is what Briteskies, an IBM i consultancy and application development and modernization firm based in Cleveland, Ohio, has done by launching the IBM i Mid-West User Group, or iMWUG for short.

  “We founded this group to help fill a gap that we noticed in the geographical locations of IBM i user groups,” Leah Avner, IBM i coordinator at Briteskies, tells The Four Hundred. “While Ohio seems to have once had a user group, it doesn’t seem to …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, September 13

  September 13, 2023 Jenny Thomas

  The team at IT Jungle has been part of the “work at home” crew since the beginning. Not to age ourselves, but this goes back a couple of decades, so long before we all sheltered in place for the pandemic. Now granted, some jobs, like news writing for instance, do require some solitude, but companies that formerly had employees gathering in an office are looking to re-establish that as the norm – including IBM. Our Top Story this week is about IBM requiring all software division employees who work within 50 miles of an office to report to work at …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 36

  September 13, 2023 Doug Bidwell

  This issue of the IBM i PTF Guide was put together the Sunday before the Labor Day holiday in America, and as you might imagine, there is not a lot going on. But there are a few things.

  First, the DIG or NSLOOKUP tool, which is used to validate DNS entries and which has been around for a while, doesn’t work anymore without PTFs. You can find out more at this link, and the PTFs you need to apply to make it work are as follows:

  • V7R5M0: SI84411
  • V7R4M0: SI84419
  • V7R3M0: SI84438
  

  And of course, there …

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