• The Rest Of October’s Power Systems Software Announcements

  October 19, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The software stack in the Cognitive Systems division, which most of us still call the Power Systems division, is a lot wider and deeper than the IBM i stack, even though IBM i does represent a lot of the software functionality and generates a lot of the revenue stream for Power Systems machinery.

  In addition to the Technology Refresh updates for IBM i 7.4 and IBM i 7.3, which were announced on October 6 and which will be available on November 13, Big Blue also updated a bunch of other pieces of systems software that run on Power Systems, which …

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• Choosing The Language To Transform Your Applications

  October 19, 2020 Michael Killian

  (Sponsored Content) Most of our customers are comfortable with RPG since it is the predominant language on the IBM i, and most are familiar with Java and .NET since those languages have been around for two to three decades. But many are not as familiar with Node.js.

  There are a lot of great resources available regarding Node.js, so I thought amalgamating that information into one concise article for ease of reference might be a better use of your time. There are so many resources out there to give context and meaning to Node.js, so I have put together a list …

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• Guru: Concerning The Stepping-On Of Feet

  October 19, 2020 Ted Holt

  It has come to my attention that once again I did not tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. In Three Suboptimal I/O Practices, I said that a simple SELECT INTO was preferable to a cursor that fetches one row. It turns out that there is at least one situation in which SELECT INTO will not serve the purpose, and one has no choice but to use a cursor that fetches one row.

  The situation is this: the program must lock the fetched row for update. Despite its power and simplicity, SELECT INTO cannot lock …

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• As I See It: Another Modest Proposal

  October 19, 2020 Victor Rozek

  In 1729, responding to English indifference to chronic poverty in Ireland, Jonathan Swift wrote an essay called A Modest Proposal in which he suggests the Irish could sell their babies to the English gentry as food, thus addressing both the problem of Irish poverty and, presumably, the lack of meat variety in England. (I shouldn’t have to say this, but given the bizarre QAnon belief that elites actually drink children’s blood, it should be noted that Swift’s proposal was, you know, satire.)

  Well, with the country starting to resemble 1729 England updated for inflation, it’s time for another …

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• Big Blue Bolsters IBM i High Availability And Data Resiliency

  October 19, 2020 Alex Woodie

  High availability and data resiliency are critical topics in the minds of business owners these days, especially in light of the summer’s disasters, both natural and manmade. To that end, in the latest batch of Technology Refreshes, IBM has bolstered the services that provide high availability and data resilience in IBM i, PowerHA, and BRMS.

  Backup, Recovery, and Media Services (BRMS) is the licensed product that thousands of IBM i shops use to automate their backups and recoveries. Those backups usually involving tape, which was cited by 48 percent of IBM i shops in the 2020 IBM i Marketplace Survey …

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• Fresche Unveils X-Replay for 5250 Testing

  October 14, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Fresche this week rolled out X-Replay, a new tool designed to automate the testing of 5250 greenscreen applications. Unlike other tools that work on screengrabs or X-Y coordinates, X-Replay software works at the field-name level, which makes test scripts more resilient to change, according to Fresche, which now boasts a complete lineup of IBM i testing tools.

  Fresche has been providing tools for IBM i testing for a while now, mainly with X-Analysis, its cross-reference analysis tool, as well as X-Dataset, which ensures good management and security of data involved in testing. However, when it comes to testing 5250 screens …

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• IBM Brings More Open Source to IBM i

  October 14, 2020 Alex Woodie

  IBM has brought an array of new open source packages to its IBM i operating system with the latest batch of Technology Refreshes, including tools for application developers and systems administrators. It’s all part of IBM’s strategy to keep IBM i on the cutting edge through open source, says IBM’s business architect Jesse Gorzinski.

  Before IBM unveiled IBM i 7.4 TR3 and 7.3 TR9 last week, we’d already written extensively about many the open source package that IBM has brought to the platform. For instance, we told you earlier this year how Apache Kafka and Apache Zookeeper were running on …

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• The New Economy Presents New Opportunities For IBM i

  October 14, 2020 Olenka Van Schendel

  (Sponsored Content) Economic downturns don’t cause technology shifts, but they do have a habit of accelerating them. The evolution of any technology follows its own path, as inventors and engineers try to meet customer wants and needs, and this transformation is fairly straightforward when the economy is robust and people feel they can invest time and money in something. But it is different when there is an economic downturn, and it is vital to see and invest in the future when the economy becomes unpredictable, as has happened during the coronavirus pandemic here in 2020.

  The pandemic-hit new …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, October 14

  October 14, 2020 Jenny Thomas

  We take a lot of pride in keeping the pulse an eye on the IBM i ecosystem. We know the cadence of announcements and our “spidey sense” gets tingling when there’s some news getting ready to break. But IBM had a surprise for everyone this week with its announcement that it was planning to break out its managed infrastructure services business from Global Services and create a new, publicly traded company. How important this will be to IBM i shops remains to be seen, but it certainly should lead to some interesting articles from our team in the coming months. …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 22, Number 41

  October 14, 2020 Doug Bidwell

  As we have been reporting since October 6, there are new Technology Refreshes that have been launched, and we have come to find out that the Technology Refresh Resaves, which are an important part of the distribution of IBM i code, will be available on November 13.

  Here is the PTF rundown by release:

  PTF Groups 7.4:

  • HIPERs (High Impact/Pervasive)
  • Security
  • Performance Tools

  PTF Groups 7.3:

  • HIPERs (High Impact/Pervasive)
  • Security
  • Performance Tools

  PTF Groups 7.2:

  • HIPERs (High Impact/Pervasive)
  • Security

  PTF Groups 7.1

  • There is occasionally stuff here, thanks to extended support. But not this week, again.

  New (or updated) links …

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