• Guru: Use SQL to Generate Random Data

  June 17, 2019 Ted Holt

  Suppose I needed to generate a large database table with random data in order to adequately test the performance of an SQL query. Suppose that, for security reasons, I was not allowed to copy the production version of the table. Suppose that I needed a way to generate a lot — and I do mean a lot! — of random data. Suppose this scenario is not mere supposition.

  Before an SQL query goes into production, it should be tested against a production-like dataset. Running a query against a test dataset of 25 rows (records) can produce unpleasant surprises when it’s …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, June 17

  June 17, 2019 Jenny Thomas

  In celebration of Father’s Day, which was yesterday in the U.S., Forbes magazine posted an article with life lessons from five billionaires dads. Aside from the fact that most of us aren’t billionaires, we all have dads in our lives — whether it be your own father, or you are a father, or your spouse or friends are fathers, you probably don’t have to look far to find someone who is doing their best to be a good dad — and it seemed like a good thing to share since the advice could be useful in business and family matters. …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 21, Number 24

  June 17, 2019 Doug Bidwell

  We are all excited that IBM i 7.4 will be shipping at the end of the week, on the AS/400’s 31st birthday, but there is still the usual tweaking that needs to be done on the earlier and still-current releases thanks to the changes happening in PTF Land.

  But to be honest, there is not that much this week. There is a new Java Group for IBM i 7.3, IBM i 7.2, and IBM i 7.1, and that’s about it.

  Also, our apologies but in last week’s IBM i PTF Guide, we did a little “fake news,” but not on …

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• Bucking the System: Higher Ed, Hold the College

  June 12, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Jim Buck spent 15 years teaching IBM i and RPG at Gateway Technical College in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Buck achieved great things there, finding hundreds of students good jobs around the country. But ultimately the college experience grew old for Buck, so he ventured out on his own. That’s when he founded his own online IBM i educational company, imPower Technologies.

  That was two years ago, in the spring of 2017. After spending almost a year getting imPower Technologies up and running, Buck is teaching students IBM i and RPG once again. Currently he offers two courses: an introduction to IBM …

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• CNX Welcomes 5250 Apps Into Valence Framework

  June 12, 2019 Alex Woodie

  For years, CNX has prided itself on providing the IBM i community with development tools for creating modern Web applications on the platform. The company looked unapologetically to the future, and encouraged customers to move on from their green-screen pasts. But in response to strong customer demand, the company has relented and decided to allow green screens into the framework via an innovative new Web-based emulator dubbed Fusion5250.

  Fusion5250 is all about giving customers choice, CNX says. The software, which is a core new feature in Valence 5.2+, lets Valence customers access a modern application developed with CNX’s Nitro App …

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• IBM i Gets a New Crop of ‘Fresh Faces’

  June 12, 2019 Alex Woodie

  The IBM i platform isn’t getting any younger, and neither are the thousands of individuals who work on it. But that doesn’t mean that platform as a whole should be marked by gray. To celebrate the viability of the platform’s ability to attract young people, IBM System Magazine just introduced its newest crop of “Fresh Faces.”

  IBM System Magazine has been calling attention to the IBM i youth movement since 2016, when it debuted its original crop of Fresh Faces. Liam Allan was a member of that group as a teenager, and he has since gone on to build himself …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, June 12

  June 12, 2019 Jenny Thomas

  You’ve probably heard the saying “there’s no such thing as bad publicity.” Personally, I don’t think many people would find that to be a true statement, but then again, there is something to be said for keeping your name in the news cycle. Speaking of which, IBM has had a busy week with a mix of good and bad stories to keep Big Blue in the public eye. Continuing to push its AI initiatives, IBM has named 40 women as leaders in the field (good), but at the other end of the spectrum is a plan for massive layoffs (bad). …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 21, Number 23

  June 12, 2019 Doug Bidwell

  Hello once again, good people of IBM i Land, and welcome to the 23rd edition of the IBM i PTF Guide for 2019. This time around, there is an update for the required PTF list to support SAP applications running on IBM i 7.3. There is also a new version of MGTools for IBM i 7.1, IBM i 7.2, and IBM i 7.3 – and we note that it has been quite a while since we have seen an update for IBM i 7.1 on this front.

  New (Updated) Links this week:

  • ASMI: Accessing the ASMI using a Web browser

  …

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• IBM i Roadmap Promises A Long Ride, Few Bumps

  June 10, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It would be hard to find a group of enterprise IT shops that are more conservative – meaning averse to risk – than the IBM midrange. Arguably, IBM System z mainframe shops are even more risk averse, but perhaps it is a matter more of scale than degree. In the average IBM i shop, one person – or maybe a handful of people – is keeping risk at bay, while in a mainframe shop there could be dozens or hundreds that are trying to steer the ship without rocking the boat.

  Every now and then, Big Blue publishes an IBM …

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• It’s Getting Cloud-i In Here

  June 10, 2019 Alex Woodie

  For many years, the only cloud option that IBM i customers had available to them were private clouds delivered by managed service providers (MSPs) or IBM business partners. But the IBM i community is now on the cusp of gaining not one but three public cloud options, delivered by Skytap, Google, and IBM itself – and more IBM i public clouds could be on the way.

  It’s no secret that IBM has been seeking to place IBM i servers in the big three public clouds managed by Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. And in …

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