• Mad Dog 21/21: Phoenix Envy

  November 12, 2018 Hesh Wiener

  IBM is understandably concerned that its annual revenue, likely to be about $80 billion this year, is 25 percent less than it was in 2011, when it reached nearly $107 billion. The company’s revenue increased during the first two quarters of 2018 after falling every quarter for five and a half years, but its falling fortunes have discouraged customers, employees, and investors. Apple, the largest technology company in the world, boasts revenue that is three times that of IBM. It nearly failed in 1997, but Microsoft helped it rise from its own ashes like the Phoenix.

  The …

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• IBM Winds Down PowerVM V2, Nudges Customers To PowerVM V3

  November 12, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It may not occur to you, but the PowerVM server virtualization hypervisor that Big Blue created for Power Systems servers has a version just like every other piece of software in the world, and like all software, it ages and eventually it is retired from the field in lieu of more modern code.

  In announcement letter 918-129, IBM let it be known that PowerVM V2, of which there were three releases, will be withdrawn from marketing on February 19, 2019 and will have its support withdrawn on September 30, 2020. That may seem like a long time away from …

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• Modernizing IBM i Apps with Microservices

  November 7, 2018 Alex Woodie

  Application modernization means different things to different people. For some, it could be turning a 5250 screen into a Web or mobile interface, or replacing database access with SQL. But for others in the IBM i community, including the vendor OpenLegacy, modernization refers to exposing existing business logic as APIs through a microservices architecture.

  Microservices refers to a software development technique whereby applications are broken down into multiple self-contained components and served via APIs in a loosely coupled but coordinated manner. The main advantage of this approach is each microservice is built independently of others, which can boost productivity and …

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• Cloud Cover

  November 7, 2018 Victor Rozek

  (Sponsored Content) Imagine for a moment that you’re on a floundering ship, surrounded by angry water. You look around for a lifeboat only to discover they are stored below deck, in the vessel rather than hanging off the side where they might actually prove useful.

  But that effectively describes an equally chancy IT practice: conducting system-monitoring activities from within the system. When the digital waters rise, the value of a monitoring method vulnerable to a variety of server and facility mishaps greatly diminishes. Once disaster strikes, there is ample irony but scant comfort in restarting monitoring operations after …

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• iSphere Upgrade Bolsters RDi Even More

  November 7, 2018 Alex Woodie

  When it comes to IBM i programming tools from IBM, Rational Developer for IBM i (RDi) is the integrated development environment at the top of many professionals’ wish lists. However, the IDE’s functionality is lacking a few departments, which provides an opportunity for innovation in the community, as IBM originally envisioned. One of the projects that’s been running with the ball is the popular iSphere project, which recently unveiled a new release.

  iSphere is a free plug-in for RDi and WDSC that was first released by Frank Hildebrandt of Task Force IT-Consulting back in 2013. The original idea behind the …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, November 7

  November 7, 2018 Jenny Thomas

  We may have gained an hour over the weekend, but I am definitely not feeling like I am getting ahead. However, since November is the month to remind us to be thankful for the many positive things happening in our life, I figure this is also a good time to remember why we are grateful for our IBM i ecosystem. Not only has it sustained us these many years, but it seems there is always more to look forward to. Our Calendar below shows there is plenty of activity yet to go this year, and COMMON is already putting out …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 20, Number 44

  November 7, 2018 Doug Bidwell

  Hello fellow residents of IBM i Land. In this week’s edition of the IBM i PTF Guide, there are new HIPER PTFs for all releases – that’s IBM i 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3 – and there is a new Security group for IBM i 7.3. It is rather sparse this week, and we suspect it will kick up next week. So enjoy the relatively easy week of IBM i patching.

  At a glance defective PTFs: There are no new defectives this week (11/01), looking good so far!

  Defective PTF rundown (The last defective for each release):
  
  	Defect		Defective	APAR	

  …

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• IBM i In The Land Of The Rising Sun

  November 5, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It took Europe and Japan a long time to rebuild after the devastation of World War II, but it is absolutely no coincidence that the United States alone or in combination with its NATO allies invested an enormous amount of money in the rebuilding of both of these nations. Not only was it good business, providing American manufacturers new markets into which to sell their products, it was also a good kind of cultural exchange.

  The predecessor of IBM, the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, sold its first punch card machine into the Japanese market back in 1925 at Nippon Pottery – yes, …

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• Cloud Provider Connectria In Major Partnership Push

  November 5, 2018 Alex Woodie

  The IBM i cloud market is quite fragmented, with dozens of companies angling to deliver IBM i hosting services, often to a geographic or industrial niche. Now one of the biggest fish in this little pond, Connectria, is looking to solidify its foothold in IBM i cloud hosting by building a network of VARs, software vendors, and other companies that share its vision.

  In May, IBM i chief architect Steve Will teased us about Google getting into the IBM i hosting business. While IBM and the Alphabet subsidiary work together with the OpenPower consortium, there’s still no indication that Google …

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• Guru: More About Merge

  November 5, 2018 Ted Holt

  I often read back through articles that have appeared in this august publication to look for errors and omissions. Such an expedition recently made me aware that I have not told you as much as I would like to about the SQL MERGE statement. Today I am pleased to provide more information.

  First I want to be sure that everybody understands is that you can add conditions to the WHEN MATCHED and WHEN NOT MATCHED expressions. That means that you do not have to treat all matched or unmatched rows in the same way. Look at this example:

  merge . 

  …

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