• Free Form RPG Scores IBM i Innovation Award

  May 16, 2016 Dan Burger

  From the time free form RPG was introduced with IBM i 7.1 TR 7, expectations have been high. There’s been much talk about the potential for greatness, but only scattered reports of success. Finally, free form RPG is lighting up the scoreboard. Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corporation (AECC) is showing the way. It’s made free form RPG the cornerstone of future development, and its endeavors led to the 2016 COMMON-IBM Power Systems Innovation Award. The award was presented Sunday at COMMON‘s Annual Meeting and Exposition, which just got underway in New Orleans, Louisiana. AECC is based in Little Rock. It

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• IBM Finally Gets Power8 Machines On SoftLayer Cloud

  May 16, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  For a company that is so eager to prove the value of the Power processors at the heart of its Power Systems machines, IBM has sure taken its time getting Power8-based systems onto its SoftLayer public cloud. IBM talked about adding Power iron to SoftLayer’s datacenters in the wake of the acquisition of the hoster and cloud provider back in June 2013, and it had bold plans to double the footprint of that cloud and to make Power iron a peer to Xeon-based systems. These promised machines are now available, and they are, in an indirect way, a significant thing

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• AURA Hopes U.S. Modernization Crowd Has Silver Lining

  May 16, 2016 Dan Burger

  AURA Equipements CTO Sylvain Rubele says he knows of 4,000 IBM i shops that are integrating IBM i native applications within Web or desktop applications that run on Windows, Linux, and Unix operating systems. How does he know this? Because, by his count, they are AURA customers. Eighty percent of those reside in French-speaking European countries. He wouldn’t mind if that number was smaller, if the number of IBM midrange customers in the United States was larger. With the increasing emphasis on application and database modernization, Rubele expects to do better in that market. But if wishes were fishes, we’d

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• OLAP Aggregation Specification In DB2 For i 7.3

  May 10, 2016 Michael Sansoterra

  If I could use one word to describe the new DB2 for i OLAP features in IBM i 7.3, it would be “Booyah”! (According to the Urban dictionary, “booyah” is “used in order to abruptly express great joy, usually brought on by victory or some other sort of accomplishment.”) Though there are many new features in i 7.3 under the umbrella of OLAP, for now I’m going to demonstrate the new OLAP aggregation specification. It was way back in 2006 in V5R4 that DB2 for i developers were first treated to OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) functions. If you’re unfamiliar with

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• Sending Escape Messages From RPG, Take 2

  May 10, 2016 Hey, Ted

  In Sending Escape Messages from RPG, your program defines the message data parameter as 80 bytes, but the IBM manual (Send Program Message (QMHSNDPM)) defines the parameter as char(*), with notes saying it can be up to 32767. I would like a variable longer than 80, but instead of coding 100 today, 120 next project, and so on, I’m wondering how I could code it better to take full advantage of the API. –Glenn The short answer is that you don’t have to code the length. Let the compiler figure it out for you. Here’s an illustration that may

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• When You Reach Your Break(ing) Point. . . Or Not

  May 10, 2016 Susan Gantner

  I’m always surprised at how well-attended my RDi debugging presentations are. After all, once you know about service entry points, there’s not a huge amount that’s new and radically different about debugging, even with RDi. Then again, I’m constantly learning new things. Here’s something I learned just last week, in fact. Let’s assume that you already have a debug session running on the troublesome program and we’ll look at setting and using breakpoints. The most obvious and common way to set one is to position your cursor on the statement where you want it. From there, you can use

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• See The IBM i Access You Never Heard Of

  May 9, 2016 Dan Burger

  The IBM i development team rolled out Access Client Solutions (ACS) almost three years ago. It remains a work in progress. And that’s a good thing. The IT graveyard is filled with products that were unable to show progress. Before there was ACS, there was Access for Windows. It can still be found in a great many IBM midrange shops, despite having one foot in the grave and no sign of a pulse when it comes to progress. The pace of progress established with ACS is not blindingly fast, but it’s steady and it’s an indicator of where and how

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• Temporal Table Trouble?

  May 9, 2016 Alex Woodie

  One of the exciting new features in IBM i 7.3 is the addition of temporal queries in the integrated DB2 for i database. The so-called “time travel” query capability will let users ask how a particular piece of data looked at some time in the past, using good old SQL. While this new capability is included with the standard version of the database, a key feature that makes temporal useful costs extra. The temporal query functionality was one of the big new features in IBM i 7.3 and brings the DB2 for i database up to par with the temporal

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• IBM Melds FlashSystem With XIV To Scale Enterprise Flash

  May 9, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Over the past few weeks, we have been analyzing the new flash modules and controllers that IBM has made available for plugging into Power Systems machines and significantly boosting the performance of the storage arrays under the skins of the servers. This week, we will take a look at the new FlashSystem all-flash arrays from Big Blue, which are aimed at much larger workloads that cannot fit within the system. The two new FlashSystems that IBM announced concurrent with the internal flash storage back in April are much heftier machines than it has been peddling to date, and the more

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• BCD, Midrange Dynamics Partner On IBM i Modernization

  May 9, 2016 Dan Burger

  When you think of modernizing applications to increase their efficiency and extend the original investment in the business logic that is so important to your organization, it should be apparent that the process requires some controls and management. It’s a bit like having a map and compass when going into the wilderness. That’s why we’re seeing partnerships form between the application development vendors and the change management vendors. The most recent hook-up is a partnership between BCD Software and Midrange Dynamics. BCD has created several methods for IBM midrange shops to modify, install, and distribute application changes. For the

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