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  • Testing For Security Inadequacies

    April 12, 2016 Dan Burger

    Organizations are often reluctant to admit that they have inadequate system security. Quite possibly they may not even realize it. That’s not uncommon, particularly in the IBM midrange community, where we know there’s a false sense of security deeply rooted in the conviction that IBM i is inherently secure. Nothing could be further from the truth, although thinking any system is inherently secure is an equally foolish mistake. It’s all a matter of understanding how to manage security on a system.

    Preconceived notions that the IBM i platform is some sort of superhero in a box is one of the

    …

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  • Thank You, IBM

    April 12, 2016 Brian Kelly

    The IBM Corporation was run as a benevolent dictatorship through 1971. Thomas Watson Senior, and then Thomas Junior, ran IBM as if they owned it. They both had an entrepreneurial flair and few would deny that when they were in charge of IBM, they ran the company as if it were a sole proprietorship. They had many wonderful policies such as taking care of the people so that the people would take care of the business, and of course the classic: “Respect for the Individual.”

    IBM believed in Wild Ducks and chairman Watson Junior wrote about them. He was not

    …

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  • Surge Of Services In DB2 For i, Part 1

    April 5, 2016 Michael Sansoterra

    The IBM i 7.2 TR3 and 7.1 TR11 technology refreshes come with a glut of new services. If you are responsible for IBM i administration, you are guaranteed to be tickled pink with these great enhancements. My examples are to call general attention to the availability of these services and give ideas on how they may be used. However, I still recommend going to the IBM documentation on the DeveloperWorks site (or the IBM knowledge center) to get full information on the parameters and all columns used by these special views and table functions.

    For clarification, there are actually

    …

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  • Enable or Disable Code at Run Time

    April 5, 2016 Ted Holt

    If you program in RPG or C, you should know how to use compiler directives to enable or disable source code at compile time. IBM i programmers should also know how to enable or disable executable code at run time, and why they would want to do such a thing.

    Let’s talk about the why first.

    One good reason to enable or disable code is for trouble-shooting. You might find it valuable to include commands to:

    • Display the job log
    • Dump program variables
    • Copy QTEMP files to another library
    • Build spooled files (like of the type I showed how to
    …

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  • Refacing Your Database, Part 1

    April 5, 2016 Paul Tuohy

    Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here.

    In this group of three articles, I will discuss a technique for refacing a traditional DDS defined database as an SQL DDL defined database. There will be no recreation of files or recompilation of programs, and it is not as much hard work as you think it might be.

    The stored procedures, functions, programs, and commands used in these articles are available in the library SQLFACE, which can be downloaded here.

    Before I get into the nitty gritty of refacing databases, I would just like to say

    …

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  • X Marks The Spot

    April 4, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan

    Just because IBM sold off its System x X86 server business to Lenovo Group does not mean magically that X86 servers are no longer relevant to Power Systems customers. As far as we can tell, Big Blue’s exit from this business has had no measurable impact on the use of X86 iron at IBM i shops, although the brand of machines that IBM i customers might choose in their next X86 upgrade cycle might change if they had not already been using gear from Hewlett-Packard Enterprise or Dell, the dominant suppliers of X86 gear in the datacenter.

    Last week,

    …

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  • IBM i Shops Behind The Customized ERP Eight Ball

    April 4, 2016 Dan Burger

    We are not sheep. What we do with our ERP software is our own business and our widget business is not going to be run like all other widget businesses. And we don’t all jump when the ERP software vendor says jump. Most IBM midrange shops are running packaged ERP software and quite a few have customized them to get what they really want. Until it’s time to upgrade, that is.

    Software upgrades, even when the software is not customized, can be a pain in the patootie. Whether that’s a dull pain or a sharp pain is often related to

    …

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  • MariaDB Dropping In On IBM i To Replace MySQL

    April 4, 2016 Alex Woodie

    When Oracle dropped support for IBM i with its MySQL database five years ago, it effectively slammed the door shut on a promising path to rejuvenate the IBM i ecosystem with an open source of applications. But soon that door will re-open via MariaDB, a fork of MySQL that is a drop-in replacement for Oracle’s open database. Zend‘s PHP-on-IBM i guru Mike Pavlak gives IT Jungle the scoop on what’s about to happen.

    According to Pavlak, work is under way to get MariaDB running on IBM i, which it will do in the same manner that MySQL came

    …

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  • Mad Dog 21/21: Wintel Overture

    April 4, 2016 Hesh Wiener

    In 1981, IBM caused a tectonic shift in computing by announcing its PC. IBM ultimately failed in the PC business, but it spawned an industry segment that still stands on the PC’s two pillars: Intel chips and Microsoft software. Thirty-five years later, however, most clients are mobile, with ARM chips and ‘nix variant software. Meanwhile, enterprise Wintel and Lintel have been enlisted by Microsoft for a fresh assault on the glass house archipelago. To avoid a debacle, IBM must reinvent its Power and mainframe platforms on the ground and in the cloud.

    IBM appears vulnerable, adding to customers’

    …

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  • IBM Keeps Low Profile While Reaction To ‘Resource Action’ Boils

    April 4, 2016 Dan Burger

    The boiling pot that is IBM‘s workforce reduction plan continues to spill over and let off steam. After a report was released last month from the financial analyst firm Bernstein estimated 14,000 IBM workers would be losing their jobs, the reaction was explosive. Last week, on the Watching IBM website, survey results from a fraction of IBM workers added some context to what’s happening.

    “The survey results show what people have been saying for quite a few years. That there is age discrimination going on in the job cuts and the IBM employee evaluation system is seriously flawed. It

    …

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