The Four Hundred Archives - Page 363 of 1506

CONST Doesn’t Mean You Can’t Change It

October 20, 2015 Ted Holt

You can pass parameters to an RPG subprocedure in three ways: by reference, by read-only reference, and by value. (I have written about this before.) My favorite method is read-only reference. I use it as often as I can. Would you believe that it is possible to change the value of a variable that is passed to a subprocedure by read-only reference? Since you would probably do so only inadvertently, it’s good to understand how it can happen.

To pass a parameter by read-only reference, include the CONST keyword in the procedure prototype and the procedure interface.

D Process         pr

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DB2 for i 7.1 TR10 and i 7.2 TR2 Features, Part 2

October 20, 2015 Michael Sansoterra

Continuing on from Part 1, this tip covers some new features recently made available in DB2 for i.

SQL Function Parameter Limit

User-defined functions capabilities in DB2 for i have received a huge boost in that the parameter list limit for a scalar function has jumped from 90 parameters to a whopping 1024 parameters. Likewise, the combined input parameter and return columns limit for a table function has increased from 125 to 1025.

Off the top of my head I can’t think of an example when I would want to pass more than 90 parameters into a scalar function.

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A Different View Of IBM i And PASE

October 19, 2015 Dan Burger

PASE is the AIX runtime environment that is integrated into the IBM i operating system. Most IBM i community members know of it. Comparatively few actually know it. It’s not a wild guess to say most IBM midrange shops that use the TCP/IP networking stack, the Java virtual machine, the Apache Web server, or the PHP runtime are unaware that these were crafted for AIX and are running inside of PASE. There’s reason to believe that PASE awareness may be on the rise. What’s that mean, if anything, to you?

PASE brings added functionality to the IBM i OS by

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Equity Speaks: Q&A With The H.I.G. On HelpSystems

October 19, 2015 Alex Woodie

Equity Speaks: Q&A With The H.I.G. On HelpSystems

As expected, H.I.G. Capital‘s plan to acquire HelpSytsems cleared all regulatory hurdles, and the deal was finalized last week. In a Q&A with IT Jungle, the H.I.G. partners in charge of the deal elaborate on plans for HelpSystems, as well as their view of the IBM i market and the IBM Power Systems server.

Fraser Preston, a managing director at H.I.G., and Aaron Tolson, a principal, were the main drivers of the deal to buy HelpSystems from Summit Partners, which was announced in August. Preston and Tolson agreed to

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Tiered Storage Upgrade Boosts BRMS

October 19, 2015 Dan Burger

IBM Backup, Recovery, and Media Services (BRMS) found a front row seat during the IBM i Technology Refresh announcements this month because of its new tiered storage capabilities. IBM i Chief Architect Steve Will made note of it in his most recent You and i blog, which featured Will’s picks for top news items among the early October IBM announcements. That tells me IBM i customers have been delivering a message or two about what BRMS needed.

From Will’s blog: “Until recently, there was a rather simple ‘tiered storage’ capability in BRMS that would detect how frequently a library was

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As I See It: Biology On The Wing

October 19, 2015 Victor Rozek

The solemn pod arcs in unison and disappears beneath blue water, leaving telltale plumes dancing in the breeze. I’m perched on weather-carved rocks on the extreme southern end of a small Canadian island called Saturna, watching a pod of killer whales sweep around the point. They pass by a mere stone’s throw from shore, on their way to ancient feeding grounds. But they are not alone. A hundred yards beyond, a picket line of boats filled with grasping tourists tracks their every breach.

Once hunted, they are now annoyed. Once victims of persistent greed, they now endure persistent curiosity. From

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IBM Updates PowerVM Hypervisor, PowerVC OpenStack

October 19, 2015 Timothy Prickett Morgan

It may seem like the only thing that IBM cares about lately in the Power Systems business is boosting its Linux-based L and LC series lines. But as the latest Technology Refresh updates from October 5 demonstrate (which we have reported on extensively at IT Jungle in the past two weeks), Big Blue is keen on updating the software stack on which IBM i shops depend. And in some cases, this also includes the hypervisor and management tools, as well as Linux running next to IBM i.

In announcement letter 215-262, IBM is updating the PowerVM hypervisor that it

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GCC: Bringing More Open Source Software to IBM i

October 14, 2015 Alex Woodie

One of the more interesting parts of last week’s IBM i announcements (if easily overlooked) was the introduction of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) to the platform. As IBM‘s product manager for the IBM i explained last week, the addition of GCC essentially opens the door to bringing a wide range of open source packaged applications to the IBM i environment, and provides a key building block for IBM moving forward.

During his October 5 webcast on the COMMON Europe website (which you can view below), IBM i product manager Tim Rowe discussed the importance of open source software

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What JSON on IBM i Can Do For You

October 14, 2015 Alex Woodie

One of the most compelling new features that IBM added to the DB2 for i database in recent memory is support for JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), which has become the de facto standard interchange format for Web data. John Eberhard, a software engineer in IBM’s Rochester lab, recently led IT Jungle through some of the major capabilities that the new JSON data store can provide to all you IBM i shops out there.

IBM shipped a technology preview of the new JSON store earlier this year with updates to IBM i 7.1 and 7.2. Unfortunately, the JSON store did not

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RPG, XML, SOAP, and REST: Web Services for IBM i

October 14, 2015 Dan Burger

Anyone following the evolution of Web services has seen the RESTful architecture gaining ground quickly on the traditional favorite SOAP architecture. Web development and particularly Web-based mobile development has welcomed REST. To keep up with demand, Krengel Technology has introduced version 3.2 of its RPG-XML Suite, which delivers new Web service capabilities to IBM i customers.

Krengel developed the RPG-XML Suite for RPG developers who, as the Krengel website notes, “have lived through creating Web services in RPG and Java without a well-packaged development toolset.”