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IBM Cuts Tags On Removable Disk, Tape For Power Systems

May 5, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan

As part of the April 28 announcements, IBM is trimming prices on various removable storage for its Power Systems line.

The price cuts, which took effect immediately, are for removable disk drives, USB-attached disk drives, RDX units (a different kind of removable disk encased in cyberfuturistic metal casings), a few SAS-attached LTO tape drives, and a bunch of controllers. Here is the full rundown of the features and their price changes, which were outlined in announcement letter 314-048:

Machine	Feature		List Price		Percent
Type	Number	Description	Old	New	Change
7895	EU01	p260, 1 TB Removable Drive	$345	$299	-13.3%

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Business Aligns With IT At Midwestern Tech Conference

May 5, 2014 Dan Burger

Continuing education and training programs for IT personnel seems like a no-brainer. The benefits seem obvious. And even more obvious are the disadvantages of an IT staff that has fallen behind the technical advancements that start-up companies have in place. That’s a competitive advantage that creates risk for businesses that allow IT skills to stagnate.

We hear a lot about the importance of aligning IT with business goals. Business goals are a moving target and IT skills are, too.

There are significant number of IBM midrange shops in the Midwest, and more than 100 or so should be sending people

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Big Blue Rolls Out New HMC For Power Control Freakage

May 5, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Look out system administrators, there is a new Hardware Management Console in town. Or, if you are not fond of the HMC, perhaps you call it the Hardware Mangling Controller. No matter what you call it, there is a new one of them, and this one is better than its predecessors.

The 7042-CR8 rack-mounted HMC was tucked into the April 28 announcements, which included the new Power8 entry machines as well as IBM i 7.2, as we reported on elsewhere in the issues last week and this week. In announcement letter 114-060, you canâ€™t really see much about this

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U.S. Economy Creates A Decent Number Of Jobs In April

May 5, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Go figure. Gross domestic product figures were lower than expected in the first quarter, but businesses didn’t know that until earlier this week, and so hiring among employers in the United States was up perhaps more strongly than expected. It is hard to argue cause and effect in an economy, so I won’t do that.

What I can say is that according to the latest jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. economy added 288,000 non-farm jobs in April, matching spikes in February and November last year. The unemployment rate took a four-tenths of a percent

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Emulate sp_Help In DB2 For i

April 30, 2014 Michael Sansoterra

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

Every once in a while I get an email from an SQL developer asking something like “What tool do you use to develop SQL routines on IBM i?” Astonished is the perfect verb to describe the reaction when I reply that I normally use STRSQL or Run SQL Scripts (in System i Navigator).

Equally apt descriptions are dumbfounded, perplexed, baffled, and flummoxed. If youâ€™ve ever used SQL developer tools on other platforms, such as Microsoft’s SQL Server Management Studio, then the astonishment is quite

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PDF = Pretty Darn Fine!

April 30, 2014 Ted Holt

If you’re running IBM i 6.1 or later, you have a great alternative to spooled files at your disposal–PDF. Here are four easy ways to add PDF generation to your programming.

Method 1: Write directly to PDF.

You can make your RPG (or COBOL or whatever) programs write directly to PDF stream files. You’ll need to specify the proper values in the Create Printer File (CRTPRTF), Change Printer File (CHGPRTF), or Override with Printer File (OVRPRTF) commands:

Device type (DEVTYPE) must be *AFPDS
Workstation customizing object (WSCST) must be *PDF
To stream file (TOSTMF) must have a valid directory or

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Where Do I Find These IBM i Licensed Products?

April 30, 2014 Hey, Joe

I’m installing third-party software on my IBM i. The vendor documentation lists out the following IBM i licensed programs as pre-requisites for installation.

5722-SS1–OS/400 – Directory Services
5722-JV1–Java Developer Kit 1.5 or higher
5722-AC3–Crypto Access Provider 128-bit for AS/400

I can’t find any of these products in my IBM i licensed program list. How do I make sure I have these features? I’m running i 6.1.

–Steve

Because of the way IBM does things combined with some changes to the i operating system over the years, there’s some confusion as to where and how each of these products is included

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IBM i Runs On Two Of Five New Power8 Machines

April 28, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Big Blue was widely expected to trot out the new entry Power Systems machines based on its Power8 processors this week, but it looks like the company wanted to make sure that the machines had a day of their own rather than being a part of the broader discussion about big data and cloud at the Impact2014 shindig that IBM is hosting. The interesting bit of news for IBM i shops that came out last week as IBM preannounced the Power8 systems is that there are five new systems, but only two of them are certified to run IBM i.

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A Real Open Power Server, Finally

April 28, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan

You cannot get one just yet, but perhaps in the not-too-distant-future if you want to hack together your own Power-based IBM i server, you will be able to do just that. Last week at the OpenPower Innovation Summit in San Francisco, IBM and its OpenPower Foundation partners showed off the first non-IBM motherboard based on a commercial-grade, 64-bit PowerPC or Power processor.

In fact, if this OpenPower scenario plays out the way Big Blue is hoping that it will, there will be multiple processor and motherboard makers who supply components to system suppliers as well as those who design and

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Executing RPG: Pull The Plug, Kilner Says

April 28, 2014 Dan Burger

Steve Kilner has been down nine miles of ugly road and he’s seen enough. If you’ve ever looked at 20-year-old, monolithic RPG code with the thought in mind that this code can serve another five or 10 years, it’s likely you’ve seen enough, too. It’s time for assessment, Kilner believes, and his assessment is that a lot of high maintenance RPG is beyond saving, beyond modernizing, and is unmistakably ill-equipped for the modern age of business computing.

This begins with a question of quality code and Kilner is talking about code that possesses inert amounts of quality. It’s so convoluted

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