• Guru: Flexible Interfaces

  November 1, 2021 Ted Holt

  The details are murky, it’s been eons ago. Probably the mid-1990’s. I was working on an AS/400 that ran a mixture of System/36 and native applications. I needed to call a program that had been written in the latest version of RPG from both S/36 RPG II and native RPG III (a.k.a. RPG/400) programs. I hope I’m remembering this correctly. It’s been so long.

  The problem I ran into was rooted in a numeric parameter. S/36 programs passed numeric parameters in zoned decimal format, whereas native RPG and CL programs used packed decimal. The called program defined the parameter as …

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• As I See It: Home Work

  November 1, 2021 Victor Rozek

  Data collection and privacy weren’t much of an issue when the Constitution was being debated, which may account for the fact that those words don’t appear anywhere in the document. Probably the greatest threat to privacy at the time was gossip.

  At best, privacy is implied in the Bill of Rights. But while the government can’t quarter soldiers in your home willy-nilly, there are plenty of other digital intruders that may be billeting in your residence; tools designed specifically to tread on your privacy. And while social media has long been Hoovering every available scrap of personal data, a subclass …

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• IBM to Resell DSI’s VTL In Its IBM i Cloud

  November 1, 2021 Alex Woodie

  IBM last week announced that it is now reselling Dynamic Solutions International (DSI)’s virtual tape library (VTL) technology with its IBM i cloud offering. By running DSI Restore in its Power Virtual Server, IBM is giving its public cloud customers another option for backing up and recovering data sets of all sizes.

  DSI Restore is a Linux-based VTL solution designed specifically to back up and recover IBM i environments of varying sizes. It’s based on DSI’s popular VTL appliance, and emulates LTO drives while integrating with common backup and recovery tools for IBM i, such as BRMS, HelpSystems Robot/SAVE, …

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• Technical Debt: The Silent Killer

  October 27, 2021 Alex Woodie

  There’s a dangerous malady afflicting companies that rely on the IBM i server to run their business applications. Left undiagnosed and untreated, it can debilitate an IT shop, rendering it unable to take advantage of new opportunities and respond to challenges. It’s called technical debt, and you or an organization you know may be suffering from it as we speak.

  Technical debt is a concept that is credited to Ward Cunningham, the American programmer and the co-author of Manifesto for Agile Software Development. “If you develop a program for a long period of time by only adding features but …

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• Quantum to Help IBM Develop LTO-10

  October 27, 2021 Alex Woodie

  IBM and Quantum last week announced they have entered into a partnership to jointly develop the next generation of Linear Tape-Open (LTO) technology, LTO-10, which is currently under development and likely will come to market in 2024 or 2025.

  The announcement was unusually terse in its wording. “Under the terms of the agreement,” Quantum stated in its October 19 press release, “Quantum will collaborate with IBM in its development of LTO-10 tape drives and media in order to accelerate time-to-market, capacity, and performance. The specific terms of the agreement are confidential and will not be disclosed.”

  The fact that IBM …

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• Remain Bolsters Change Management Suite

  October 27, 2021 Alex Woodie

  In the market for change management software? One of the most active vendors in the IBM i space, Remain Software, this month announced the delivery of several new releases of its software, including TD/OMS version 14, Gravity version 7, and a new release of its API Studio.

  Remain develops and supports its application lifecycle management (ALM) software for IBM i and open system platforms out of its headquarters in The Netherlands. It has several partners in the United States and other countries, giving it a global reach with its flagship TD/OMS offering and supporting cast of tools.

  In early October, …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, October 27

  October 27, 2021 Jenny Thomas

  The year isn’t quite over yet, but already businesses are starting to look back and take stock of how successful – or not – 2021 was for all aspects of their organization. With Big Blue heading into its Big Separation with its spin-off Kyndryl next month, the road may get a little more rough before everyone settles in to IBM’s new normal. This is probably why we see a lot of news and commentary focusing on IBM right now as we all watch and wait to see what happens next. Keep checking back here for more developments, and to find …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 23, Number 43

  October 27, 2021 Doug Bidwell

  It’s time for another security alert. Check out Security Bulletin: IBM Java SDK and IBM Java Runtime for IBM i are affected by CVE-2021-2369 and CVE-2021-2432, which you can see at this link. Here are the patches by release:

  • Release 7.4 – SF99665 level 12
  • Release 7.3 – SF99725 level 23
  • Release 7.2 – SF99716 level 33
  • Release 7.1 – SF99572 level 47

  Here is the rundown of PTF Groups by IBM i release level:

  PTF Groups 7.4:

  • HIPERs (High Impact/Pervasive)
  • Backup Recovery Solutions

  PTF Groups 7.3:

  • Backup Recovery Solutions

  PTF Groups 7.2:

  • Backup Recovery Solutions

  PTF Groups 7.1: …

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• A Proper Accounting Of The Power Business

  October 25, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Big Blue might be preparing for the spinout of its Kyndryl managed services company, now slated for early November, and its new financial presentations, which we reviewed two weeks ago, but that task is not yet done and until it is we are still getting the same financial view of IBM in the third quarter of 2021 ended in June. It was not a particularly memorable quarter when it came to IBM Systems group.

  But it is looking like IBM is going to be able to pad a better 2022, with Kyndryl taking on a huge amount of software …

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• Talking Power Systems Deals With The Boss

  October 25, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  What a relief when you speak the same language with someone in the business. In any business. But particularly with someone in the AS/400 and IBM i business, who has been at it about the same time as you, has seen the same stuff as you, has the same frames of reference as you, and who knows what the hell you are talking about even if they don’t agree with you all the time.

  That’s how it is with the boss at UCG Technologies, that being president and founder Jim Kandrac, who is proud of his city of Cleveland and …

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