• Talking Power9 With IBM Fellow Brad McCredie

  October 2, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The Power8 generation is at the very end of its life, and the Power9 generation is just starting to crawl and soon will be walking and then running. IBM is a bit behind its processor rollout cadence, but that delay is not as great as the one that Intel has experienced with its recent “Skylake” Xeon SP processor launch, which was expected last September and then was held off formally until July. We had heard Power9 iron would launch in July, then in October, and now we are hearing maybe in December.

  It is unusual for there not to be …

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• Why Encryption Is Not A Silver Bullet

  October 2, 2017 Alex Woodie

  While there is a temptation to view database encryption as the ultimate form of security, there are a variety reasons why the technology should not be relied upon as the main means to protect your valuable DB24i data. We talk with former IBMer Bruce Bading, who wrote the book on IBM i security assessments, to get the dirty details.

  In the wake of the Equifax hack, several important questions have gone unanswered: Did the credit giant encrypt its data, and if so, how did hackers end up with 143 million records? With multiple government investigations – and many more civil …

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• Guru: Consuming A REST Web Service Using SQL And POST

  October 2, 2017 Mike Larsen

  In my prior article, I showed how to consume a REST web service using the GET verb. This time, we’re going to continue to build our knowledge of web services by working with the POST verb. In addition to working with a different verb, I’m also going to demonstrate how to pass a header and body to the service.

  The goal is to post information to an Amazon Web Service (AWS). I created a simple REST Amazon Web Service that accepts information about a pet which will be inserted into a pet store database. I pass a JSON structure …

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• IBM i And RDi: Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire

  October 2, 2017 Dan Burger

  Evaluating the future of your IBM i environment should be on your mind. It should be on the mind of your boss and the minds of everyone at the C-level where you work. Maintaining and modernizing existing applications means being prepared for today and tomorrow, even if that requires technological changes that test the outer limits of your comfort zone.

  The need to integrate technologies and reuse existing business logic may vary from foggy to laser sharp, but continuing to get more from IT is probably happening to some degree, or it soon enough will. Are you prepared to become …

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• Take The IBM i Marketplace Survey

  October 2, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In days gone by, IBM used to have a great amount of insight into what was going on at AS/400 shops. But somewhere between the iSeries and through the System i down to Power Systems running IBM i and what is, apparently, being called Db2 instead of DB2 these days, with or without i, Big Blue stopped having the kind of insight that helped us not only understand the trends in our community, but how they related – or didn’t – to the larger IT community.

  This community, which is more than a marketplace but still encompasses that, has always …

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• One IBM i Route Into the API Economy

  September 27, 2017 Alex Woodie

  The so-called API Economy is emerging as a legitimate engine for driving the growth of commerce around the world. But with mostly monolithic apps written years ago, the IBM i installed base isn’t well positioned to be a major player. However, there are alternative pathways into the API Economy for IBM i shops, if they know where to look.

  The API Economy refers to the idea that, by exposing bits and pieces of our internal systems out to the world through well-defined application programming interfaces (APIs) – which usually manifest REST-based Web services, although SOAP and XML files will work …

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• A Fast Idle For IBM i Development

  September 27, 2017 Alex Woodie

  One thing that’s clear about Liam Allan is he doesn’t take things slow. At just 20 years of age, Allan is one of the brightest young developers on the platform. Now the British coder is sharing his latest creation with the IBM i world: a lightweight ILE development tool dubbed Idle.

  There are many options when it comes to IBM i development tools, especially if open source, Web-native languages are your thing. There’s no shortage of environments for creating PHP, Node.js or Java apps. The opening of the IBM i platform has been a great thing in that regard.

  But …

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• Latest App Dev Design Tool From MRC Arrives

  September 27, 2017 Dan Burger

  The common thread that runs through application development tools is a desire for simplicity. Ease of use, whether to tool is being used by an experienced programmer or a technologically challenged power user is the prize many companies are searching for. And not all end users have the same Web application goals. Some apps are designed for report writing, business intelligence, executive dashboards, e-commerce, customer portals, or mobile users. And that list could be much longer.

  At michaels, ross & cole, the IBM i software tool developer that prefers lower case letters and the shortened handle mrc, its Java-based …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, September 27

  September 27, 2017 Dan Burger

  Total cost of ownership comparisons have always been an important tool for combating the high up-front cost that competitors use against the IBM i on Power system. Updated reports — one for midsize companies and one for enterprise companies —  recently hit the streets. Two weeks ago, you may have seen an IT Jungle story on these reports. This week their importance is noted in Steve Will’s blog.

  Mention IBM marketing at a gathering of IBM i users and watch the sparks fly. Now IBM has its own Watson Advertising division. This should be interesting. Find out more about Watson …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 38

  September 27, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  Hello fellow IBM i-ers. (Yes, that looks ugly.) This week in the IBM i PTF Guide, you will discover that the Java Group for V6R1 has been updated. Even though V6R1 for IBM i is no longer supported, the licensed programs for that release may be on a different support level.

  By the way, Java Group has been updated in all releases, not just for V6R1, as have the HIPERs and the Backup Recovery Groups. Lots of PTF action this week. Best news is no new Defective PTFs since September 8!

  A big “Thank You” to Charles Charalambou for …

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