• The Power Neine Conundrum

  July 24, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  If you take a very liberal interpretation of what the term cognitive systems means, including database, middleware, analytics software and the underlying system hardware and software, then IBM has spent untold tens of billions of dollars – probably hundreds of billions, really – creating its Cognitive Systems stack. We wonder what all of that analytics and machine learning software would say, with Watson’s voice of course, if it was pointed at IBM’s entire financial and technical history.

  What is the prognosis, Doctor Watson?

  We here at IT Jungle are an optimistic lot, and we realize that IBM, like many of …

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• Mulling Midrange Optimism

  July 24, 2017 Alex Woodie

  It can be hard to be positive about the state of the IBM i server. While there are occasionally signs of growth, the overall size of the market is a small fraction of what it used to be. Outside of Rochester, you can scarcely find an IBMer who can even spell “eye bee em eye.” But a recent merger involving third-party vendors indicates there may be hidden life in the legacy platform.

  Last month’s blockbuster acquisition involved IBM i HA software vendor Vision Solutions being sold by Clearlake Capital Group to Centerbridge Partners in order to merge it with Syncsort …

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• Guru: Fundamentals Of Prototyping, Part 1

  July 24, 2017 Jon Paris

  In my series on parameter passing fundamentals, I mentioned the importance of using prototypes to help ensure consistency of parameter definitions; i.e., to help ensure that the parameter passed to the called routine matches what is expected. After that article was published, it came to my attention that many of my readers were unaware of some of the additional capabilities of prototypes, in particular that prototypes can not only identity errors in parameter usage, but that in some cases they can actually fix them for you!

  Before we can begin, though, it would be a good idea to ensure that …

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• As I See It: Those Accursed Millennials

  July 24, 2017 Victor Rozek

  Kids!

  I don’t know what’s wrong with these kids today!

  Kids!

  Who can understand anything they say?

  Kids!

  They are disobedient, disrespectful oafs!

  Noisy, crazy, dirty, lazy, loafers!

  While we’re on the subject:

  Kids!

  You can talk and talk till your face is blue!

  Kids!

  But they still just do what they want to do!

  Why can’t they be like we were,

  Perfect in every way?

  What’s the matter with kids today?

  That little ditty was sung by the wonderfully snarky Paul Lynde from the 1960s musical Bye Bye Birdie, still performed in high schools around the country. Beyond …

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• Education And Enterprise Computing Not Passing The Test

  July 24, 2017 Dan Burger

  The education-to-employment system flat out fails for most employers and young people seeking employment. Let’s introduce that elephant in the room right now. It’s not a dry well, but it’s not close to being what it should be. It’s much bigger than the IBM i community. It’s bigger than the IT industry. But it certainly is a factor in filling positions at IBM i shops. The mismatch between colleges and the needs of the job market is apparent.

  There are expectations and finger-pointing on both sides: the educational system and the employers. What there doesn’t seem to be is the …

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• Logical Replication: Still the Mainstay for IBM i HA

  July 19, 2017 Alex Woodie

  For many years, logical replication solutions were the only choice in the high availability product category for IBM i and its predecessor platforms. IBM’s introduction of PowerHA changed that, providing a dramatically different approach to achieving high availability. However, the vast majority of HA deployments in the IBM i market still use logical replication solutions. Which one is best suited for your needs? Hopefully this story will help you find the answer.

  Logical replication solutions work by replicating changes made to database files and other IBM i objects in real time. The eight third-party products in this category – including …

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• Have You Patched Those 35 Java Vulns on IBM i?

  July 19, 2017 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that take security seriously will want to know that IBM has issued a number of security patches over the past several months. The patch count since March includes fixes for security vulnerabilities in various technologies supported in IBM i 6.1 through 7.3, including 35 alone in Java, as well as flaws in Python, Samba, BIND, and the integrated Web server.

  Implementing security patches, or program temporary fixes (PTFs) in IBM jargon, is one of the easiest ways to ensure your system is kept up-to-date against vulnerabilities that are constantly being exposed by the hacker community. It’s also …

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• Eamon Musallam: Insights on i

  July 19, 2017 Dan Burger

  Things that make a difference. We’re all looking for what’s essential. Too often we get distracted by the inconsequential, improbable, and inapplicable. Sometimes those distractions are built into the way we’ve always done things. The fate of organizations, the fate of our professions and the fate of IBM i are in the balance.

  Last week, I had a conversation with Eamon Musallam, president of the OCEAN user group, which is based in Orange County, California. We talked about real work that is getting done by IBM i shops to solve problems and how a user group continues to be …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, July 19

  July 19, 2017 Dan Burger

  The graying of the IBM i workforce is opening the door for somewhat of a youth movement. Yes, that has the potential to be culturally shocking. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Some youthful influence is needed in organizations (yours might be one of them) that have done little to change the IT formula in the past 20 years or more.

  This week Monitor also includes articles on what’s tormenting IBM’s cognitive superhero Watson, a blockchain blockbuster deal for IBM, and an interview with the RDi chief architect and his insights into what RDi can do for you.

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 28

  July 19, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  Firmware. That “stuff” in the middle that appeared in our world when the AS400 went away. In the beginning, when the computing world was created and this unique creation was created to be something special, there was an AS/400.

  This was an all-in-one OS/TIMI/hardware computing solution. During its evolution, names have changed, compute, memory, storage, and I/O capacity has increased exponentially, and, several architectural changes have been made. Some changes have been comfortable, some not so much. One of the not-so-comfortable things is firmware. This firmware has been around forever, we just didn’t know it as a separate beast to …

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