• IBM to Kill DeveloperWorks Connections Site

  October 30, 2019 Alex Woodie

  IBM announced last week that it’s planning to sunset the developerWorks Connections website and developerWorks Connections applications on December 31, 2019. The company is planning to launch new websites and apps to host community discussions around its platform. The IBM i community reacted poorly to the announcement.

  IBM started warning developerWorks users about the pending change on October 14. On a FAQ page, IBM stated:

  “As part of the overall IBM effort to reduce the number of duplicate client interaction portals and simplify the user experience with the digital side of IBM, we are sunsetting the developerWorks Connections platform …

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• IBM i TRs Bring Database Enhancements, Too

  October 30, 2019 Alex Woodie

  The heart of the IBM i server is its database, so it’s natural that we would see some enhancements to Db2 for i with delivery of IBM i 7.4 Technology Refresh 1 and 7.3 TR 7 next month. The new features may not be earth-shaking, but they deliver some useful functionality nonetheless.

  Let’s start with some foundational changes to the database itself, including the way that database engineers architect the tables that store information in the database. With 7.4 TR1, IBM i shops can now add a new child table to the database without having an exclusive lock on the …

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• Revenge Of The Zombie Green Screen

  October 30, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Don’t look now, but command line interfaces – which were supposed to have been killed off years ago at the hands of superior graphical user interfaces (GUIs) – are making a comeback in the general IT scene. And the command line love appears to be spilling over into the IBM i.

  Command line interfaces, or CLIs, never completely disappeared from the scene. Even Windows 10 users can summon the dark magic of the DOS prompt with a few tactical clicks of the keyboard, mouse, or (God forbid) touchscreen. But like crazy uncles and credit card debt, the CLI has largely …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, October 30

  October 30, 2019 Jenny Thomas

  In my house, the news of the day is the Houston Astros making a second run at the World Series. If baseball isn’t your thing, you have come to the right place. We have the news you are looking for from in and around the IBM i and our IT community. One article we point out this week actually comes from IT Jungle, but it is so relevant to what we do here in Monitor that it could not be overlooked. Our resident technical guru, Ted Holt, offered up a tip this week that also served as a wonderful reminder …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 21, Number 43

  October 30, 2019 Doug Bidwell

  Welcome to this week’s issue of the IBM i PTF Guide where we have a bunch of stuff to review, including a new Backup and Recovery Group for IBM i 7.4. Among other news are HIPERs for IBM i 7.4, 7.3, 7.2, and 7.1, and there is a new HTTP server group for IBM i 7.4, 7.3, and 7.2.

  In addition, we also have a set of Security Bulletins that cover multiple vulnerabilities in the IBM i HTTP Server affect IBM i, as follows:

  IBM i 7.4	IBM i 7.3	IBM i 7.2
  CVE-2019-9517	SI70961		SI70970		Not affected
  CVE-2019-10081	SI70961		

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• How The Latest TRs Bolster HA/DR And Security

  October 28, 2019 Alex Woodie

  High availability, disaster recovery, and security are more important than ever, as enterprises look for ways to eliminate risks to their operations, applications, and data. To that end, it’s not surprising that IBM bolstered the HA/DR and security capabilities in IBM i with the latest Technology Refreshes that are slated to begin shipping November 15.

  Let’s start with the new HA features in Db2 Mirror for IBM i, the new business continuity offering that implements an active-active database cluster atop two unique IBM i logical partitions. Db2 Mirror, you’ll remember, was delivered with IBM i version 7.4, so it’s …

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• Wanted: A Real ROI Study For Midrange Platforms

  October 28, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  There is no shortage of IBM i shops that are sitting on back releases of the operating system and related systems software, or older Power Systems iron, or both. Sometimes, it takes a little convincing to get upper management to listen about how IT operations could be improved and extended if the company would only make some investments in upgrading the hardware and systems software. Sometimes it takes a lot of convincing, particularly when many small and medium businesses are run by their owners and in a certain sense any money that would be allocated for an upgrade is their …

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• Guru: Remove Extra Blanks, Or Why I Attend Conferences

  October 28, 2019 Ted Holt

  Have you been to a conference lately? If not, you may be shortchanging yourself. I attend several conferences every year and I get immense benefit from them. I learn a lot, I get a break from the day-to-day, and best of all, I build relationships with other people.

  I recently attended the RPG & DB2 Summit in Minneapolis, where I met a bright young developer named Kevan Robinson. He was kind enough to share his version of a tip that I shared with him and other attendees. It’s a technique that I learned ages ago from Craig Mullins, a mainframe …

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• As I See It: Quitting Time

  October 28, 2019 Victor Rozek

  Unlike relationships based on mutual regard, if you have issues with your job, your job doesn’t care. It’s just there, waiting to get done, by you or someone else. Nothing personal, just business.

  It’s more of a one-way relationship, with all of the emotional highs and lows experienced by the employee. And while managers have three options for dealing with undesirable workers: fix, move, or fire; employees have but one option for dealing with undesirable jobs: quit.

  But even when the workplace becomes intolerable, people often contrive to get themselves fired because they don’t have the courage to stand up …

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• Big Power8 Iron Gets A Reprieve, And More Power To You

  October 28, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The big Power9 iron has been in the field for more than a year now, and IBM had every intention of removing the Power8-based Power E870C and Power E880 E880C from its product catalog by Halloween, and said as much on February 26 this year in an announcement that we covered about a slew of withdrawals for the Power Systems platform.

  In announcement 119-078, dated October 22, IBM has decided to keep the For Sale signs up on the eight-socket Power E870C and 16-socket Power E880C machines for an extra two months, and now you will be able …

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