• Why Curbstone Picked iSam Blue for HA

  September 12, 2018 Alex Woodie

  When it comes to picking an IBM i high availability vendor, there are a lot of factors that come into play. Does the product do what I need it to do? Are the license and maintenance fees reasonable? Will the vendor give me the support I need? When the folks at Curbstone considered HA offerings for its IBM i-based credit card authorization portal, all signs pointed to iSam Blue.

  Founded in 2002, Curbstone has built a business around credit card authorization software, particularly on the IBM i platform. The company’s founder and CEO, Ira Chandler, wrote the first commercial credit …

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• Archive Migration A Success For County Clerk

  September 12, 2018 Alex Woodie

  A county clerk’s office in Illinois that relies on IBM i-based applications to keep its records straight has successfully migrated its archive from an older Ultra-Density Optical (UDO) setup to a network attached storage (NAS)-based device that utilizes newer optical technology. Best of all, the new storage solution didn’t impact response times on the IBM i server one bit.

  The Madison County Circuit Clerk’s Office was up against a mandate to comply with a new State of Illinois law requiring documents in civil court proceedings to be stored electronically and to be available for real-time access. While its JANO Justice …

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• IBM Patches Security Flaws In IBM i

  September 12, 2018 Alex Woodie

  IBM last week shared details of two new OpenSSL vulnerabilities that are impacting all supported versions of IBM i. That came on the heels of two more vulnerabilities that were disclosed last month in IBM i’s Python implementation and the HTTP Server. All of the flaws have been patched by IBM.

  IBM i 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3 are impacted by the pair of OpenSSL vulnerabilities disclosed by IBM on August 30. Neither of the flaws, which include CVE-2018-0732 and CVE-2018-0737, are particularly nasty, but they do open gaps in the platform’s security apparatus just the same, so it’s important to …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, September 12

  September 12, 2018 Jenny Thomas

  Some acts are hard to follow. Sometimes you don’t even want to try. I find myself in that position today as I attempt to step in to the shoes of really one of the very best people, not just in our little ecosystem, but in the world. If I had it my way, Dan Burger would be writing Monitor, like he has from the day we launched it, and I would be looking forward to our weekly exchange when he passed it on to me for a light edit before we shared it with the IBM i world. We lost …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Number 20, Volumes 34, 35, 36

  September 12, 2018 Doug Bidwell

  It’s been three weeks since our last PTF guide, but we have been keeping up with all the updates and have packaged it all together for you. In addition to the usual defective PTF rundowns each week, we have seen some OpenSSL fixes and new HIPER and Security groups. It is also interesting to note that as of September 8, it has been four months since a bug was found in a patch. We aren’t sure if this sets any sort of record, but it is definitely worth mentioning! All the latest PTFs are lined up below for you. Happy …

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• Weak Internal Security Causes Weak External Security

  September 10, 2018 Dan Burger

  Editor’s Note: Our dear friend and colleague, Dan Burger, passed away in August. We grieve. The last story that Dan worked on was about long-time security expert, Pat Botz, joining HelpSystems, the conglomerate that focuses on systems management, monitoring, security, high availability clustering, and performance management for the IBM i platform, along with a bunch of tools for complementary AIX and Linux platforms.

  Botz goes way back in the computer industry. He wrote the Basic compiler and CAD tools for Control Data supercomputers and then lead the development of CAD tools for its AIX workstation line three decades ago. He …

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• Zend Server 2018 Brings PHP 7.2 To IBM i

  September 10, 2018 Alan Seiden

  Since its release on IBM i in 2006, PHP, a popular open source language for building web sites, has become well established on this platform. Like IBM i, PHP has kept up with the times, improving with each release. PHP is installed via a product called Zend Server, which offers a basic, free license for IBM i users, as well as premium paid licenses.

  I wanted to learn more about the latest release, called Zend Server 2018 (pronounced twenty eighteen), so I interviewed Zeev Suraski, co-founder and chief technology officer of Zend, which is now part of Rogue Wave, …

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• Guru: Data-Centrism, Step Zero

  September 10, 2018 Ted Holt

  I hear a lot these days about the need for data-centric information systems. That is as it should be. The proper way to support an organization is to remove logic from application programs and put it into the database through such devices as constraints and triggers. However, before many shops can take the first step in that direction, they need to take what I call step zero.

  Step zero in data-centric computing is to remove hard-coded data values from programs and put them into the database. Just as the database manager should enforce business rules (e.g. we don’t ship to …

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• IBM Showcases New Crop of ‘Fresh Faces’

  September 10, 2018 Alex Woodie

  For a computer platform to remain vital, it must have a constant stream of new arrivals. This is just as true for IBM i, which has struggled to retain relevance in an increasingly homogeneous IT world, as it is for every other platform. But give kudos to IBM and its latest batch of “fresh faces” that highlight the fact that millennials are finding their way to IBM i and Power.

  While nobody is claiming that younger folks are knocking down the door to get onto IBM i, there nevertheless appears to be a solid group of individuals from the less-than-40 …

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• The Server Boom Goes From Sonic To Nuclear

  September 10, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The smartphone, the second wave of Internet applications, the shift to cloud computing, and the normal expansion of processing and storage as companies hoard more and more data in the hopes of doing something useful with it have all combined to send the server market skyward.

  In the second quarter, worldwide sales of servers experienced an astonishing 43.7 percent growth rate, to $22.53 billion dollars, the largest quarter for server sales in the history of information technology – even if you adjust for inflation and probably even if you take out the effects of DRAM and flash memory price hikes …

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