• Address Those Fears And Move Your IBM i Workloads To The Cloud

  August 20, 2018 Clayton Weise

  You know the facts. Managing IBM i installations takes specialized skills and knowledge. In fact, many companies keep IBM i experts on staff, even though the amount of IBM i work they have may be sporadic. At the same time, the workforce capable of managing IBM i installations has been shrinking.

  For these reasons, and many others, moving IBM i workloads to a cloud environment managed by specialized talent has become an attractive option. The aggravation savings alone can make it worthwhile, and that’s before adding in the other benefits of the cloud, like cost savings, security, and scalability.

  Yet, …

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• IBM i Gets The Big Power9 Iron, But Not The Midrange

  August 15, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  First of all, let me apologize for not getting to this story last week, but I had a bunch of personal stuff going on and frankly, it is still going on. To eliminate the mystery, I will tell you the big part, which is that I was preparing to get married, then got married, and then tried to take a short honeymoon out in the mountains, and I did not expect for IBM to try to announce the last of the Power9 servers smack dab in the middle of all that.

  But on August 7, IBM did just that. For …

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• Latest IBM i TRs To Ship Next Month

  August 15, 2018 Alex Woodie

  IBM unveiled a pair of out-of-bound technology refreshes (TRs) for the IBM i operating system last week. In addition to supporting the new Power Systems E980 server, IBM i 7.3 TR5 and 7.2 TR9 bring a set of enhancements to the platform’s database, development tools, and the administrative interface.

  The IBM i installed base has grown accustomed to seeing operating system updates in the spring and the fall. This twice-a-year pattern has been with us, more or less, since IBM shifted to the TR approach several years ago. But IBM broke with that tradition last week when it announced that …

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• Visual LANSA Goes Low-Code With High Tech Update

  August 15, 2018 Alex Woodie

  As one of the original advocates of fourth-generation language (4GLs), LANSA knows a thing or two about the value of abstraction layers. While the hype around 4GLs has long since passed, LANSA continues to build on its foundation with new features aimed at keeping customers ahead of the technology curve. That work is on display with the recent update to its “low-code” environment, Visual LANSA version 14 SP2.

  Visual LANSA is LANSA‘s flagship integrated development environment (IDE) for creating modern graphical applications. The IDE employs numerous techniques to minimize the amount of Rapid Development and Maintenance Language (RDML, its …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, August 15

  August 15, 2018 Dan Burger

  A new star was born last week. August 7 was the official launch of Power9. IT Jungle has been covering the impending launch for months, and be assured we will continue to stay on top of Power9 and how it relates to our i ecosystem. With the pace of change in tech right now, it is more important than ever to keep up on those skills, so be sure to look for opportunities for learning and collaboration with other Power Systems professionals. We also have some new blogs and podcasts to share with you this week in our Redbooks, White …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Number 20, Volumes 31 and 32

  August 15, 2018 Doug Bidwell

  We have some catching up to do this week. Summer is winding down, the kids are going back to school, and it’s time to get things back in order in PTF Land. There actually wasn’t much to report with Volume 31 of our PTF Guide, mostly due to the announcements that were expected in time for Volume 32. Still, 31 brought us a fix pack for Rational Developer for i (9.6), as well as some new links on how to configure ObjectConnect, what system fixes are required for Domino, and the IBM i collaboration software compatibility guide.

  Here’s the defective …

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• Big Blue Moves Up Technology Refreshes For IBM i

  August 6, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We knew that IBM was getting ready to flesh out the Power9 server lineup with the “Cumulus” processors for scale-up systems, used in machines that span from four to 16 sockets in a single system image, and we told you all about that last week for an announcement that is expected to come to pass on August 7. This is fitting with all of the rumors we heard at the beginning of the year, which expected the big iron to come in the third quarter.

  Normally, we expect Technology Refresh updates for the current versions and releases of IBM i …

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• CIO Summit Brings Execs Up To Speed On IBM i

  August 6, 2018 Alex Woodie

  The IBM i server is mystery to many. Not only does it run on abnormal hardware – at least compared to “standards-based” X86 computers – but its programming languages, user interfaces, and administrative tasks can seem otherworldly to the uninitiated. For Alan Seiden, the organizer of an IBM i-focused executive get-together known as the CIO Summit, dispelling the platform’s mystery represents something of a personal challenge.

  The next CIO Summit is in about two months, and Seiden, who’s a well-known PHP on IBM i expert as well as the founder and principle of the Seiden Group, is looking forward …

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• Guru: Beefing Up The Job Log, Take Two

  August 6, 2018 Ted Holt

  In Tracing Routines Explain Why The Computer Did What It Did, I wrote about the usefulness of writing information about program execution to determine why a program run gave certain results. Today I want to present a simpler method than the tracing routines. The tracing routines are not obsolete, but they are powerful and I have found them at times to be overkill.

  Just a word about terminology. Since I wrote that article five and a half years ago, my reading has led me to a different understanding of the terms tracing and logging. I’ve since decided that …

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• As I See It: Just Bag IT

  August 6, 2018 Victor Rozek

  Only two days in, my stay in Lassen Volcanic National Park was cut short by vanishing stars. Evidently the “new normal” knows no boundaries and has no respect for vacationers. It seems that every year now, there are fires, terrible fires, consuming the West. In Redding, California, 50 miles west of the park, 966 homes and six people were lost. More are missing. Over 90,000 acres of drought-stressed brush remain ablaze. As of this writing, 38,000 residents may have to be evacuated as swirling winds are spreading flames in all directions.

  But in the distant mountains I knew nothing of …

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