• Reckless or Riskless: IBM i App Dev Experts Talk Security

  February 5, 2018 Dan Burger

  It is safe to say that your most sensitive and most valuable data is not safe. The threat of stolen data is a reoccurring nightmare for executive management who are mystified and somewhat dumbfounded by the number of vulnerabilities in their IT systems. Not all of them worry about the same things or are hearing the same strategies from their IT experts.

  Most can agree that what’s been done in the past isn’t going to cut it in the present, much less the future. One of the holes in the wall that protects data is at the application level. Existing …

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• Guru: Three Suboptimal I/O Practices

  February 5, 2018 Ted Holt

  I have on numerous occasions looked at source code that I had written in previous years and asked myself, “Why on earth did I do that? What could I have been thinking?” We live and learn, or at least we hope we learn. Today I share three database practices that I see from time to time that can be simplified. Maybe there’s something for you to learn today.

  Before I share the three examples, let me say that I do not consider the more cumbersome code to be wrong. To my way of thinking, any code that produces the correct …

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• Will Blockchain Impact IBM i?

  February 5, 2018 Alex Woodie

  Lately there’s been a lot of talk about blockchain, in both the IT press and the mainstream media, which is telling. Most of this talk centers around digital currencies like bitcoin that are based on blockchain technology. But because of the media-fueled speculative bubble that’s pushed digital currency values through the roof, it’s tough for a rational being to separate the incredible hype from the underlying reality.

  What’s interesting about the whole blockchain-bitcoin discussion, however, is how many smart technology folks have come out and basically said that while the digital currencies are interesting but not ground-breaking, the underlying blockchain …

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• The Persistence Of The IBM i Platform

  February 5, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Talking about switching platforms is one thing, and it is relatively easy if you are talking about moving from Unix infrastructure servers based on RISC servers to machines that are going to run essentially the same workloads on Linux systems based on X86 processors. Leaving the IBM i fold, particularly for customers who have created their own applications, is another matter entirely.

  That, in a nutshell, is one of the main reasons why the IBM i platform, in its many different incarnations in the past 30 years, has persisted. The database is the stickiest piece of software in the datacenter, …

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• Overdue Upgrades Perplex IBM i Shops

  January 31, 2018 Dan Burger

  When decision makers describe their IT environments by saying the more we know, the less we understand, there’s a problem that needs to be solved. Maybe you have the brains on staff to figure out how to put heat-resistant handles on this steaming pot. Maybe not. But the problem isn’t going to solve itself and those who don’t search for an answer become part of the problem.

  This specific problem bubbles to the surface when organizations fall behind on unsupported versions of the operating system and unsupported software. It’s risky business and a gamble that has little chance of paying …

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• IBM i Gets More PTFs for Meltdown and Spectre

  January 31, 2018 Alex Woodie

  IBM on Friday issued a second set of program temporary fixes (PTFs) for the IBM i operating system that address the Meltdown and Spectre processor vulnerabilities that were disclosed earlier this month. Meanwhile, IBM i customers are beginning to wonder about the performance impact that the patches will bring to production workloads.

  At about 11 a.m. Eastern time on January 26, IBM posted a message to the PSIRT Blog to let customers know that “IBM i has released PTFs in response to the vulnerabilities known as Spectre and Meltdown.” (We’ll assume that the urgent nature of the message led to …

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• Rocket Gits Hip to Emerging IBM i Tech

  January 31, 2018 Alex Woodie

  When it comes to managing traditional IBM i development environments, Rocket Software has its bases covered. But as younger technologies and younger developers find their way onto the platform, Rocket found that it had some work to do to ensure that DevOps – or application lifecycle management (ALM), if you like — runs as smoothly as its enterprise customers expect. That’s the case with the vendor’s announcement today around Git.

  Rocket Software today announced that it’s now supporting Git with the Aldon Lifecycle Manager (Enterprise Edition), the company’s ALM product for open systems environments like Windows, Linux, and Unix. The …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, January 31

  January 31, 2018 Dan Burger

  It is important for all decision makers familiarize themselves with current and emerging IT landscapes. Now is the best time to be thinking through future scenarios. A favorite saying of one of my mentors is: “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing you can do is the wrong thing and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”

  This week, Monitor hooks up readers with articles that cover important IT trends, the avoidance of training failures, the changing roles of CIOs, and the legal dangers that lurk within …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 20, Number 4, The Spectre Of Meltdowns

  January 31, 2018 Doug Bidwell

  As we have pointed out, the Spectre and Meltdown speculative execution security vulnerabilities have been classified by IBM’s Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) as having a “High Severity” level.

  This week’s update is somewhat chilling. IBM announced additional PTFs to be fully protected, meaning you have to do both, and also do the firmware fix.

  But wait, there’s more. . . . The HIPER and Security groups for each release were re-released over the weekend, but only the first of each set below is included in the Security group. So, if you order and download the latest HIPERs …

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• LUG Talks About IBM i Priorities

  January 29, 2018 Alex Woodie

  The Large User Group (LUG) held its first meeting of the year last week at the IBM lab in Rochester, Minnesota. While LUG members use the IBM i platform differently than your average mid-sized company, their experiences, concerns, and vision for the future of the platform are relevant to the community as a whole. We caught up with two LUG members last week to get the low down on the i tech.

  The LUG is a private organization that keeps the identities of its members confidential. Because the overall IBM i ecosystem is relatively small, the LUG requested that IT …

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