• The AS/400 Lessons Come Back Around With Power9 Systems

  December 11, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  For many years before I took the job as Systems Editor at The Register and in the years since I left that post, the joke about any new system or device was: “Yes, but can it run Crysis?” Those of us writing stories would bend a few sentences around the idea, particularly with Linux systems, which if you equipped them with the WINE Windows emulator might allow said device to indeed run that first-person shooter game that was popular from 2007 through 2013.

  As we think about the new “Witherspoon” Power9 server that IBM launched last week, we can’t help …

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• Trinity Guard Fills Gap In IBM i Network Security

  December 11, 2017 Alex Woodie

  Trinity Guard, the IBM i security software company founded by the original developers from Pentasafe, this month rolled out TG Secure, a new network security product that addresses a potentially serious gap in exit point coverage that many IBM i shops who use open source software may not be aware of.

  IBM has done a good job of bringing new open source tools, technologies, and applications to the platform. The addition of languages like PHP, Node.js, Ruby, and Python; products like the NGINX Web server, the MySQL/MariaDB databases, and the Git repository; and everything else included in the 5733-OPS open …

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• Guru: Quirky SQL Creations

  December 11, 2017 Ted Holt

  Hey, Ted:

  We are creating a view from a source member using the Run SQL Statements (RUNSQLSTM) command. None of the objects are qualified in the source member. The system always creates the view in the wrong library, no matter how we set the current library. Can you tell me what is happening?

  –William

  William ran up against the quirky behavior of the SQL CREATE VIEW statement. It sure threw me for a loop. I would have thought that the view would be created in the current library. Not so. William found the answer to his question in the IBM …

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• Mad Dog 21/21: Bubbling Over

  December 11, 2017 Hesh Wiener

  The Turks may have started it, shipping tulips to Vienna around 1554, but during the next century the Dutch finished it. Hollanders dominated a booming market in cultivated tulips and a bumper crop of financial instruments based on the trade. Then, in 1637, tulip prices collapsed, breaking speculators and triggering a financial tsunami. With FANG stocks – Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google – and other tech shares sky high, worriers say a comparable collapse is imminent. Now there’s even a movie, Tulip Fever, built around the old story. Will tech companies get whacked? Will IBM be among them? …

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• As I See It: Disruption

  December 11, 2017 Victor Rozek

  Thirty years ago I read something that stayed with me all these years because it delivered the slap of sobering truth. I read it in an environmental journal, and I regret the lack of attribution, but the quote went something like this: “A time will come when environmental degradation will simply continue, with or without our participation.”

  That prospect had never occurred to me. I had assumed there would always be time to turn things around. That sooner or later people would come to understand the severity of the damage being done to the Earth, and would chart a more …

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• VAI Covers All the Bases With Modernization

  December 6, 2017 Alex Woodie

  There are a lot of ways to “modernize” your IBM i application. You could create Web and mobile user interfaces. You could adopt free form RPG and migrate the database to modern SQL. You could host it all on the cloud. You could integrate analytic capabilities into it. Or, if you’re the IBM i ERP software vendor VAI, you could do all those things.

  VAI has, in fact, done all those things leading up to this year’s release of S2K Enterprise 6.0, and according to CEO and founder Bob Vormittag, the company is reaping big rewards as a result.

  “We’re …

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• BCD’s Nexus Portal Shows Mobile and API Capabilities

  December 6, 2017 Dan Burger

  Development in IBM i focused organizations — transitions from green-screen to browser-based applications and from monolithic to modular code — cannot ignore the portal piece of the puzzle. It’s the portal that provides secure, organized access to enterprise information for employees, vendors and customers using all types of devices connected to the Web.

  Because so many BCD Software customers are interested in mobile access to data and real-time interactions, the development team got to work on making its Nexus portal more useful and convenient for the tablet and smartphone contingents that crave enhancements to their remote gateways.

  “Our development efforts …

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• A Profound Replacement For My VisualAge For RPG Applications

  December 6, 2017 Dan Devoe

  In January 2016, I wrote an IT Jungle article outlining how my company, Boston Warehouse Trading Corporation, prolonged the life of our VisualAge for RPG (VaRPG) applications by getting them to work on 64-bit versions of Windows. And I’m pleased to say, that as of Windows 10 Creator’s Edition, they still work. However, the applications are on life support, and we needed to act sooner rather than later to begin the process of replacing the apps whose SDK and support died a premature and painful death.

  We have researched a few application modernization solutions. But it seemed that, when all …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, December 6

  December 6, 2017 Dan Burger

  Where there is smoke there is probably fire. The odds are not nearly as good that where you find reports there will be data analytics. What tools and capabilities are available to provide deeper insight into the data you have on hand and what difference will it make to the people using the data?

  You can find the answer in Monitor this week. Read a bit farther and you’ll also find informative articles about IBM’s Bluemix and building apps on the internet, what happens when IT loses control of analytics projects, and how to avoid mistakes that lead to preventable …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 48

  December 6, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  This week, in Number 48, we have HIPERs (again!), Security, and MQ Groups, as well as some great information on WebSphere to share with all. The HIPERs are about new GA markers, and fixing flight recorder formatting. The Security fixes are about patching SSH for the latest CVE notifications. The MQ message queuing middleware group is about delivering the MQM400 Cumulative fix pack #80008.

  There are also new Recommended Fixes for Telnet, pertaining to memory leaks, and better tracing.

  Here’s the breakdown by release:

  V7R3

  • SI65503
  • MF62915

  V7R2

  • SI65502
  • MF63206

  V7R1

  • SI65496
  • MF62916

  One last thing: IBM published an Official …

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