• Counting The Cost

  November 27, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We are strong believers in being thorough with both the technical and economic analysis of platforms. In the absence of a lot of performance and pricing information on Power Systems iron, we are always looking for ways to help IBM i shops try to figure out what to do when they are thinking about upgrading a machine or just tossing out the old one and buying a new one.

  IBM isn’t shipping Power9-based machines that can support IBM i as yet, and it is not expected to do so until early next year. But in the meantime, Big Blue wants …

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• The Top iOS Apps For IBM i

  November 27, 2017 Alex Woodie

  Despite sharing a similar name with Apple products, IBM i isn’t mobile. You can’t run IBM i on your smartphone or tablet, let alone on your watch or whatever IoT-connected gadget people need now. But that doesn’t mean developers haven’t written a bunch of mobile apps that connect to IBM i. Here are the top 15 iOS apps for IBM i.

  Being a developer of propriety hardware and software, Apple won’t share much about, well, just about anything. In fact, the super secretive company from Cupertino, Calif., doesn’t even provide a way to browse the catalog of iOS apps on …

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• Guru: Using SELECT * With Cursors

  November 27, 2017 Ted Holt

  From time to time someone brings to my attention the use of SELECT * with SQL cursors in RPG programs. Specifically, is that a good idea or a bad idea? I have learned that the answer to that question is “It depends.” Using SELECT * in a cursor declaration may or may not get you into trouble.

  To set the stage, let’s begin with a simple example — an RPG program that reads one table (physical file) and prints each row (record). Even though most programs use data from more than one table, programs that read only one table are …

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• Data Analytics And Business Intelligence: Too Little, Too Much, Too Late?

  November 27, 2017 Dan Burger

  There’s no slowing down the amount of data and the number of data sources. Drinking from that informational firehose is a success for a few, an in-progress experiment for others, and an incentive to find some other way to quench analytical thirst for many. Improving the data mining, to use a term that was popular before the big data firehose was turned on, of structured data continues to be a useful endeavor for many IBM i shops. And, by the way, that doesn’t make them dinosaurs stumbling down the path of extinction, unless you get your news from press releases. …

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• IBM Expands Flash Drives For Power8 Iron

  November 27, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Back in October, IBM announced a new lineup of small form factor disk drives with 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch form factors as well as updates for 2.5-inch flash drives that were a little bit on the beefy size. We suspect that these drives were intended to be co-launched with Power9-based servers, as well as some new, skinnier flash drives that were announced just before the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States.

  On November 21, in announcement letter 117-108, Big Blue rolled out the new 2.5-inch flash drives that are based on 3D NAND flash memory and are rated at …

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• VAI Experiments With Watson

  November 15, 2017 Alex Woodie

  It’s hard not to hear about Watson these days, especially since IBM changed the name of its Power Systems division to Cognitive Systems. But what can the cognitive service bring to pragmatic IBM i shops who are wary of change? The ERP software company VAI is at the forefront of experimentation.

  According to VAI CIO Kevin Beasley, VAI started working with Watson in 2016. A lot of the early work that year involved manually uploading a bunch of ERP data into Watson, mixing it with data supplied by IBM, and then seeing what Watson came up with.

  One of …

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• Bring Docker To IBM i

  November 15, 2017 Dan Burger

  One of the fundamental shifts in the way people think about building applications is the use of containers, packages that include: code, runtime, system tools, system libraries, and settings. Containerized software runs equally well regardless of the environment. Docker is the most popular of the container platform providers. And there is a group of IBM i advocates who would like to see Docker support added to IBM i.

  One of those supporters is Kim Greene, a Domino on IBM i consultant, with clients who would benefit from Docker support. Specifically, Greene sees an opportunity for supporting Verse on Premises (VOP) …

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• Understanding Your 2FA Options for IBM i

  November 15, 2017 Alex Woodie

  It’s hard to have too much security on the Web these days, particularly with a preponderance of hackers, botnets, and keyloggers hanging around. One way to boost one’s cyber security is to use two-factor authentication, or 2FA, when connecting to sensitive applications and databases. Luckily, the technology is available for IBM i, too.

  2FA is a technique that boosts the security of the log-on process and thwarts unauthorized access of sensitive systems. Instead of letting a person onto a computer based on the combination of just a user name and password, 2FA requires the person to have an extra identifier. …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, November 15

  November 15, 2017 Dan Burger

  IT strategic planning is an oxymoron at many organizations. Controlled chaos is often the oxymoron that better describes the situation. A fast-changing business environment combined with a constant flow of technology hype can make strategy sessions difficult. A “we don’t do things that way” status protection system can also be a strategy barrier. But some find the process of developing a strategy as valuable as the strategy itself.

  This week in Monitor we also have articles on the risks and advantages of BYOD mobile policies, integrating security in DevOps, and keeping a watchful eye on the facts and fiction regarding …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 44

  November 15, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  The action this week in the IBM i PTF Guide is all in HIPERs for all three releases and in the Security groups for IBM i 7.2 and 7.3. Also, there is a recommended fix for IBM i 7.2, one of the baddies. The QMGtools were also updated for all releases.

  Also, we have an important reminder: Java 6 will be going out of support on December 31, 2017. So be sure to update your Java applications to Java 8 or Java 7 to ensure a safe and secure application environment.

  The PTF updates this week are as follows:

  IBM …

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