The IT Jungle

IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 41

October 18, 2017 Doug Bidwell

We have taken advantage of the lull in PTFs to restructure the IBM i PTF Guide. Check out the “Prior” worksheet, it is designed to let you know what the latest Cume (cumulative PTF patch stack) was on several prior releases. In many cases, these are available for order from IBM.

We have also added a “Links” worksheet. It is a collection for the links we have found useful over the years. If you have any suggestions about what should be added for the benefit of all, send them in and we’ll add them on.

There is one broken …
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Java On IBM i: A Developing Situation

October 16, 2017 Dan Burger

IBM i developers in the Java camp have some changes in store as Java 9 replaces Java 8. First of all, there will be no IBM i support for Java 9. This break in tradition may come as a surprise for many IBM i developers, but not for those Java-holics who have been closely watching the Java 9 news. There are a couple of reasons IBM has decided not to support Java 9 on IBM i, even though IBM currently supports Java 7 and Java 8 and it has supported every Java release seemingly since Moby Dick was a minnow. …
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IBM Unveils LTO-8 Tape Drives

October 16, 2017 Alex Woodie

The not-so-long wait for the latest Linear Tape-Open gear is finally over, as members of the LTO Consortium last week unveiled their latest drives capacity of storing 30 TB of compressed data. Among the first consortium members unveiling product was IBM, which announced its first two LTO-8 Ultrium drives.

LTO-8 drives can store up to 12 TB of data on a single LTO-8 cartridge, and move data at rates up to 360 MB/sec. With 2.5-to-1 compression turned on, the capacity of LTO-8 drives jumps to 30 TB while the transfer rates increases to 900 MB/sec. That corresponds to a 100 …
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Guru: Error Handling in SQL PL, Part 2

October 16, 2017 Ted Holt

In the previous episode of this exciting, action-packed series, I introduced you to the exception-handling methods that IBM has built into SQL PL. The cliff-hanger has lasted four months now, much too long. It’s high time I explained RESIGNAL, as I promised I would. I will explain SIGNAL while I’m at it.

Before I start the syntax lesson, I need to explain a bit of philosophy. I use the hit-the-ball-drag-Harry method of exception-handling when I embed SQL in RPG and COBOL programs. That is, I execute a command, test the SQL state, execute a command, test the SQL state, …
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Mad Dog 21/21: Big Blue’s Big Beast Boost

October 16, 2017 Hesh Wiener

In July, IBM announced another generation of mainframes. At first, IBM will be able to sell every box it can build. This could continue for a year or more. During this sales surge, IBM’s hardware revenue should rise. So, too, will intake from mainframe systems software and middleware. IBM’s services operations should enjoy a nice lift as well. IBM’s employees may feel more secure, its shareholders more confident, its customers pleased. Even curmudgeonly commentators will produce more prose of praise than pans.

In the past, IBM has stimulated forward migration of its mainframe base by pricing bundles in attractive …
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Sundry October Power Systems Announcements

October 16, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

We had been hearing for quite some time that there might be some Power Systems announcements in October, and lo and behold there have been. They are just not what we had expected out of Big Blue.

The big news was not related to IBM i, which just had its Technology Refresh announcements two weeks ago for the 7.2 and 7.3 releases, but rather a big update for IBM’s AIX Unix variant as well as for the PowerVM hypervisor, the PowerSC security tools, and the PowerVC implementation of the OpenStack cloud controller, which does support IBM i systems. There was …
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IBM Updates Cloud Backup Solution

October 11, 2017 Alex Woodie

IBM i shops are getting new options for backing up data to the cloud from IBM, which last week announced an update to the Cloud Storage Solutions as part of its Technology Refresh for IBM i 7.2 and 7.3. Representatives from IBM and Rocket Software, which actually developed the product, clued us in on the news.

It was almost exactly one year ago when IBM first unveiled Cloud Storage Solutions for i. The offering — which was mostly developed by Rocket Software and really is just one solution — enabled IBM i customers to back up their IFS data to …
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Agilysys And IBM i Still A Gaming Industry Force

October 11, 2017 Dan Burger

It’s both legacy and legendary. In Las Vegas, the gaming capital of the world, the Lodging Management System (LMS) by Agilysys has been a fixture for decades in many of the largest casinos and resorts in the town with more than 150,000 hotel rooms. Like a three-day weekend in Sin City, the key to LMS is endurance. The gaming industry made LMS what it is today and to a large degree LMS made the gaming industry what it is today, at least with regard to what IT can do for a rapidly expanding business. And the combination of LMS and …
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IBM i Slow to Catch On, But What Does It Mean?

October 11, 2017 Alex Woodie

It’s been nine-and-a-half years since IBM rebranded the name of the platform from System i to IBM i on Power Systems. However, many people in the IBM midrange community call the platform by something other than its official name, according to anecdotal evidence and Web search data. Is this evidence of continued name confusion, or is there something else at play?

IBM has been running from the iSeries name since its 2006 rebranding exercise, which replaced iSeries with System i. That name went by the wayside in April 2008, when IBM announced the Power Systems platform and the merger of …
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Four Hundred Monitor, October 11

October 11, 2017 Dan Burger

Prior to the latest Technology Refresh announcements, which were just released yesterday, Tim Rowe, business architect for application development and systems management for IBM i, reviewed what was added to Access Client Solutions earlier this year. He also commented on the partnership between IBM and HelpSystems that resulted in development work on several IBM products being farmed out to the IBM i software vendor.

Inside Monitor this week, you’ll also find articles pertaining to open source database trends, what’s holding back IT hiring, Java technology on IBM i, and IBM’s leading role in Blockchain advancements. The calendar of events has …
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