• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 28

  July 19, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  Firmware. That “stuff” in the middle that appeared in our world when the AS400 went away. In the beginning, when the computing world was created and this unique creation was created to be something special, there was an AS/400.

  This was an all-in-one OS/TIMI/hardware computing solution. During its evolution, names have changed, compute, memory, storage, and I/O capacity has increased exponentially, and, several architectural changes have been made. Some changes have been comfortable, some not so much. One of the not-so-comfortable things is firmware. This firmware has been around forever, we just didn’t know it as a separate beast to …

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• Getting Hyperconverged On Power Systems

  July 17, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  A few weeks ago, when pondering the possibilities of how Big Blue might reimagine and reinvigorate the IBM i platform, we outlined how this might be done – and how it might apply to a much broader customer base after it was done – in an article called The Cognitive Systems/500 2018 Edition. We forgot one of the possible components of a modern, integrated system and, amusingly, IBM has just announced support for it.

  The bit of the software stack we forgot to mention was what is called hyperconverged infrastructure, or HCI for short, and this server-storage halfblood has …

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• Of Course i’s Not The AS/400

  July 17, 2017 Alex Woodie

  The AS/400 was a great computer. No doubt about that. In the pantheon of business machines, you’d be hard-pressed to find anything that remotely compares to IBM’s long-lived midrange champion. But today’s IBM i on Power Systems platform has evolved far beyond the AS/400, and midrange professionals who cling to the old words and ways are doing us all a disservice. Are you one of them?

  Chances are, you’re not. If you’re reading this article, you’re likely one of the “engaged” midrange professionals who takes an active interest in news, works to improve your skills, and embraces newer technologies available …

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• Guru: Conditional SQL Unions

  July 17, 2017 Ted Holt

  SQL unions combine two or more result sets into one. That’s what they were designed to do. But unions also provide a way to choose between alternate result sets, i.e. to enable or disable SELECT statements at run time. I have used this feature to advantage on numerous occasions. Here’s how it’s done.

  First consider the nature of unions. Each result set of a union can return data or no data, depending on the criteria in the WHERE and HAVING clauses. If a SELECT retrieves no data, the system appends an empty set to the union result. The way to …

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• IBM i Security Expert Interprets PCI and Multi-Factor Authentication

  July 17, 2017 Dan Burger

  With data security written boldly at the top of many organizations’ priority lists, the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is viewed as a top line defense against data breaches. Whether a company handles credit cards and is required to implement mandated security measures or uses the PCI standard as a best practices model, IT security gurus pay attention to the PCI DSS.

  We are well beyond the realization that organizations need to be secure. The emphasis has clearly shifted to how organizations become secure. How to build and maintain a secure network, protect data and regularly monitor …

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• Mixed Results For IT Spending Forecasts

  July 17, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We have made it through the first half of 2017, and now is a good time to take a pause and count the money that the IT vendors of the world have amassed from the hardware, software, and services they provide to the datacenters of the world. And so, IDC and Gartner have done just that even ahead of the reporting of financial results for the second quarter. The results from these two firms generally agree, and they show that, as always, different parts of the business are growing even as other parts slow or even shrink.

  One big reason …

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• Sibley Elaborates on ‘Synergy’ of ILE Compiler Move

  July 12, 2017 Alex Woodie

  When Steve Sibley, the vice president and business line executive for IBM Cognitive Systems, announced a month ago that it’s moving development of its RPG compiler from the Rational group directly into the IBM i development organization, he cited the increase of “synergy” as the main reason for the move. IT Jungle finally caught up with Sibley last week and obtained a more detailed explanation.

  In his June 9 open letter to IBM i customers and partners, Sibley announced that development of the Rational programming tools for IBM i and ILE RPG and ILE COBOL compilers themselves would move into …

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• Programmer Productivity Underscores Remain’s App Management Upgrades

  July 12, 2017 Dan Burger

  If the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World were bumped up to Eight, the original OS/400 applications could fill that slot. They were an efficient combination of form and function and built to last. But change eventually occurs. These days, it occurs more rapidly than ever. Application development strategies come in multiple shapes and sizes. We are witness to the debates and deployments of modernizations and migrations.

  Change management software has taken on a bigger role by becoming useful in multi-platform development environments (one tool for tracking all development), workflow management, and for the expanded role of application lifecycle management. …

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• DocPath Picks Up AFP Printing Where IBM Leaves Off

  July 12, 2017 Alex Woodie

  If you’re looking to do fun and exciting things with your IBM i spool file output, you’ll need to look beyond IBM. With the death of AFP Utilities in IBM i 7.3 last year and the demise of InfoPrint Designer before that, it’s clear that IBM doesn’t want anything to do with printing or electronic document management. One vendor that’s eagerly investing in IBM i output is DocPath.

  AFP Utilities was a collection of programs from IBM that allowed IBM i shops to manage Advanced Function Presentation (AFP) content communicated to high-end production printers using the two-way Intelligent Printer Data …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, July 12

  July 12, 2017 Dan Burger

  The Scout motto “Be Prepared” is good advice for all of us. But when it comes to advice applicable to IBM i, Chief Scout Steve Will has specific advice on preparations that will be useful when the time for platform re-evaluation comes around. This article adds to Will’s advice on this topic noted by Monitor on June 21.

  This issue of Monitor also has articles on the delivery of open source PTFs, the positive and negative impacts of artificial intelligence on workers, the tape storage dynasty that remains a factor even in leading edge companies, plus the influence, guidance and …

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