• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 23

  June 14, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  The only group updated this week was the SF99706 High Availability for V7R1 group. It has approximately 30 fixes, dealing with everything from missing disks to security breaches. It is well worth putting this HA group on your system if you are in a PowerHA world, or dealing with iASPs. For fun, we have listed a few of the PTFs in the group below:

  SI57128 - OSP-OTHER Fix Poodle vulnerability issue. The Poodle vulnerability issue was found in CIM. This has been fixed. Disable SSLv3, the RC4 and RSA Export ciphers in CIM.
  MF62562 - LIC-OTHER Additional Debug Support. Added 

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• The Cognitive Systems/500 2018 Edition

  June 12, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  With the Power9 processor not coming to the IBM i and AIX platforms until sometime early in 2018, rather than right now as many of us were led to believe would be happening, we have some extra time on our hands. So we should all – including the executives who run IBM Systems and its subordinate Cognitive Systems division (formerly known as Power Systems) – take this opportunity to take a hard look at how the IBM i platform is packaged and priced and how a modern integrated platform should be architected.

  The IBM i customer base needs the Cognitive …

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• Understanding IBM’s PowerHA For i

  June 12, 2017 Alex Woodie

  When it comes to high availability on the IBM i platform, there are two main options: logical replication and PowerHA SystemMirror for i. While the architecture and benefits of logical replication solutions are well-established and well-known, PowerHA remains a bit of a mystery for many. We will try to shine some light on how PowerHA works, and whether it is the right choice for you.

  There has been an increase in interest around HA so far in 2017, but many IBM i shops remain confused about the various options. In the first article in this HA series, we took …

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• Guru: Error Handling in SQL PL, Part 1

  June 12, 2017 Ted Holt

  I once fancied myself a logical thinker. I changed my mind when I started programming computers. I quickly realized that I was incapable of writing an error-free program. Chalk up another valuable lesson to experience. More experience taught me to program for both expected and unexpected conditions, and now I apply that concept to all languages that I use, including SQL PL.

  SQL PL has excellent exception-handling methods, and they’re not hard to use. In this article and Part 2 to follow, we look at how DB2 informs you that your SQL request worked correctly or not. Next, we’ll take …

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• As I See It: The Hungry Leader

  June 12, 2017 Victor Rozek

  Corporate leaders like to compare business to the military. From top-down command structures, to having a “mission,” that can only be accomplished by “capturing” market share, and “crushing” the competition; it all sounds very Ramboesque. Given the languaging you would think every CEO was the second coming of George Patton. Turns out Patton had more regard for the people under his command.

  Besides the fact that the color of corporate bloodshed is green, there is a core difference between military ethics and corporate ethics. Author and TED Talk regular Simon Sinek succinctly summarizes the difference. The military, says Sinek, “gives …

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• CTO Praises Open Source, Offers Modernization Guidance

  June 12, 2017 Dan Burger

  One of the most influential and productive fields of new development is the open source community. Its magnitude is just beginning to be felt. It’s not just people talking about open source development. It’s people doing development and deriving benefit from it. And it’s people using it often times without realizing it.

  At the COMMON Annual Meeting last month, I had an opportunity to talk about open source technology with Brendan Kay, chief technology officer at Fresche Solutions, where open source solutions continue to evolve and provide benefits to internal development and the software products that company delivers to …

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• Trinity Guard Gives PentaSafe Customers a Lifeline

  June 7, 2017 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that still use PentaSafe security and auditing tools will be glad to know that a company named Trinity Guard has emerged to continue developing and supporting the products. The Houston, Texas, company has already rewritten the flagship IBM i auditing tool to support the Authority Collection in IBM i 7.3, and major rewrites for two other PentaSafe products are in the works.

  Almost 15 years ago, NetIQ bought PentaSafe for $255 million in one of the first of many deals that would help consolidate the IBM i software market in the years to come. Save for a …

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• Green Screens, Web Enablement, and LANSA

  June 7, 2017 Dan Burger

  Although there are important lessons to be learned from history, from an IT perspective, building a better future makes more sense than admiring past achievements. Not that there’s anything wrong with hard-won success. But past success does not assure future success. An easy example is a green-screen app that doesn’t translate all that well to a Web environment. Some require more modification than others to be effective in a Web environment.

  The transition from green screens to browser-based applications has caused more chins to be rubbed than a dull razor attack on five o’clock shadow. It’s also caused IBM i …

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• Linoma Takes GoAnywhere MFT to the Public Cloud

  June 7, 2017 Alex Woodie

  A new release of Linoma Software’s GoAnywhere managed file transfer (MFT) software lets customers move files to and from cloud repositories in the same way they handle transfers with on-premise systems. The cloud support reflects the major on-going shifts to public cloud infrastructure, and also addresses a previous shortcoming in the GoAnywhere product.

  Last month, Linoma announced that GoAnywhere version 5.5 now supports deployments on public cloud systems, including Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure. The new feature allows GoAnywhere customers to securely transmit files to and from remote cloud locations, while maintaining control and audit history from the central MFT …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, June 7

  June 7, 2017 Dan Burger

  An IT strategy is often a major resource strategy. Where to allocate resources and how much to allocate is a big part of it. When you are the chief architect for IBM i, you set your priorities beginning with the DB2 for i database and work from there. There are competitive strategies to take into account and collaborative strategies as well. In this article, Steve Will talks mostly about the need for collaborative strategies.

  You could say open source is an important collaborative strategy for IBM i. There’s a legitimate emphasis in that direction. Building skills and increasing the IBM …

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