• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Numbers 21 And 22

  June 7, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  The first couple of PTFs in the HIPER group are enough scare the wits out of you, so we just went with them. The important thing is to get them on your systems as soon as possible. You need to install the whole HIPER group.

  There was a time, a long, long time ago, when the CUME PTF pack sufficed when it came to keeping the system up to snuff. The CUME hasn’t contained all of the patches necessary to keep your systems running smoothly for quite a while, though. We need to pay attention to our Group PTFs and …

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• IBM i And AIX Won’t Get Power9 Until 2018

  June 5, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In case you have not figured it out yet, IBM’s biggest priority when it comes to the Power9 processor is Linux. Not IBM i and not AIX, which are Big Blue’s own operating system platforms and which have generated the vast majority of revenues for the combined Power platform since Linux made its debut on Power and System z machines almost two decades ago.

  As we have previously reported, IBM is getting ready to launch the Power9 processors sometime in the second half of this year, and officially has not given a precise date for when the first systems using …

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• Understanding IBM i Options For High Availability

  June 5, 2017 Alex Woodie

  There are many options when it comes to high availability (HA) for IBM i. Should you use logical replication software like MIMIX, or a hardware-based solution like PowerHA? Should you deploy to the cloud, or stay on premise? Is remote journaling the way to go or should you roll your own? IT decision-makers must do their homework if they’re going to find the right solution for them.

  If you’re in the market for a HA solution – and recent surveys indicate that many IBM i shops are shopping for HA in 2017 – then you should probably start at the …

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• Guru: Common Table Expressions Can Replace Query Chains

  June 5, 2017 Ted Holt

  Modernization efforts often concentrate on the database and programs. That is well and good, but there is more to modernization. Replacing Query for IBM i with more modern query tools is also important. But what do you do with those queries that people depend on? More confusing, what do you do with query chains?

  A query chain is a series of queries that run one after another, consolidating and reformatting data in temporary physical files, in order to produce a resulting data set, often in report form. It’s not unusual to see small CL programs like the following one:

  PGM
  

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• Mad Dog 21/21: King Solomon’s Mimes

  June 5, 2017 Hesh Wiener

  King Solomon enjoys a prominent place in the Bible and Quran; in Arabic the name is Sulayman. A son of King David, Solomon was, according to scripture, the wisest and wealthiest of the Hebrew Kings. After his reign, Israel split in two, with the smaller part governed by Solomon’s son Rehoboam, the larger part by the unrelated Jeroboam. Our greatest contemporary corporate kings resemble Solomon. While none have 700 wives and 300 concubines, their lawyers, dreaming of the prenup work, may wish they had Solomon’s connubial inclinations.

  While archeologists and other scholars have not been able to put science behind …

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• The App Dev World According To Gapp

  June 5, 2017 Dan Burger

  Somewhere in the tangle of business requirements and IT capabilities is the elusive goal of developing applications that perform well regardless of the device they run on. Can IT provide the user experience that meets the ever-changing business needs and users’ expectations? The answer, in many instances, is “not exactly.”

  The evolution of business applications has created many distractions, disruptions, and dissatisfactions. In some organizations, the evolution is ignored – nothing changes. In other organizations, shadow IT worms its way into departments that operate outside centralized control creating disparate degrees of lunacy and sorrow. Steve Gapp has seen it all …

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• DSI Delves Into IBM i Backup Software

  May 24, 2017 Alex Woodie

  Dynamic Solutions International (DSI) may be best known as a provider of virtual tape library (VTL) solutions for IBM i and other platforms. But now the Colorado company is getting into the software space with a pair of backup offerings designed specifically for IBM i environments.

  Conductor and Tracker were unveiled by DSI earlier this month prior to the annual COMMON conference in Orlando, Florida. The products were created to bolster the management of backups of the company’s VTL clients that are backing up from IBM i. But they don’t necessarily require a VTL at all, and, in fact, can …

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• BCD Presto Mobilizes Green Screen To Web App Dev

  May 24, 2017 Dan Burger

  Not every green-screen RPG application needs to be modernized. Some need it more than others. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. The same can be said for desktop apps. They don’t all have to be capable of rendering on mobile devices, but some need it more than others. Now BCD Software is helping in the decision making process by bringing responsive development capabilities to its version 7 release of Presto.

  Presto, of course, is BCD’s most popular modernization tool, while responsive design is the capability to design Web pages that display on any device desktop or mobile with a single …

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• CNX Kickstarts Development with Valence 5.1

  May 24, 2017 Alex Woodie

  A new release of the Valence Framework from CNX will enable IBM i shops to get more Web programming and modernization work done with even less effort than before.

  The Chicago-based company has been speaking the “less is more” mantra since the 2014 launch of Valence 4.0, one of the first releases that included Nitro add-on tools that handle tasks on behalf of the user. After all, why should the user get bogged down in the intricacies of coding JavaScript when software can do it instead?

  Nitro’s auto-coding capabilities are once again front-and-center in Valence 5.1, which CNX launched …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, May 24

  May 24, 2017 Dan Burger

  What’s more popular than a barbeque on a summer weekend? That’s easy. Steve Will, IBM i chief architect at the COMMON Annual Meeting. In his “You and i” blog, the Chief writes about the fun and the fundamentals of an IBM i technical conference.

  Proof that what goes around comes around is the chatter these days about running IT as a business. That means IT needs to make money not spend it. And do you know the top reasons for employees leaving their jobs? Hint: It’s not the money. One more thing . . . IT service providers are coming …

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