• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 19

  May 17, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  Every Wednesday, the IBM i PTF Guide is included in The Four Hundred to help system administrators figure out what patches to put onto your machines and what ones you can ignore. The IBM i PTF Guide is available in downloadable spreadsheet format, and we have taken the archive back about two and a half years for your convenience.

  We are, as always, thankful to Doug Bidwell, the owner of IBM i business partner DLB Systems Associates, who has been putting together a guide to help OS/400, i5/OS, and IBM i shops deal with patches for the past 19 years. …

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• Open Source On IBM i: Let It Grow

  May 15, 2017 Dan Burger

  The evaluation of open source software is nowhere near conclusive when it comes to enterprise grade application development. Decisions remain in the exploratory phases. Roadmaps are incomplete. Most are without clear routes to a destination. Some are without destinations. However, it would be wrong to assume roads are not being built.

  There is no way that the future of application development – on IBM i or anywhere else – can handle everything that is coming down the pike without open source. That’s not a mandate to jump on a band wagon. It’s an awareness wake-up call. The IBM i community …

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• HelpSystems Tackles IBM i Password Woes

  May 15, 2017 Alex Woodie

  Passwords, in many ways, are the bane of our digital existence. We can’t live with passwords, but we certainly can’t live without them either. HelpSystems is aware of the challenges posed by this necessary evil, and has plans to alleviate the password pain with a series of new products and enhancements to existing ones.

  Last week at the COMMON Annual Meeting and Expo in Orlando, Florida, HelpSystems Vice President of Technical Services Tom Huntington previewed for IT Jungle a new product the company plans to ship by the end of June.

  The new product is called Access Authenticator, and it’s …

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• Guru: How To Cancel A Bad SQL Update

  May 15, 2017 Ted Holt

  In Three Ways To Manage Unmatched Data I wrote about the use of the RAISE_ERROR function to force a SELECT statement to cancel when unmatched data is considered a fatal error. Another good use of RAISE_ERROR is to force an UPDATE statement to cancel when an invalid condition occurs.

  To illustrate, imagine that you and I work in a factory. All factories have inventory. The people we serve purchase some inventory items and manufacture others. Our job is to write a program that will allow certain people to zero out the inventory balance for certain types of purchased items.

  The …

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• COMMON Looking Youthful In 2017

  May 15, 2017 Dan Burger

  Professional organizations like COMMON exist to unite members, improve skills, provide information, encourage active participation, and promote professionalism. It takes more than meeting minimal requirements to stay on top of the fast-changing technology field and so agility is an attribute for COMMON.

  For the coming year, the association has a few new focus items, a new president, and two new board members. At the Annual Meeting last week in Orlando, Florida, out-going president Jeff Carey and executive director Manzoor Siddiqui discussed plans to improve COMMON and the benefits it offers its members.

  Personnel-wise Justin Porter is taking over as president. …

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• The Five Things Clouds Need To Deliver For IBM i

  May 15, 2017 Lief Morin

  The cloud is compelling and real and here to stay – and to accelerate. On the surface, cloud consumption models are primarily attractive because they deliver simplicity of payment, consistency of service, and lastly, elasticity. These are the highly touted benefits of cloud services promoted to clients as they seek to understand how cloud services might be consumed in their enterprises.

  But, the real benefits are much more tangible than those. All cloud organizations must now offer something beyond those capabilities. They must offer regulatory and security compliance, inherent resiliency, and consolidation of expertise to enable clients to focus on …

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• Reporter’s Notebook: COMMON Spring 2017

  May 10, 2017 Alex Woodie

  Harry Potter sightings remain at an abnormally high level here at the COMMON conference, which is taking place in the heart of Universal Orlando. The young wizard appears to be everywhere – in sessions, by the pool, at the Expo, buying raffle tickets. But it’s left some wondering: Can he program in ILE?

  The COMMON conference wraps up today after a four-day run here at the brand-spanking-new Lowes Sapphire Falls Resort. The site has mostly lived up to the expectations of COMMON’s management, who booked the event before the massive construction project was even finished. You just can’t fake that …

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• IBM i Vendors Seeking ‘Meaningful Exits’ Have Options

  May 10, 2017 Alex Woodie

  Skills depletion within the IBM i community has been well documented on these pages in issues past. Another side effect of working on an older computer platform is the aging of the software vendor community itself. As the baby boomer owners approach retirement age, a handful of industry consolidators are eager to give the software companies they created good homes.

  One of the most active vendors in the IBM i community over the past few years is Fresche Solutions. The Montreal, Quebec-based company was known as Speedware back in 2012 when it bought a German RPG migration tool company …

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• Profound Digs Deeper Into Node.js

  May 10, 2017 Dan Burger

  All things considered, most IBM i shops would prefer to retain and enhance their investments in a stable, secure and proven system than accept the risk and expense of rewriting applications in another language or migrating from the platform. And why not? The IBM i is a modern business computing system capable of handling sought after technologies such as mobile, analytics, open source and cognitive.

  For companies aiming to enhance their IBM i environments, Profound Logic Software has just released Profound.js 2.0, a methodology for enhancing applications that uses a combination of Node.js and RPG in an agile development environment. …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, May 10

  May 10, 2017 Dan Burger

  Why would anyone want to move on-premise IBM i infrastructure to the cloud? Utility pricing, moving a development environment off the production server, and establishing a disaster recovery plan are a few things that come to mind.

  This edition of Monitor also includes articles on the top CIO challenges (business and IT alignment is a big one) and the nightmares brought on by H1-B visa program. You’ll also find useful resources and a calendar of events that includes tech conferences and local user group meeting agendas. If you are not a member of a local user group, you’re missing out …

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