• The IBM i Year In Review

  December 14, 2016 Alex Woodie

  With another year almost in the books for the IBM i community, we thought it was time to reminisce on the top stories of 2016. Security vulnerabilities, hacked AS/400s, blockbuster acquisitions, new releases of the operating system, and major conferences all garnered their share of digital ink. Here’s a rundown on the top IBM i-related stories making news this year. It started innocently enough, way back in. . . January . . .When we asked “what should you do with your spare CPWs?” After all, you can’t take ’em with you. But with so much processing oomph on those brawny

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• How Do You Do That with RDi? Part 2: Compile

  December 13, 2016 Susan Gantner

  In an earlier tip, I began a series on how I do things using RDi that some people seem to prefer doing in PDM. In that first tip, I talked about various ways to copy a source member. In this tip, I’ll talk about compiling with RDi. I must confess to being baffled by the number of people I talk to who, while they do all their editing in RDi, always go back to PDM to do their compiles. To me, if you don’t compile your code with RDi, you’re missing out on a huge time-saver: the ability to

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• RPG And The BLOB

  December 13, 2016 Hey, Mike

  I’m trying to use a SELECT/INTO embedded SQL statement in an RPG program that accesses a table that includes a BLOB(20K) column. The INTO target is an externally defined data structure based on the table. However, I get compiler errors unless I remove the BLOB column from the table. What’s up with that? —Four Hundred Guru reader The problem is that RPG doesn’t have a native data type equivalent of a BLOB (or the other large object types CLOB/DBCLOB, for that matter.) The reason for this is that large object types can be up to 2GB in size, far

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• IT Spending And Staffing Show The Effects Of Managed Services

  December 12, 2016 Dan Burger

  Last week, an email from Computer Economics advised me of an updated report on IT spending and staffing. CE has cranked out these reports on an annual basis for many years, which is useful for long-term comparisons. These days, however, the short-term comparisons are almost microscopic. There are times when it is wise to expect the unexpected, but this isn’t one of them. IT spending and hiring leaves a faint mark on the chart that maps business growth. The indistinct spending growth that is revealed in the CE report, indicates cloud computing has the best potential for “long-term growth and

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• As I See It: History Repeating

  December 12, 2016 Victor Rozek

  It was a known problem 16 years ago. And for 16 years it was largely ignored, even though it poses a direct threat to representative democracy. It is a problem well understood by IT professionals and cyber security experts, and it haunts the entire spectrum of computer-dependent users from the military and political establishment, to corporations and the public. It was the subject of debate, accusation, and investigation during the recent election, and it has the power to cast doubt on its legitimacy. The problem: Through neglect or deliberate intent, computers that decide elections have been allowed to remain vulnerable

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• Escape From The Tape Trap

  December 12, 2016 Dan Burger

  IBM i storage strategy remains heavily dependent on tape. Even beyond the IBM midrange, around 75 percent of all data is stored on tape. Old habits die hard, even when alternatives become easier and less expensive to manage. A good example is the Universal Backup Device designed by LaserVault. In its original form, it’s an IBM i backup appliance that appears as a tape device. Now it works in VM environments as well. The VM integration eliminates the cost of the LaserVault appliance and the cost of an X86 server. That’s roughly $6,000 to $8,000. Instead of requesting a

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• New LUG Spreads ‘MAGIC’ In The Mid-Atlantic

  December 12, 2016 Alex Woodie

  Starting next month, a broad swath of IBM i professionals along the eastern seaboard will have their very own local user group (LUG) to call home. Dubbed the Mid-Atlantic Group of IBM i Collaborators, or MAGIC, the group hopes to create a sense of IBM i community across a large region of the country where visible support for the platform was lagging. If you’ve been around the IBM midrange for any length of time, you realize how much the community has shrunk in size. Instead of semi-annual COMMON conferences that attracted 4,000 devoted AS/400 and iSeries enthusiasts twice a year,

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• Talking Change Management With Chrono-Logic

  December 12, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  There is, we think, a bit of a resurgence in the IBM i community when it comes to software change management tools, which have always been one of the workhorse pillars of the vendor community and one of the key functions that need to be automated in the datacenter. To get a sense of what is happening in the software change management arena, we had a chat with Ghislain Jacques, vice president of development at Chrono-Logic, a long-established vendor in the IBM i market that has expanded its product lines and boosted its aspirations to get more IBM i

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• Reporting Elevated IBM i Privileges to SIEM

  December 7, 2016 Alex Woodie

  Why work hard to find a back door when you can go through the front door? This is the gist of the enlightened hacker mind, which understands there is an excess of user profiles equipped with administrative privileges floating around most shops. Now new software from Townsend Security can detangle the complexity of authority levels and give intelligent SIEM tools the data they need to keep hackers out of IBM i. Far too many IBM i shops weaken their security by handing out special authorities like they’re candy canes at a Christmas party. PowerTech has documented this unfortunate phenomenon quite

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• IBM i Performance Secrets Revealed

  December 7, 2016 Alex Woodie

  The IBM i server is unlike any other computer system on the planet, with unique architectural elements like single level storage and TIMI that simplify programming and boost security. But the 64-bit RISC server also has unique performance characteristics, especially compared to its X64 brethren. To ensure long-term success with the platform, it’s critical to maximize performance. The folks at IBM recently put together a very informative paper that describes some of the unique performance tracking features that are present in every IBM i system. The paper, titled “IBM i on Power – Performance FAQ,” dives into the various components

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