• Fundamentals: Parameter Passing

  November 29, 2016 Jon Paris

  Even though high-level languages make it unnecessary–and in many cases, difficult–to understand what is going on “under the covers,” I have always found a basic knowledge of internal processes to be invaluable. This is particularly true when it comes to resolving mystery bugs. I was reminded of this recently by a number of problems related to parameter passing that appeared on Internet lists and also in my email directly from customers. My need to understand internals is due, at least in part, to the fact that I learned assembler and other low-level languages at an early stage in my career.

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• Forced Windows Migration Failures

  November 28, 2016 Dan Burger

  Here’s what 90 percent of the companies don’t do before, during, and after making the decision to migrate from IBM i to Windows. They don’t plan the way they would for any other major business event. Quite possibly that’s because management doesn’t understand the system they currently have and how it works, nor do they understand what the new system entails. Hasty decisions can be costly decisions. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are wasted. A recent blog post by Bob Losey on LinkedIn casts a critical look at these migrations and why so many of them are failures. Bob Losey

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• As I See It: Leave It To Cleaver

  November 28, 2016 Victor Rozek

  The grand paradox of humanity’s quest for wisdom is that the truly great questions have no definitive answers. Age-old questions such as: Why am I here? What is the meaning of life? And does the recent election prove that God exists, or that He doesn’t? These are the eternal questions that haunt us and rob us of sleep. But once in a while, like the proverbial blind squirrel bumping into an acorn, we stumble upon an elusive answer. The question in question is: What single quality in a spouse will be most useful to advancing your career? It’s a deliciously

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• The Supercomputer At The Heart Of The Power Systems Revival

  November 28, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  With both the Supercomputing 2016 conference and Thanksgiving Day behind me, I find myself being thankful that the engineers that helped IBM make the transition from proprietary 48-bit CISC processors to 64-bit PowerPC processors in 1995–yes, that was more than two decades ago–were forward thinking. But as it turns out, there were other technologies, including massive floating point performance and database acceleration, that may in the long run help the entire Power Systems line not only survive, but thrive. We all know that the PowerPC-AS version of the Power line of chips was the only one of several early attempts

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• DB2 For IBM i: Made But Not Mastered

  November 28, 2016 Dan Burger

  IBM recently hosted an SAP on IBM i conference for customers and business partners. The conference is described as a showcase of best practices and advice on deployment of the latest technologies. IBM’s lineup of experts included Scott Forstie, DB2 for i Business Architect and a member of the DB2 on i Lab Services team. Forstie says interest in the new analytic features and OLAP functions available in DB2 for i surpasses anything to do with HANA. “Many attendees come to a conference like this to concentrate on better ways to use what they already own and to get the

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• What Koch’s $2.5 Billion Infor Investment Means For IBM i

  November 28, 2016 Alex Woodie

  Koch Equity Development LLC, the private equity arm of Koch Industries, will invest more than $2 billion into IBM i ERP giant Infor, the companies announced last week. Infor says it will use the cash to expand its business, while news reports say some of it will go to pay off earlier investors in the company. Infor wouldn’t comment on questions about what exactly it’s going to spend KED’s reported $2.5 billion investment, beyond what it said in the press release. Even IBM i customers would benefit, an Infor spokesman said. “All existing and future customers will reap

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• QTEMP Is A Different Animal

  November 15, 2016 Hey, Ted

  I have a problem with an FTP script. I wish to send a file in QTEMP to a remote system, but the script tries to send the file from QGPL instead. The PUT command does not tell which library to send the file from because our standards prohibit the use of hard-coded library names. Any thoughts will be appreciated. –Al I commend you and other wise people in your shop for outlawing the hard-coding of library names, Al. The library list is a wonderful feature of IBM i, a feature that is sorely missing from other database systems. I have

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• SQL PL–The LOOP Loop

  November 15, 2016 Ted Holt

  In the previous episode of this exciting series, I wrote about FOR, arguably the most useful of the SQL PL looping structures. Next in line of usefulness, in my opinion, is the LOOP structure. Like the rest of SQL PL, this is an easy structure to master, and I am pleased to write about it. In its simplest form, the syntax of the LOOP structure is as follows: LOOP - body - END LOOP Here is a more realistic version of the syntax: label: LOOP - body - END LOOP label The body contains any assortment of simple statements

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• Calling SQL Functions From RPG, A Service Program

  November 15, 2016 Paul Tuohy

  Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. In this article I would like to introduce a service program that provides RPG subprocedure “wrappers” for using SQL scalar functions. This means you can use an SQL scalar function as if it were an RPG built-in function. Using an SQL scalar function can be a lot easier than using the RPG alternative: Use the UPPER function instead of defining two translation strings and using %XLATE. Use DAYNAME function instead of calculating the day of the week and using an array to provide the day name. Using the

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• You’re Hired! Finding Your Next IBM i Pro

  November 14, 2016 Dan Burger

  The skills shortage dilemma for IBM i shops is a reality. It’s also an excuse. New technologies are being introduced rapid fire in IT and each has a learning curve that is being handled by people who choose to do so. It takes time and effort. This is enterprise computing. It’s slightly more difficult than learning to play the kazoo. But nearly every IBM midrange system admin or RPG programmer started out being thrown into the deep end of the pool. You don’t find new employees with the enterprise skill sets of someone with 10, 20, or 30 years of

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