• Inside Infor’s Data Science Lab

  August 17, 2016 Alex Woodie

  If you’ve noticed subtle improvements to your enterprise software lately, you’re not alone. For the past two years, IBM i ERP giant Infor has been using data science techniques to optimize various business processes that are automated by its software. And the best part may be that Infor is offering its Dynamic Science Labs expertise to customers for free and that improvements get wrapped back into the product. The big data revolution is impacting many aspects of our lives, including how we work and play. The technologies and techniques that the big Silicon Valley Web firms like Yahoo, Google

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• Ublu: A Modern Band-Aid for Legacy i Ills

  August 17, 2016 Alex Woodie

  In a perfect world, companies would hire and retain technology professionals who possess the requisite skills for working on the IBM i server. However, that is clearly not the case, as an IBM i skills shortage has bubbled up as one of the platform’s most pressing issues. For those jack-of-all-trades who are struggling with this thing called the IBM i, the open source tool Ublu offers a bridge to familiarity. Ublu is an interpretive scripting language designed for automating IBM i tasks from any remote platform capable of running Java, which includes Windows, Mac, Linux, OpenBSD, and other desktop operating

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• Assorted DB2 for i Questions

  August 16, 2016 Michael Sansoterra

  Shown below are assorted questions related to DB2 for i. If you have a question you’d like Four Hundred Guru to try to answer, be sure to visit the IT Jungle Contact page. Note that some of these questions were modified from their original form for clarity and simplicity. Adding an attribute to an element based XML Q: The FHG tips on composing XML documents from DB2 data (Part 1 and Part 2) do not describe how to add a custom attribute to element based XML. Consider the following query: SELECT XMLAGG( XMLROW(NAME as "Name", Color as "Color",

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• How To Insert With A Common Table Expression

  August 16, 2016 Hey, Ted

  I have to merge some new item numbers into our item master file. The problem I’ve run into is that there is more than one record for some items. None of the examples I found on the Web work for me. How do I write an SQL statement to copy all records from one file to another avoiding duplicates on part number? –Trent This is a new wrinkle on a challenge about which I have written before, namely the need to select only one row (record) to represent a group. (See the Related Stories below.) The wrinkle is that not

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• Overlaid Packed Data In Data Structures

  August 16, 2016 Jon Paris

  Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. Sometimes things that should be simple give us difficulty. Jon Paris recently helped a Four Hundred Guru reader to solve a problem with overlaid packed-decimal data in data structures. We’re sharing their conversation for the benefit of others. Hi, Jon: My question has to do with overlaid packed-decimal data in a data structure. I store a date in CYMD format in a seven-digit, packed-decimal field. I am trying to extract the two-digit year from that. Dcl-Ds cymdDate; currentDate packed(7); currentYear packed(2) overlay(currentDate:2); End-Ds; When I set

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• New Round Of Enhancements For Access Client Solutions

  August 15, 2016 Dan Burger

  With every Technology Refresh there are new features and functions added to IBM i Access Client Solutions (ACS) that make the official announcement list. But in reality, ACS upgrades also occur in between TRs with their announcement held off until the next TR. On July 31, the latest batch of ACS enhancements became available as a download on the IBM i Access webpage. ACS replaced the legacy Access for Windows several years ago. Like the traditional Access products, IBM i Access Client Solutions is primarily used for 5250 emulation, but is also popular for accomplishing data transfers, printer output,

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• Mad Dog 21/21: Vulcan’s Fury

  August 15, 2016 Hesh Wiener

  When Vulcan gets riled, steer clear of volcanos. Be nice. Show him some respect. Admire his metalworking skills. Celebrate his holiday, Vulcanalia, on August 23. Don’t hurt Vulcan’s feelings as Pompeii apparently did. In 79 AD, Pompeii was buried alive in ash and lava. Vulcan is obviously implicated: Vesuvius erupted on August 24, right after Vulcanalia. IBM, which has supported a huge study of Pompeii’s destruction, should know better than to trifle with Vulcan. But Big Blue has been vexatious, deprecating the hardware business. Vulcan is surely offended; he could strike at any moment. Watch out! Pompeii And

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• No Seats At Cruikshank’s SQL Database Sessions

  August 15, 2016 Dan Burger

  Dan Cruikshank’s presentations at the OCEAN Tech Conference last month were packed. Conference attendees had plenty of session options running opposite of Cruikshank, but his topics enticed IBM i advocates like free ice cream cones in the park on the Fourth of July. The seats are filled by folks hungry for technical advice on SQL, database efficiency, and business value. He gave them sessions on database re-engineering, reusable SQL procedures, modernizing IBM i applications, and data-centric programming. Based on “hands-up” session surveys during similar sessions he presents around the world, Cruikshank is convinced that programmers are increasing their efforts to

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• Talking Modernization With Profound Logic

  August 15, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Modernization, in its many guises, seems to be a big driver of the IBM i ecosystem these days. For a long time, high availability software was major propellant diving the market alongside System/38 and System/36 upgrades–a kind of modernization effort in its own right. Then along came the ERP wave in the 1990s, and packaged software is all the rage. Now, the diehard IBM i faithful need to update their code to work with modern devices and to look and feel like other modern software, and they need some help. A programmer or two using good tools are perhaps better

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• IBM i Requirements: It’s About (To) Change

  August 15, 2016 Alex Woodie

  Have you ever wondered how IBM comes up with ideas for how to improve the IBM i platform? According to the IBM i chief architect Steve Will, the most strategic ideas originate internally within IBM. However, many new features come from the customer base through formal requirements processes. And this fall, IBM intends to launch a new requirements program that will allow users to vote on new features over the Web. There are currently four formal requirements programs that feed ideas for new IBM i features to IBM. These include the COMMON Americas Advisory Council (CAAC), COMMON Europe Advisory Council

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