• RPG Talks To Watson

  September 27, 2016 Paul Tuohy

  Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. Yes, RPG can talk to Watson. No special software required, nothing to install, nothing to configure. You just need to be on V7R1, have the ability to use embedded SQL and write just a few lines of code–none of which are complicated. To see how it works, all you have to do is copy/paste the display file and RPG code in this article, compile and call. On the off chance that you don’t know what Watson is, Watson is the IBM computer that, in 2011, competed

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• IBM Preaches Cognitive, Cloud, And IT Consumption

  September 26, 2016 Dan Burger

  They say it’s not just about the technology. It’s really about the business. But that brings to mind an old adage from the car industry: You sell the sizzle not the steak. Right now the sizzle is cognitive computing. It has edged out big data and analytics in the one-upsmanship match of IT leadership and the next big thing. At the Edge conference last week, when IBM executives talked strategy and road maps, cognitive computing was on the tip of tongues. Cognitive is a differentiator, an upper hand for IBM. Big Blue has not let the world forget about Watson,

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• Mad Dog 21/21: From Hegel To Google

  September 26, 2016 Hesh Wiener

  The renowned philosopher Georg Hegel, whose life coincided with the Industrial Revolution, analyzed social change and the resultant conflict of old and new. His ideas galvanized Karl Marx, 50 years his junior. Two centuries after his birth, Hegel’s wisdom guided Silicon Valley’s sensational inventors. At its best, our economy is nourished by a hearty Hegelian stew of technologies seasoned with a dash of Ninotchka. At its worst, we try to feed on an Apple duly but dully managed by former ibmocrat Tim Cook as we listen to a hoarse Yahoo. Georg Hegel: German philosopher whose

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• Living With VIOS and Other Tips From A Power Champion

  September 26, 2016 Alex Woodie

  Nobody likes VIOS, not even AIX administrators, admits Anthony English, an AIX expert who was named an IBM Champion for Power earlier this year. But with the proper mindset, a good coach, and a few key pieces of knowledge, even career IBM i professionals can learn to get along with the Virtual I/O Server. There isn’t much clarity surrounding VIOS in the IBM i community. Many IBM i professionals who have spent their entire careers managing disks and storage the old-fashioned way in the IBM i operating system get flummoxed when presented an AIX-based VIOS screen. VIOS is weird and

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• With Avnet Deal, Tech Data Spans From Glass House To Your House

  September 26, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  And then there were three. For the past several years, the two dominant master resellers of Power-based systems–that would be Avnet and Arrow Electronics–who also sell a whole lot of other kinds of IT gear into datacenters, got a little competition from Tech Data and Ingram Micro joined the fray and started peddling Power gear and related storage. Rather than compete with Avnet, Tech Data decided to shell out a whole lot of money to buy its Technology Solutions division, thus vaulting itself into a better competitive position in the IT distribution business relative to Arrow and making it

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• IBM i Finds A Place At Edge Conference

  September 26, 2016 Dan Burger

  The IBM i community was born and raised with platform-specific tendencies. That was the way of the IBM IT world for many years. It’s not the way anymore. The strategy for IBM Power Systems, running i and AIX, is much more open. It’s OpenPower and OpenStack oriented. Its roadmap has cloud and cognitive computing highlighted. The IBM Edge conference last week left no doubt about that. So what’s left for i? Power Systems general manager Doug Balog says there’s plenty. IBM continues to invest in IBM i, Balog says, using the stream of OS releases 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3 as

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• New Service Combats Complacency In IT Security

  September 19, 2016 Dan Burger

  The chilling reality of IT security weaknesses is widely overlooked and often assumed to be something that only affects someone else’s business. A close look at our own organizations makes us uncomfortable. So do stories that include expert opinions that every business should begin its security review with the realization that a security breach has already occurred. That’s how real the threat is. And your current security policy, if you even have one, is probably obsolete. Security is an ongoing process. It’s not inherent in the system, not even the legendary IBM i platform. “Attackers and their targets and objectives

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• As I See It: The Girl Who Liked to Count Things

  September 19, 2016 Victor Rozek

  She was born nearly a century ago in a little town in West Virginia with the unappealing name of White Sulphur Springs. There, the well-healed gathered to escape the summer heat and soak away their ailments at a resort that employed her father. She would not have been welcome there as a guest, however. She is black. At the time, educational opportunities for black children in her county–those who could even contemplate such lavishness–ended with eighth grade. So her parents were forced to find a high school she would be permitted to attend, the nearest being about 120 miles away.

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• Is It RDi Time Yet?

  September 19, 2016 Dan Burger

  It would be great fun to begin this article with news that IBM i enthusiasts were virtually lined up like box cars on freight trains to download Rational Developer for i (RDi), the modern graphical design tool for application development. It’s not that dramatic. Sheer numbers don’t tell the entire story, however. There’s a bit of detectable momentum. What are the chances IBM will help that momentum grow? It’s actually better than the pessimistic answer: slim and none. One reason for optimism stems from the Rational for i team escaping IBM Software Group in 2015 and finding a more welcoming

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• What’s Ed McVaney Up To Next?

  September 19, 2016 Alex Woodie

  In the IBM i world, no software vendor has found as much as success as JD Edwards. Sold to PeopleSoft for $1.8 billion in 2002 and now a part of Oracle, JD Edwards was the gold standard by which other ERP packages on the platform were measured. Now the principle founder of JD Edwards, Ed McVaney, is involved in another software startup in the Denver, Colorado area called Nextworld. But what does the company do? That’s a tough question to answer, as the company is still in “stealth mode” ahead of an official launch, ostensibly, at some point

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