• Message Data Data Structures

  August 30, 2016 Hey, Ted

  Sending Escape Messages from RPG is a great article. Your program defines the message data parameter as 80 bytes of character data, but the IBM Knowledge Center defines MSGDTA as char(*) with notes saying it can be up to 32,767 bytes. I would like a variable longer than 80 bytes, but instead of coding 100 today, 120 next project, and so on, how could I code it to take full advantage of the API? –Glenn You’re right that the API can handle up to 32K of data, but you need only define MsgDta as large as you need it to

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• Easy Printing from CL, Take Two

  August 30, 2016 Hey, Ted

  When I read your statement that CL cannot write to printer files, I immediately thought, “It can’t? Then what have I been doing for the last couple of decades?” I looked through the article and saw that it didn’t mention my most used method, and I wondered how it was missed. –Tom Liotta Tom takes advantage of one of the best features of ILE, namely the ability to bind routines written in different languages to form one program. The non-CL procedure that he included is the printf function, which is well-known to C programmers. Even though printf produces stream

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• Clouds Grow, But Can IBM i Follow?

  August 29, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Until cloud computing–meaning virtualized compute, storage, and networking that is sold under utility pricing–is absolutely the norm in the data center, we will be talking about what is and is not cloud and how fast it is or is not. The prognosis is that investments in public cloud computing are going to continue to grow fast, much faster than the overall IT sector, which has been coasting along more or less level for years. That placid surface on overall IT spending masks the churn underneath the surface, so don’t be fooled. According to researchers at IDC public cloud spending is

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• Time For Tapeless? LaserVault Tempts The SMB

  August 29, 2016 Dan Burger

  IBM midrange shops with dedicated system operators that manage backup media and drives are few and far between these days. The common staffing arrangement has programmers or maybe network admins juggling backup duties along with their other responsibilities. Of course, lean staffing invites human error into IT operations. Automating backup procedures can provide welcome relief. Data at risk is a problem that Electronic Storage Corporation is addressing with a new appliance it calls Backup SAVSmart for i. Electronic Storage Corporation is the maker of LaserVault backup and recovery solutions. SAVSmart uses the newest version of the LaserVault Backup software, which

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• Tape: It Ain’t Dead Yet

  August 29, 2016 Alex Woodie

  In 2003, the inestimable Richard Pryor got in a good, last laugh when he starred in the Comedy Central documentary “I Ain’t Dead Yet, #*%$#@!!” In some ways, you could say that magnetic tape is the Richard Pryor of the storage world: Everybody seems to think tape is already dead, but it keeps delivering the goods year after year anyway. If your midrange shop is like most, there is probably a magnetic tape drive toiling away. That’s because, despite the repeated predictions of its death, tape still plays a critical role in the back-office IT operations of tens of thousands

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• We’re All IBM i Storytellers

  August 29, 2016 Dan Burger

  Everyone has a story. Alison Butterill has quite a few. They’re all about i. She didn’t make them up. You did. Or, at least, some of you did. These are stories only you can tell. Butterill, the widely traveled IBM i product offering manager, just repeats them. Storytelling was part of her session titled IBM i in the Digital World, which I sat in on at the OCEAN Technical Conference last month in Orange County, California. The reason you are the only ones who can tell them is because they’re about you and your IBM i. Butterill collects them

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• Power9 Gets Ready To Roll In Systems In 2017

  August 29, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In about a year or so, a radically different Power processor family will be embedded as the motors in the Power Systems machines that will drive IBM i applications into the future. The forthcoming Power9 chips, which IBM’s top techies unveiled at the Hot Chips conference in Silicon Valley last week, are as always packed with lots of technical innovation. But that is not the main thing that IBM i shops should be ebullient about. The real innovation that will drive the Power platform forward is the OpenPower Foundation and the fact that Big Blue has rearchitected its chips and

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• Knocking On The Old Database Door

  August 22, 2016 Dan Burger

  Keeping up with technology should be systematic and efficient. Avoidance behavior will only reduce your anxiety for so long. At some point, the limitations companies have learned to live with and consider “good enough” will prevent them from keeping up with the herd. Here are three organizations that realized it was time to take on database modernization, after discovering their existing databases lacked documentation, defined relationships and normalized procedures. The three examples are projects that involve Resolution Software, a company that specializes in database modernization services and developed software that automates much of the labor intensive work in the

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• As I See It: Breakup

  August 22, 2016 Victor Rozek

  I went to a wedding last weekend and it was everything a wedding should be: beautifully located, attended by scores of family, supported by legions of friends, and replete with that singular optimistic naivety that believes in happily ever after. While it would be foolish to marry without a firm belief in the prospect of future happiness, regrettably “happily ever after” has a shelf life for about half of all married couples. There’s a fair chance that at some point during the career of a married employee, divorce will bring an unexpected end to what might have been. Whether amicable

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• Vision Bolsters Entry-Level HA With iTERA 6.2

  August 22, 2016 Alex Woodie

  Small and midsize IBM i shops that are looking to adopt a high availability (HA) solution to protect their businesses from downtime have a lot of options available to them these days, including cloud solutions and hardware-based offerings from IBM. SMBs looking for in-house logical replication solutions will eventually call on Vision Solutions, which recently added some enterprise-level features to its entry-level solution with the launch of iTERA Availability version 6.2. It’s a great time to adopt HA for IBM i shops. The combination of dropping hardware and software costs, higher levels of affordable network bandwidth, and the

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