• As I See It: Rediscovering The Big Fresh

  June 20, 2016 Victor Rozek

  Exercise has always been my salvation. Over the years the jobs I’ve held varied in challenge and satisfaction. But whether the work turned out to be exceptionally demanding or excruciatingly dull, exercise was my deliverance. It was a curative constant guaranteed to soften the stress and alleviate the boredom. And on those occasions when my youthful righteousness spilled over and I felt compelled to lecture my manager, exercise served as the antidote to the inappropriate expression of strong feelings. After all, there’s only so much emoting welcome in the workplace. Laughter is one thing; frustration, ah, no. Sadness or anger,

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• Analytical Expectations And Misconceptions Of IBM i

  June 20, 2016 Dan Burger

  Often we recognize we had expectations about the same time as we recognize those expectations have not been met. The IBM midrange computer, a combination of the IBM i operating system running on Power Systems hardware, exceeds the expectations of a high percentage of organizations that rely on it. Reliability, scalability, and securability are its hallmarks. However, some would describe its analytical capabilities as a weakness. Transactional-based business computers, like this one, are limited in what they can do. Are they analytically challenged? That depends on your expectations. The type of analytics most IBM i shops are interested in are

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• Windows Explorer DOS Attacks On IBM i 7.3

  June 20, 2016 Alex Woodie

  If you have noticed that Windows Explorer seems to be running especially slow when mapped to your IBM i server, you are not alone. Over the past month, there have been several reports of what appear to be limited denial of service (DOS) attacks against servers running IBM i 7.3. This issue stems from a change in protocols for mapped drives that IBM made with the new operating system, but it appears that Microsoft is on the hook for the fix. IBM issued a Technote about a month ago to describe the problem and to offer various workarounds. The problem

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• The AS/400 At 28: A HENRY, Not A DINK

  June 20, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  A lot of people get credit for the work that went into creating IBM midrange systems over the decades, and rightfully so since the creation of such machinery, including the hardware and the software, takes many hundreds or thousands of individuals with each successive generation. It is appropriate to think about them as the AS/400, the forebear of the current Power Systems IBM i system, turns 28. That is a long time in a human life, and an even longer time in computer history, where a generation has spanned from 12 to 24 months instead of decades. The funny bit

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• Inline Table Functions In DB2 For i

  June 14, 2016 Michael Sansoterra

  In DB2 for i 7.2 TR4 and IBM i 7.3, IBM has made a special user-defined table function (UDTF) enhancement that should be shouted from the rooftops. This enhancement is referred to as an inline table function. Consider the simple example of this UDTF named Get_Customer_Orders: CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION Get_Customer_Orders ( @CustomerID INT, @StartDate DATE, @EndDate DATE) RETURNS TABLE ( SalesOrderId INT, CustomerId INT, OrderDate DATE, ShipDate DATE, SUBTOTAL DEC(19,4)) LANGUAGE SQL NO EXTERNAL ACTION DISALLOW PARALLEL SET OPTION COMMIT=*NONE,USRPRF=*OWNER,DATFMT=*ISO RETURN SELECT SalesOrderId,CustomerId, OrderDate,ShipDate,SubTotal FROM SalesOrderHeader WHERE CustomerId=@CustomerId AND OrderDate BETWEEN @StartDate AND @EndDate; What does DB2 do when

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• Easier Overloading of SQL Functions

  June 14, 2016 Hey, Ted

  In Formatting Dates with SQL, Take 2, you have shared a great technique. Function overloading is a real boon to SQL programming. Here’s another way to handle the same issue with what I believe is less code and less invasive (meaning you won’t have to recompile programs that use the FMTDATE service program). Leave your original FMTDATE function alone, but add the following to the SQL source: create function xxx/fmtdate (inDate varchar(8), inFromFmt varchar(8), inToFmt varchar(8)) returns varchar(10) language SQL specific FMTDATEA deterministic returns null on null input begin declare DateNum numeric (8,0); declare OutDate varchar(10); set DateNum =

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• The Basics Of XML-SAX

  June 14, 2016 Jon Paris

  Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. In XML-INTO And Optional Elements, I showed a reader how he could use XML-INTO to parse an XML document that effectively contained one of two completely different payloads. As I noted in that article, for this type of “does the document contain X” processing, XML-SAX can be a better choice than XML-INTO. That is the task that I’m going to demonstrate in this tip. In his email, the reader mentioned that his original intent had been to simply identify the type of payload (Report or Event) and

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• The Server Refresh Cycle Loses Steam

  June 13, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  With one way of looking at it, the server market that drives the IT business is very mature and relatively flat, which shows demand for compute (and in some cases storage) remains steady and healthy. But in another way of looking at it, in a world obsessed by growth and often demanding it to drive revenues, profits, and stock prices, the server market has taken a dip and this is bad news. Which way is it? Like an electron, perhaps, it is neither and both at the same time. What we can tell you is that the box counters at

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• Focal Point Emphasizes Security Assessments, Documents In The Cloud

  June 13, 2016 Dan Burger

  Focal Point Solutions Group, an IBM i-based managed service provider specializing in high availability, disaster recovery architectures, and security monitoring has expanded its services to include security assessments and document management in the cloud. Slowly but surely the word is getting around that IBM i systems are securable but not inherently secure. The distinction is that it takes skills and knowledge to secure the box. Security doesn’t just happen when you push the power button. More to security than locking down the network. Customers are realizing they need to know that security issues are being monitored and addressed when

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• Rocket Ties Analytic Database Into IBM i

  June 13, 2016 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that are interested in extracting insights from their data under the guidance of automated statistical analysis and machine learning may want to check out a new offering from Rocket Software. Called Rocket Discover for IBM i, the new software combines data discovery capabilities with self-service data preparation, and is aimed at regular business users who find things like Tableau Software‘s products too geeky or difficult to learn. Rocket began building its Rocket Discover tool several years ago to serve the growing need for self-service tools that can handle the entire analytic spectrum–from data preparation and

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