• IBM Puts Future Power Chip Stakes In The Ground

  April 12, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Two important things happened at the OpenPower Summit last week. One of them concerns IBM i shops directly and the other one affects them indirectly and perhaps more importantly. The first is that IBM rolled out an official roadmap for Power chip development for the next five-plus years. The second was that search engine giant Google and cloud operator Rackspace Hosting said that they were collaborating on a design of a future system based on the Power9 chip. Google has been experimenting with Power8 chips for at a couple of years, and we suspect (without any corroborating evidence at all

  … Read more

• IBM i 7.3 Arrives April 15; 7.2 TR4 Follows in May

  April 12, 2016 Dan Burger

  It’s here. Today is IBM‘s announcement day for i 7.3, which becomes available Friday, April 15. The Technology Refresh, TR4 for i 7.2, arrives May 20. A new OS release is a glimpse of the future. For some of you, the future is now. You’re the early adopters–the people who put the bug in IBM’s ear several years ago about expanding analytical capabilities and help getting a handle on the security problem that is crying for attention. This release fits into the long-term strategy of Chief Architect Steve Will by providing more options for those who want to develop

  … Read more

• Refacing Your Database, Part 1

  April 5, 2016 Paul Tuohy

  Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. In this group of three articles, I will discuss a technique for refacing a traditional DDS defined database as an SQL DDL defined database. There will be no recreation of files or recompilation of programs, and it is not as much hard work as you think it might be. The stored procedures, functions, programs, and commands used in these articles are available in the library SQLFACE, which can be downloaded here. Before I get into the nitty gritty of refacing databases, I would just like to say

  … Read more

• Enable or Disable Code at Run Time

  April 5, 2016 Ted Holt

  If you program in RPG or C, you should know how to use compiler directives to enable or disable source code at compile time. IBM i programmers should also know how to enable or disable executable code at run time, and why they would want to do such a thing. Let’s talk about the why first. One good reason to enable or disable code is for trouble-shooting. You might find it valuable to include commands to: Display the job log Dump program variables Copy QTEMP files to another library Build spooled files (like of the type I showed how to

  … Read more

• Surge Of Services In DB2 For i, Part 1

  April 5, 2016 Michael Sansoterra

  The IBM i 7.2 TR3 and 7.1 TR11 technology refreshes come with a glut of new services. If you are responsible for IBM i administration, you are guaranteed to be tickled pink with these great enhancements. My examples are to call general attention to the availability of these services and give ideas on how they may be used. However, I still recommend going to the IBM documentation on the DeveloperWorks site (or the IBM knowledge center) to get full information on the parameters and all columns used by these special views and table functions. For clarification, there are actually

  … Read more

• IBM Keeps Low Profile While Reaction To ‘Resource Action’ Boils

  April 4, 2016 Dan Burger

  The boiling pot that is IBM‘s workforce reduction plan continues to spill over and let off steam. After a report was released last month from the financial analyst firm Bernstein estimated 14,000 IBM workers would be losing their jobs, the reaction was explosive. Last week, on the Watching IBM website, survey results from a fraction of IBM workers added some context to what’s happening. “The survey results show what people have been saying for quite a few years. That there is age discrimination going on in the job cuts and the IBM employee evaluation system is seriously flawed. It

  … Read more

• Mad Dog 21/21: Wintel Overture

  April 4, 2016 Hesh Wiener

  In 1981, IBM caused a tectonic shift in computing by announcing its PC. IBM ultimately failed in the PC business, but it spawned an industry segment that still stands on the PC’s two pillars: Intel chips and Microsoft software. Thirty-five years later, however, most clients are mobile, with ARM chips and ‘nix variant software. Meanwhile, enterprise Wintel and Lintel have been enlisted by Microsoft for a fresh assault on the glass house archipelago. To avoid a debacle, IBM must reinvent its Power and mainframe platforms on the ground and in the cloud. IBM appears vulnerable, adding to customers’

  … Read more

• MariaDB Dropping In On IBM i To Replace MySQL

  April 4, 2016 Alex Woodie

  When Oracle dropped support for IBM i with its MySQL database five years ago, it effectively slammed the door shut on a promising path to rejuvenate the IBM i ecosystem with an open source of applications. But soon that door will re-open via MariaDB, a fork of MySQL that is a drop-in replacement for Oracle’s open database. Zend‘s PHP-on-IBM i guru Mike Pavlak gives IT Jungle the scoop on what’s about to happen. According to Pavlak, work is under way to get MariaDB running on IBM i, which it will do in the same manner that MySQL came

  … Read more

• IBM i Shops Behind The Customized ERP Eight Ball

  April 4, 2016 Dan Burger

  We are not sheep. What we do with our ERP software is our own business and our widget business is not going to be run like all other widget businesses. And we don’t all jump when the ERP software vendor says jump. Most IBM midrange shops are running packaged ERP software and quite a few have customized them to get what they really want. Until it’s time to upgrade, that is. Software upgrades, even when the software is not customized, can be a pain in the patootie. Whether that’s a dull pain or a sharp pain is often related to

  … Read more

• X Marks The Spot

  April 4, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Just because IBM sold off its System x X86 server business to Lenovo Group does not mean magically that X86 servers are no longer relevant to Power Systems customers. As far as we can tell, Big Blue’s exit from this business has had no measurable impact on the use of X86 iron at IBM i shops, although the brand of machines that IBM i customers might choose in their next X86 upgrade cycle might change if they had not already been using gear from Hewlett-Packard Enterprise or Dell, the dominant suppliers of X86 gear in the datacenter. Last week,

  … Read more

Previous Articles Next Articles