The IT Jungle

No More Java 6 Support in Next Version of IBM i

March 9, 2016 Alex Woodie

We don’t know much about the next release of the IBM i operating system, except that it will (probably, maybe) be called version 7.3 and that it will have awesome new features, according to those who have been briefed under non-disclosure agreements. But IBM has already made one thing certain about the new OS: It won’t run Java 6. As IBM i product manager Steve Will explains, it’s time for Java developers to move on.

IBM updated its Java on IBM i developerWorks webpage on February 17 to reflect the fact that IBM i 7.2 will be the last release

IBM Kills Off Flex p260+ Node, Offers PureSystems Trade-In

March 7, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan

If you are one of the relatively few customers who bought Flex Systems modular servers from IBM based on its Power7 and Power7+ processors, you had better get the lead out if you need to add some iron to your systems.

In announcement letter 916-028, IBM said that it was going to be withdrawing the Flex System p260+ server nodes, which are based on Power7+ processors, from its catalog starting on November 18. A slew of networking features, including switches and adapters, are having the plug pulled on them on March 8, and so are memory and storage features

IBM Patches Pair Of TLS Flaws In IBM i

March 7, 2016 Alex Woodie

IBM i shops are encouraged to be vigilant following a pair of security vulnerabilities that have emerged in the encryption protocols used by the platform. This includes the SLOTH vulnerability in the IBM i JVM that IBM patched February 15. But a bigger threat looms in the form of DROWN, a potentially significant vulnerability in the SSL/TLS stack that IBM patched on March 1.

IBM issued a series of patches to address the SLOTH vulnerability in the IBM i JVMs. According to IBM’s Security Bulletin for SLOTH, a problem with the IBM i JVM’s implementation of the TLS 1.2

The Most Precious IBM i Resource . . . Women

March 7, 2016 Dan Burger

Man’s work and women’s work, can you describe the difference? Think about all the reasons there are tasks that fit into one or the other category. Then think about the IBM midrange community and why the ratio of men to women must be 10 to one, or even greater. Unbalanced? Obviously. Discrimination? I’m not here to throw that bomb. Successful women in this business? Yes, there are many.

I’m going to mention just a few highly successful women from the IBM i community right off the top of my head: Alison Butterill, IBM i Product Offering Manager; Susan Gantner, highly

A Change Of Heart: IBM i Shops More Willing To Share

March 7, 2016 Dan Burger

On the road from the AS/400 to IBM i, there have been many changes. One of the biggest has been the evolution from being a fortress that locked out all “outsiders” to allowing the system to interact with other systems. I don’t doubt there are some one-dimensional IBM i shops, but sharing data, once punishable by death, now occurs without beads of sweat and loss of sleep . . . most of the time.

The IBM i platform has a strong record of being directly accessible to other platforms, especially within the Windows realm, Mike Sansoterra points out. Sansoterra is

A Possibly Coherent Future Power Hybrid System

March 7, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan

From the looks of things, we can expect to see new Power Systems machines based on the Power8+ processors from IBM in the next several months. With new iron on the way and the server, storage, and networking markets all undergoing tumultuous change, now is a good time to examine the place of the IBM i platform in the modern datacenter and how it might be better integrated with the other systems that coexist with it.

Having to say such a sentence was never part of the original System/38 and AS/400 plan, of course. And perhaps the midrange IT world

The Three Sources Of RUNSQLSTM

March 1, 2016 Ted Holt

The Run SQL Statements (RUNSQLSTM) command executes a file of SQL and/or CL commands. If you’ve used this command, you probably know that RUNSQLSTM reads the commands from a source physical file member. But did you know that there are two other places from which it can read SQL commands?

First, the usual way. Here’s member LOADPLANTS in source physical file SCRIPTS.

CREATE TABLE PLANTS (ID DEC(3), LOCATION VARCHAR(24),
   PRIMARY KEY (ID));
INSERT INTO PLANTS VALUES
(  1,  'Lost Angeles'),
(  2,  'New Yolk'),
(  3,  'Waste Virginia');

To create the PLANTS table and initialize it with data, do this:

Easy Printing From CL

March 1, 2016 Ted Holt

CL cannot write to printer files. This is understandable, since CL fits into the category of job control languages. Even though I’d never use CL to build an aged receivables report, there are times when it is advantageous for a CL program to generate a report (i.e., produce a spooled file), and here are two fairly easy ways to do that.

Suppose you have a CL program that runs three RPG programs in nightly batch processing. There are people in your organization who need to know whether these programs ran successfully or not. If you could build a short spooled

Retrieving Data From All Members With SQL

March 1, 2016 Michael Sansoterra

Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here.

Everyone knows that DB2 for i SQL doesn’t play well with legacy multi-member database files. The CREATE ALIAS statement allows SQL to access a particular member of a file. But what if you want to access all members in a file using SQL as though they were a single member? A reader recently inquired about this topic and further wanted to know if there was a built-in SQL function to return each row’s member name.

NOTE: For clarification, I’m not discussing members of a DB2 partitioned table.

Here

Where In The World Is IBM i?

February 29, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan

In case you did not notice it, there is a new year here in 2016 and Big Blue has spent what must have been a fortune putting a new mobile-tuned website together for itself. I am going to show my age a bit here, but mobile formats are fine for a phone, and on a web screen they might be slick and slippery, but they are also shouty and devoid of actual data. Call me a misplaced man of letters, but I like text.

Just for the hell of it, I went poking around the new IBM website to see

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