• SEQUEL Data Warehouse Picks Up Where RODIN Left Off

  February 22, 2016 Alex Woodie

  Not every IBM i shop needs a big data warehouse to store and analyze information about their operations. But for those organizations whose data needs go beyond basic reporting capabilities, it is good to know there are tools like HelpSystems‘ SEQUEL Data Warehouse, which was formally called RODIN and which the company just released at version 8.0 with substantial new functionality. It has been a year-and-a-half since HelpSystems acquired Coglin Mill, the Rochester, Minnesota, based company that developed RODIN. Once dubbed “the IBM i platforms best-kept secret,” RODIN provided enterprise-grade data preparation capabilities and extract, transform, and load (ETL)

  … Read more

• The Job Market For The People Who Make The IBM i Go

  February 22, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Like you, we are trying to understand the current state of the IBM i community. Thus far in 2016, we have taken several looks at the dicing and slicing of the latest IBM i Marketplace Survey compiled by HelpSystems as well as providing our own insight into what industries are represented by the IBM i base and how that compares to historical data. We also did our best to try to case the distribution of system admins and programmers in the IBM i base. This week, we want to take a look at the job market for the people in

  … Read more

• IBM i Shines In Academic Research Data Center

  February 15, 2016 Dan Burger

  The Power Systems Academic Initiative is more than classes that teach RPG, PHP, and enterprise computing. It’s much more. It’s about research and the role of information technology. And more and more it’s about data and analyses. Where this is headed has caused the Academic Initiative data center to relocate to accommodate growth and the requests from colleges and universities that keeps IBM i in the midst of innovation. During the past month and a half, the AI data center has found a new home in Tucson, Arizona, in a facility IBM uses primarily for its storage product testing and

  … Read more

• As I See It: Beware Of Beware

  February 15, 2016 Victor Rozek

  At some point in our lives, a transformative event or some perceived injustice propels many of us to become active in social or political movements. At least for a period of time. Regardless of left/right orientation, where politics and social justice matters are concerned, emotions tend to run high and rhetoric flows. And since there are few, if any, centrist movements committed to nothing nobler than nurturing the status quo, activists typically congregate on the margins, doing and saying things they think will best publicize their cause. The more outrageous and controversial their actions, the more media coverage they are

  … Read more

• Speed Versus Need In IBM i Mobile Initiatives

  February 15, 2016 Dan Burger

  As mobile access to corporate communications and data becomes more widespread in IBM midrange shops, those who are just arriving at the party can learn a great deal from those who came before them. We learn from our mistakes, but actually it’s a lot less bloody when we learn from others mistakes. And when mistakes do get made; there will be pressure to step on the accelerator before turning on the lights. Damn the darkness. Let’s go mobile! Security and employee education are two major issues that are being de-emphasized or ignored until something bad happens. If it wasn’t for

  … Read more

• All Signs Point To The Cloud, But Will IBM i Crowd Follow?

  February 15, 2016 Alex Woodie

  You don’t need a weatherman to see that clouds are quickly building. American companies are moving workloads to big public computing clouds from Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, and others at an unprecedented rate, spurring a massive data center building boom. But will IBM i shops fall in line and move to the cloud? That’s where the forecast gets a little iffy. There’s an abundance of signals reflecting big uptake of clouds, including public clouds run by the aforementioned companies, as well as private clouds run by managed service providers (MSPs) and IBM business partners. A January study of

  … Read more

• IBM Wheels And Deals On Big Iron Compute And Memory

  February 15, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  With the Power8 processors having been on the market in IBM‘s Power Systems machines for nearly two years now, and Intel widely expected to launch its “Broadwell” Xeon server processors within the next few months, you might think that Big Blue would be out there wheeling and dealing, offering all kinds of clever deals to try to keep machines moving. Maybe IBM’s sales force is doing this, and maybe its resellers are doing this, but the past two years during the Power8 generation have been the most quiet ones I can remember when it comes to a lack of

  … Read more

• Parsing Delimited Text Data Natively In SQL, Part 2: Java To The Rescue

  February 9, 2016 Michael Sansoterra

  Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. In Part 1 of this series, I introduced ParseFileContent, a 100 percent SQL user-defined table function (UDTF) that can parse delimited text (as a CLOB or IFS file) and format the results as rows and columns. As an advantage over tools like CPYFRMIMPF, this UDTF can streamline a text based import process by allowing CASTs, JOINs, and data integrity checks to be done while the import is running. As useful as ParseFileContent is, it does suffer a few drawbacks. ParseFileContent is not particularly fast and it can’t handle

  … Read more

• Use SQL To Change A Substring

  February 9, 2016 Ted Holt

  Occasionally I need to change part of a string value in a database table. SQL has three mechanisms that let me accomplish such a thing. Do you know what those three mechanisms are and how to use them? First, we need a table for illustrative purposes. create table Parts ( ID char(6) primary key, Description varchar(40), Cost dec (5,2), Price dec (5,2)); insert into parts values ('XX-101', '20-inch Doodad', 0.12, 0.25), ('XX-105', '2-foot Doodad left-hand', 0.48, 0.75), ('XX-106', '2-foot Doodad right-hand', 0.48, 0.75), ('XX-118', '12-foot Doodad', 1.25, 3.00), ('BA-101', '5CM Widget', 0.30, 0.45), ('BA-104', '15Cm Widget', 1.00, 1.35), ('BA-111', '150cm

  … Read more

• IBM i and .Net Connectivity With XMLSERVICE

  February 9, 2016 Richard Schoen

  Many businesses are looking for ways to modernize their IBM i applications while maximizing their existing code investments in RPG or COBOL applications. Some contend that using Microsoft development technologies is a bad way to go. They think it promotes replacement of existing IBM i applications or of IBM i itself. My position has always been that PCs and Microsoft technology are a great way to enhance existing IBM i applications. XMLSERVICE and Microsoft Visual Studio are open source technologies your company can use to modernize, enhance, and augment your existing IBM i code base. Using Microsoft .Net with XMLSERVICE

  … Read more

Previous Articles Next Articles