• Parsing Delimited Text Data Natively in SQL, Part 1

  January 26, 2016 Michael Sansoterra

  Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. A common task for database developers is to accept a delimited text file, parse it, and dump it into a database table. This tip demonstrates a user-defined table function (UDTF) that can accomplish this task based on delimited text data stored in a CLOB or in an IFS file. The UDTF is called ParseFileContent and it accepts three parameters: CLOB data to parse, row delimiter character(s), and column delimiter character(s). The UDTF returns a ROWID column that represents the line number of the text data and 250 columns

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• Upsert One Row From A Data Structure

  January 26, 2016 Hey, Ted

  I’m attempting to use the SQL MERGE statement to write an “upsert” that stores the data to be inserted or updated in an externally described data structure. Is that possible? Any insight into this would be helpful. –Lewis Even though Lewis was only dealing with one row in the database table, what he was doing qualifies as an upsert in my book. He’s updating a row if it’s there and adding it if it isn’t. However, I don’t think MERGE is the right tool for this job. MERGE is designed to update a lot of rows in one table from

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• Run VisualAge RPG Applications On 64-bit Windows 7, 8, And 10 Over The LAN

  January 26, 2016 Dan Devoe

  With assurance of continued support from IBM, we used VisualAge RPG (VARPG) to develop modern business applications. Then IBM pulled the plug on VARPG. Nevertheless, we’ve kept our applications working, and have even managed to find a way to run them under 64-bit Windows from our LAN. Here’s how we did it. A Little Background Around a decade ago, we were looking for a way to put a modern interface on our 5250-based applications. We really liked what VisualAge RPG (VARPG) had to offer. We found many reasons to lean toward this solution, but the most enticing ones were

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• Baseline Data Boss Predicts Steady Stream Of Outsourced Production Environments

  January 25, 2016 Dan Burger

  If there is a demand for managed services in the IBM midrange market, you can begin measuring it 20 years ago. It’s not a new thing, but some of the services are new. For many companies, those contracting for managed services as well as those that provide the services, the managed services relationship has been long established. Usually it’s based on a disaster recovery service. But what about the new demand? We’ve written about this before in IT Jungle articles. When will the managed services business become more than the disaster recovery business? It already has. Nearly every managed service

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• Mad Dog 21/21: Pythia And The Two-Legged Pig

  January 25, 2016 Hesh Wiener

  The great temple of Apollo stands at Delphi on Mt. Parnassus. Centuries ago, an elder priestess at this temple, yclept Pythia, was an oracle, offering prophecies to those able to correctly interpret her words. Today, Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway is IBM’s largest shareholder, is called the Oracle of Omaha. Buffett looks the part, resembling a benign grandma. He has more money than all of Greece, although right now plenty of people enjoy that distinction. Like Pythia the Oracle, Buffett can be baffling; less gifted people cannot understand why Buffett is up to his ears in IBM

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• Web Portal Not An IBM i Modernization Bit Player

  January 25, 2016 Dan Burger

  The portal piece of modernization projects seldom gets top billing. All eyes are on the graphical user interface and efforts to scour the green screen out of sight from those who believe it is the work of the devil. But dagnabbit, it’s the portal that unifies information and applications from a galaxy of diverse sources and displays it in an orderly fashion. It’s the key to proprietary information that’s shared among authorized users. “We see a lot of B2B companies building portals,” says Marcel Sarrasin, vice president of marketing at Quadrant Software, the parent company of BCD Software, one of

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• What To Do With All Those Spare CPWs

  January 25, 2016 Alex Woodie

  If there’s one thing that the average IBM i shop with a typical business forecast doesn’t need, it’s more CPW. The latest generation of Power8 servers offer more than enough computational oomph to get the job done, which raises the question: What should one do with those spare CPWs? With some forward thinking, the average IBM i shop maybe doesn’t have to be so average anymore. There is no doubt there’s a power glut of Power8 iron in IBM‘s IBM i market. Each Power8 chip has roughly 50 percent more computational power per core than the Power7 chip launched

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• Power Systems Turns In A Full Year Of Growth

  January 25, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  There have been worse years in the Power Systems business than 2015, and in fact, 2014 was one of them. In its latest financial reports, IBM said that that it has turned in four quarters of revenue growth for the Power server unit, no doubt helped by an uptake of Power8 systems as customers do their inevitable upgrades. As the year wound down, IBM was running on its entry and high-end cylinders, the first time in a while when that happened. IBM Systems, the hardware unit of the company that sells servers and storage and is responsible for operating system

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• IBM Debuts Another Solution Edition for SAP HANA on Power . . . Auto-Approval Brings Time Savings to Document Workflows . . . User-Defined Dashboards Get Power Boost from mrc . . .

  January 20, 2016 Alex Woodie

  IBM Debuts Another Solution Edition for SAP HANA on Power IBM is now shipping a third version of its Power Systems Virtual Solution Edition for SAP HANA. Last week’s announcement of a new solution edition based on its Power E880 server should give larger customers more options for running the in-memory database on IBM gear. For the low low price of $177,357, customers can get started in a nicely equipped Power Systems Virtual Solution Edition for SAP HANA that features a 40-core Power8 processor module running at 4.19 GHz and 2 TB of RAM, along with Power IFL and SuSE

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• Object Replication at the Touch of a Button

  January 20, 2016 Alex Woodie

  IBM i professionals who struggle to distribute objects across multiple IBM i systems for patching, testing, or other purposes may be interested in a new product from Shield Advanced Solutions. The software, dubbed RE4i, can automatically distribute practically any type of IBM i object to one or more remote systems with the press of a button, thereby saving time and reducing hassle for programmers and administrators alike. Most midrange administrators use a combination of FTP and save/restore commands to distribute and apply objects–such as PTFs or application changes–to remote IBM i servers. The admins probably don’t view the manual

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