• Urgent Need for Application Modernization Seen at the Federal Level

  December 2, 2015 Alex Woodie

  Security breaches. Downtime. Poor performance. These are some of the problems federal IT managers expect to encounter if they continue to run legacy applications as they now exist, according to a recent study from MeriTalk. But instead of ditching the old applications and writing new ones from scratch, MeriTalk advocates a selective modernization approach that blends new and old. MeriTalk, a public-private partnership that addresses IT issues in the federal government, recently tackled the topic of legacy modernization with a report titled “Future Ready Applications: The Modern Legacy.” The November 18 study involved responses from 150 federal IT managers,

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• IBM Patches Pair of Security Flaws in iAccess for Windows 7.1

  December 2, 2015 Alex Woodie

  IBM last month revealed the presence of a pair of security vulnerabilities in iAccess for Windows 7.1, including one that could allow a local cybercriminal to take control of the Windows PC running the iAccess software, and another that could be used to launch a denial of service attack. Big Blue patched both flaws with a PTF. IBM provided some details of the security flaws with a Security Bulletin N1020996 published November 18, which is the same day it released PTF number SI57907 to fix the flaws in iAccess for Windows 7.1. The buffer overflow flaw that was given the

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• Detecting A “Job End” Condition in DB2 for i

  December 1, 2015 Hey, Mike

  An ETL process extracts data from our ERP system and places it in our Business Intelligence systems. It runs 24/7 except for the End of Day process that shuts down the subsystem that it’s in. The SQL process we run ends up dying violently and the parent process fails (without recovering on startup). A graceful exit would be as simple as issuing a RETURN statement! Can SQL detect a shutdown process? –D.S. The ANSI SQL standard offers no specific guideline for implementing some kind of host shutdown process, so you’ll have to rely on the other special OS related views

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• How Many Interfaces Are Enough (To Print A CSV File)?

  December 1, 2015 Ted Holt

  Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. CSV (comma-separated values) files have been part of my working world for years. I like them because they’re easy to build. Users like them because they can easily open them in Microsoft Excel. I’ve written about this before. Let’s end the year with a utility I wrote to print CSV files. I had fun writing it. Maybe you’ll find it useful in your shop. When I need to read a CSV file on an IBM i system, I typically FTP the file from the IFS to a temporary

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• End of Year Feedback

  December 1, 2015 Ted Holt

  We’ve made it through another year. I hope it’s been a good one for you in spite of the hardships and challenges. Let’s read some of the feedback that I received in 2015 and see what we can learn. Hey, Ted: To make a grep search case-insensitive, use the “-i” switch. I also add the “-n” switch to show the line number. catsplf -j 681206/MYSELF/MYJOB QSYSPRT 1 | grep -in 'smith' I also have a SCANSPLF command. It is not case insensitive, but that would not be hard to implement. Keep the great articles coming. –Bryan Bryan wrote in

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• Vision Touts MIMIX Success Stories

  November 18, 2015 Alex Woodie

  When it comes to high availability, few products have the installed base enjoyed by MIMIX. Owned by Vision Solutions, the logical replication-based HA solution is used by thousands of IBM i shops around the world. Vision recently published a handful of those successes in customer case studies. One of those customers, Gränges Sweden AB, originally installed Vision Solution’s OMS/ODS, the HA product Vision sold before it bought its rival Lakeview Technology way back in 2007. When Gränges installed the HA solution in 2001, the aluminum manufacturer was seeking a way to reduce downtime caused by nightly backups, as well

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• IBM i Mobile Apps Made Easy

  November 18, 2015 Dan Burger

  As the number of IBM midrange shops building mobile applications grows, the ideas about features and functionality expands. Rising to the top of that list for many companies is the usefulness of a bar code scanner in combination with IBM i-based applications. It’s a demand that BCD Software has noticed and it led to creation of Presto Mobile, an app for accessing modernized green screens from iPhones and iPads. Accessibility to IBM i data is a basic requirement, but the added capability of using the built-in camera as a bar code scanner is the driving force behind Presto Mobile, according

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• LANSA Shows Off Responsive Design Capabilities

  November 18, 2015 Dan Burger

  Designing Web pages that display on a desktop, a laptop, a tablet, or a mobile phone are no longer considered in terms of individual development efforts. That eats up too much time and often becomes an application maintenance nightmare. One development effort that results in user interfaces that correctly display regardless of the device is the new normal. Making the build process quick and the performance fast is the goal everyone is aiming for. LANSA is the latest option for making this happen. The process of building applications with interfaces that change depending on where they’re presented–desktop, laptop, tablet, or

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• Townsend Security Turns Over a New LEEF

  November 18, 2015 Alex Woodie

  Townsend Security‘s Alliance LogAgent software now speaks Log Event Extended Format (LEEF), a data format used by IBM‘s QRadar security information and event monitoring (SIEM) software. The two companies’ integration and development work will dramatically reduce the time spent training QRadar to understand security events happening on IBM i, says Townsend Security founder and CEO Patrick Townsend. Practically every SIEM product on the planet supports the industry standard Syslog format. Townsend’s software can convert IBM i event data, such as events logged to the QAUDJRN, into the Syslog format so it can be consumed by 35 or so

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• ERP Upgrades: Love ‘Em or Leave ‘Em?

  November 18, 2015 Alex Woodie

  What is the value of an ERP system? At most companies that use them, the ERP suite is critical to daily functioning. Without a centralized place to run things like accounts payable and general ledger, the company simply couldn’t operate. But that line of reasoning does not appear to hold true when it comes to ERP upgrades, which companies are increasingly choosing not to perform. A recent survey from Rimini Street shed some light on the situation surrounding ERP upgrades, specifically for Oracle customers. In its second-annual survey of Oracle customers around world, Rimini (which is a provider third-party maintenance

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