The IT Jungle

CONST Doesn’t Mean You Can’t Change It

October 20, 2015 Ted Holt

You can pass parameters to an RPG subprocedure in three ways: by reference, by read-only reference, and by value. (I have written about this before.) My favorite method is read-only reference. I use it as often as I can. Would you believe that it is possible to change the value of a variable that is passed to a subprocedure by read-only reference? Since you would probably do so only inadvertently, it’s good to understand how it can happen.

To pass a parameter by read-only reference, include the CONST keyword in the procedure prototype and the procedure interface.

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Developers Can Improve Security and Reduce the Administrative Cost of Security

October 20, 2015 Patrick Botz

One simple tool allows developers to improve the security of their applications and associated resources and reduce the administrative cost of managing security for the whole system. That tool is adopted authority. Adopted authority is an important tool for developers to have in their toolkit because it allows them to build applications that ensure users never encounter an authority failure even when administrators use PUBLIC(*EXCLUDE) authority on all sensitive resources. The combination of adopted authority and PUBLIC(*EXCLUDE) significantly increases the level of security and decreases the cost of managing security.

It’s true that system administrators can change programs to adopt

IBM Updates PowerVM Hypervisor, PowerVC OpenStack

October 19, 2015 Timothy Prickett Morgan

It may seem like the only thing that IBM cares about lately in the Power Systems business is boosting its Linux-based L and LC series lines. But as the latest Technology Refresh updates from October 5 demonstrate (which we have reported on extensively at IT Jungle in the past two weeks), Big Blue is keen on updating the software stack on which IBM i shops depend. And in some cases, this also includes the hypervisor and management tools, as well as Linux running next to IBM i.

In announcement letter 215-262, IBM is updating the PowerVM hypervisor that it

As I See It: Biology On The Wing

October 19, 2015 Victor Rozek

The solemn pod arcs in unison and disappears beneath blue water, leaving telltale plumes dancing in the breeze. I’m perched on weather-carved rocks on the extreme southern end of a small Canadian island called Saturna, watching a pod of killer whales sweep around the point. They pass by a mere stone’s throw from shore, on their way to ancient feeding grounds. But they are not alone. A hundred yards beyond, a picket line of boats filled with grasping tourists tracks their every breach.

Once hunted, they are now annoyed. Once victims of persistent greed, they now endure persistent curiosity. From

Tiered Storage Upgrade Boosts BRMS

October 19, 2015 Dan Burger

IBM Backup, Recovery, and Media Services (BRMS) found a front row seat during the IBM i Technology Refresh announcements this month because of its new tiered storage capabilities. IBM i Chief Architect Steve Will made note of it in his most recent You and i blog, which featured Will’s picks for top news items among the early October IBM announcements. That tells me IBM i customers have been delivering a message or two about what BRMS needed.

From Will’s blog: “Until recently, there was a rather simple ‘tiered storage’ capability in BRMS that would detect how frequently a library was

Equity Speaks: Q&A With The H.I.G. On HelpSystems

October 19, 2015 Alex Woodie

Equity Speaks: Q&A With The H.I.G. On HelpSystems

As expected, H.I.G. Capital‘s plan to acquire HelpSytsems cleared all regulatory hurdles, and the deal was finalized last week. In a Q&A with IT Jungle, the H.I.G. partners in charge of the deal elaborate on plans for HelpSystems, as well as their view of the IBM i market and the IBM Power Systems server.

Fraser Preston, a managing director at H.I.G., and Aaron Tolson, a principal, were the main drivers of the deal to buy HelpSystems from Summit Partners, which was announced in August. Preston and Tolson agreed to

A Different View Of IBM i And PASE

October 19, 2015 Dan Burger

PASE is the AIX runtime environment that is integrated into the IBM i operating system. Most IBM i community members know of it. Comparatively few actually know it. It’s not a wild guess to say most IBM midrange shops that use the TCP/IP networking stack, the Java virtual machine, the Apache Web server, or the PHP runtime are unaware that these were crafted for AIX and are running inside of PASE. There’s reason to believe that PASE awareness may be on the rise. What’s that mean, if anything, to you?

PASE brings added functionality to the IBM i OS by

LANSA Delivers LongRange Support for Windows 10 . . . Got Mobile Server Monitoring? iEye, Captain . . . Shield Goes ASP with JQG4i

October 14, 2015 Alex Woodie

LANSA Delivers LongRange Support for Windows 10

IBM i shops that have Windows 10 devices in their mobile sites may want to check out LongRange, the LANSA development tool for IBM i customers. Last week LANSA announced that LongRange is the first IBM i-centric mobile development tool to support the creation of Windows apps that run on tablets and regular PCs.

Steve Gapp, president of LANSA Americas, says the new Windows support marks a turning point for LongRange, which the Downers Grove, Illinois, company unveiled back in 2012 to streamline development of native mobile applications (as opposed to Web apps)

Taming SQL Queries with a CozTool

October 14, 2015 Alex Woodie

Bob Cozzi has done a lot with the IBM midrange server platform–probably more than most, including founding the platforms’ first publication and presiding over its largest user group at one point. But Cozzi may have top it all with his latest creation: A handy little database utility called SQL Query File that he developed and sells through his software company, CozTools.

SQL Query File is a green-screen tool designed to let IBM i professionals quickly and easily query their DB2 for i database using standard SQL, right from the command line. You can cut the SQL you previously used

RPG, XML, SOAP, and REST: Web Services for IBM i

October 14, 2015 Dan Burger

Anyone following the evolution of Web services has seen the RESTful architecture gaining ground quickly on the traditional favorite SOAP architecture. Web development and particularly Web-based mobile development has welcomed REST. To keep up with demand, Krengel Technology has introduced version 3.2 of its RPG-XML Suite, which delivers new Web service capabilities to IBM i customers.

Krengel developed the RPG-XML Suite for RPG developers who, as the Krengel website notes, “have lived through creating Web services in RPG and Java without a well-packaged development toolset.”