• What Will IBM i Do With A Power10 Processor?

  August 17, 2015 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The gap between what is needed and what is provided has been growing and growing for years, and we don’t talk about that very much in the IBM i base. As someone who loves big iron with lots of horsepower, I tend to look on each new Power chip rollout as a chance for the IBM i platform to capture more and more work. While this happens at a number of shops that mix IBM i and Linux workloads–and sometimes AIX, too–for the most part, the IBM i platform is a silo in the datacenter even if other applications tickle

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• Compliance Leads Small Shops To Online Backup

  August 10, 2015 Dan Burger

  Small IBM i shops often wrestle with the same demons and dragons as enterprise-class businesses. The rules are the same and size does not matter when the opponent is regulatory compliance and privacy laws. There’s no leniency when it comes to data security. Because of this, many small shops are examining their tape backup policies, often devised with no thought toward security, and taking a look at online backup options. Data protection comes down to getting the data encrypted and then stored at an off-site, secure location. Without a mandate to protect the personal information collected, data handling would not

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• As I See It: Game On

  August 10, 2015 Victor Rozek

  His days are spent in a small room, eyes fixated straight ahead. His appearance is neglectful, and he often forgets to take sustenance. An observant visitor might notice a peculiar thickness around his slender waist. He wears a diaper. He endures this indignity not because he is elderly or disabled, but because he cannot bear to tear himself away from the screen on which endless battles rage. Chinese authorities estimate there are another 24 million like him, a generation of gamers addicted to the action-life depicted in violent virtual worlds. Marathon sessions are common. Serious gamers routinely play for 20,

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• IBM Patches More OpenSSL Flaws In IBM i

  August 10, 2015 Alex Woodie

  IBM last month issued integrity PTFs for IBM i 6.1 through IBM i 7.2 to address eight recently discovered security vulnerabilities in OpenSSL. This includes the so-called Logjam Attack in TLS, which was disclosed by security researchers in May and could allow attackers to read encrypted traffic. The eight vulnerabilities also exist in i5/OS V5R3 and V5R4, but IBM will not fix them, it says. IBM i shops are encouraged to apply the patches–including SI57527 for IBM i 6.1, SI57473 for IBM i 7.1, and SI57468 for IBM i 7.2–as soon as possible. For organizations running older versions of the

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• Lack Of Awareness Plagues Free-Form RPG

  August 10, 2015 Dan Burger

  How could IBM be more successful with IBM i? How about this novel idea: product promotion. For all the money it spends on product development, IBM fails to expand the IBM i market because product awareness remains low. This discussion could go in a lot of different directions, but for today let’s make the focus free-form RPG. This is one of the top IBM i enhancements in recent memory. Why isn’t the IBM i community aware of it? Beginning with IBM i 7.1, RPG IV coders gained the capability to do completely free-form programs. The benefit of free-form calcs had

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• The IBM i Market Is Not Economics 101

  August 10, 2015 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It is a time of transition for the Power Systems line, and that is one of the reasons why sales have been picking up in recent quarters. The full Power8 product line has been rounded out and is shipping in volume, from the smallest single-socket box up to the biggest, baddest 16-socket server. The Power7+ processors have been in midrange machines since October 2012 and came to entry machines in February 2013 and are winding down in the channel. With IBM i 5.4 sunsetted and IBM i 6.1 saddling up for its ride to the west, this is when we

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• Know Your PTF Group Level Currency In 30 Seconds Or Less!

  August 4, 2015 Larry Bolhuis

  The IBM i is one of the easiest to maintain operating systems going. A big part of that is because IBM provides the hardware, operating system, and updates. Clearly the number of permutations are reduced dramatically. In addition, some problematic areas, such as video drivers, simply don’t exist in IBM i. So that’s it then, no need to update because we live in Utopia, right? Well, not so fast! Just because IBM provides all the pieces doesn’t mean they are either perfect or complete. Besides, there are many components and these are constantly being updated. Two examples are node.js and

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• Where Do Library Lists Reside?

  August 4, 2015 Ted Holt

  I often sit and ponder the mysteries of life. For example, why do some people use C to write business applications? Why does the text of message SQL6789 end in a period instead of a question mark? And, recently, why do people circumvent powerful features of the robust IBM i operating system? Let me show you what I mean. The circumvented feature that is on my mind at present is the library list. In case you’re new to the IBM i world, the library list is a list of libraries that the system searches when looking for an object. It’s

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• An Introduction To Processing XML With RPG, Part 1: The Basics

  August 4, 2015 Jon Paris

  Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. RPG IV’s built-in XML support has been available for some time now, having been originally introduced with V5R4 back in 2006. Due to deficiencies in that release, many RPG’ers chose not to use RPG to process XML. Fortunately, IBM has corrected those deficiencies, and RPG provides a smart way to read XML. Here’s how it’s done. In that first release, the most powerful of the op codes, XML-INTO, had some gaps in its support that sometimes made it difficult to use without pre-processing the XML. In addition, the

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• Legacy ERP Conversion Under Way At Dietz & Watson

  July 27, 2015 Dan Burger

  Legacy ERP Conversion Under Way At Dietz & Watson When an ERP system becomes a drag on business efficiency, it’s time to make a change. Inefficiencies increase costs and get in the way of expanding production and customer bases. An ERP system, particularly those that are 20-something years old and of the home-grown variety, are seldom equipped for modern business demands. What’s the strategy for companies facing this dilemma? Keeping a lid on costs and disruption are priorities and understanding what works for your company cannot be sacrificed for a one-size-fits-all solution. Dietz & Watson has taken that step. The

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