• Mad Dog 21/21: If It Ducks Like A Quack, Part 2

  July 27, 2015 Hesh Wiener

  A century ago, Thomas J. Watson’s IBM prohibited employees from drinking alcohol, even in off hours. Yet IBM was hardly alone in its penchant for probity. In 1920, America amended its Constitution to usher in Prohibition. But there was an unintended consequence: organized crime, fueled by the booze biz, metathesized. Times have changed dramatically, and now it is easier to buy dope in Denver than insulin in Ithaca. And IBM, yclept Dr. Watson, an Aesculapian bean-counter enlightened by AI, is injecting itself into medicine. As the temperance folk asked after banishing demon rum, “What could go wrong?”

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• Strong Dollar Hurts Power Systems Sales In Q2

  July 27, 2015 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It is a story that every big multinational public organization is telling as they reveal their financial results for the second quarter of the year. Economic uncertainty in parts of Europe, South America, and Asia have pushed up the value of the U.S. dollar relative to the other currencies, which is great if you are an American traveling. But if you are an American corporation bringing a big chunk of your overseas sales back home for financial reporting, it is not so much fun. Such is the case with IBM‘s Power Systems line during the quarter ended in June,

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• Keeping Up With Security Threats To IBM i

  July 27, 2015 Alex Woodie

  When it comes to security, the IBM i server is a different beast, as you well know. It’s not subject to the same sorts of malware attacks that afflict Windows, Linux, and Unix systems. But thanks to its unique architecture, it has its own peccadillos when it comes to security, and understanding those strengths and weaknesses is critical for keeping up with security on the platform. A new tool from Skyview Partners should ease the work. In most organizations, the IBM i server runs the application of record, and as such stores the organization’s most vital data. This fact, in

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• IBM i Strategist Sets Priorities, Balances Resources

  July 27, 2015 Dan Burger

  IBM is a company with a boatload of resources. How those resources are applied to its large and prosperous IBM i market segment is a topic that we like to discuss from the perspective of you can’t do enough for IBM i and, by the way, we think you are doing too little. Chief architect for IBM i, Steve Will, bristles at the accusation. IBM i strategy is his domain. Resource allocation is his tight rope to walk. One of those resources is of the human variety. People and teams that take the ideas and turn them into innovations that

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• How Much Temporary Storage Is In Use And Who Is Using It?

  July 21, 2015 Pete Massiello

  I recently visited the site of a company that had a problem of increasing disk utilization. The staff had run all the GO DISKTASK reports and nothing seemed to be getting bigger. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been an easy way of finding who is using temporary storage. Displaying the amount of used temporary storage was so obscure that most System Administrators had no idea where to look. Let me show you how to see: (1) the amount of temporary storage that is being used; and (2) the jobs are using the most. Temporary storage is mostly associated with jobs on your

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• Clamoring For Attention

  July 21, 2015 Ted Holt

  You know how to send a message to the system operator message queue. Here’s some code you can use when you need that message to stand out. Here’s the CL code. dcl &Message *char 434 dcl &Line1 *char 74 stg(*defined) defvar(&Message 1) dcl &Line2 *char 72 stg(*defined) defvar(&Message 75) dcl &Line3 *char 72 stg(*defined) defvar(&Message 147) dcl &Line4 *char 72 stg(*defined) defvar(&Message 219) dcl &Line5 *char 72 stg(*defined) defvar(&Message 291) dcl &Line6 *char 72 stg(*defined) defvar(&Message 363) ChgVar &Line1 ' **************************************+ *********************************' ChgVar &Line2 '*' ChgVar &Line3 '* Test message -- please ignore. ' ChgVar &Line4 '* More important information'

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• Object Dependency Tracking In DB2 For i

  July 21, 2015 Michael Sansoterra

  The DB2 for i catalog tables and views present a plethora of valuable information about the various SQL objects defined on your system and their relationship to one another. In this tip, I discuss the dependency tracking views. If you ever wanted to make changes to one of your application’s primary SQL objects (such as a table, view or procedure) but feared the unknown (what related objects are affected?), then it’s time to investigate these special catalog views. What Are The Dependency Catalog Views? The “dependency” catalog views under consideration are: SYSROUTINEDEP–Records the objects used by stored procedures and

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• Infor Delivers IBM i-Based Cloud ERP for Automakers, M3 Update

  July 15, 2015 Alex Woodie

  In June Infor delivered two products that are relevant to its IBM i installed base, including the 13.3 release of its M3 ERP suite and a new IBM i-based offering called AutoRelease Cloud. The new cloud version of AutoRelease, which is based on an iSeries-based product once used by more than 100 companies in the automotive business, includes software from Infor’s business partner InterForm A/S. Infor has been trying to get customers to upgrade from older versions of CRM AutoRelease for the better part of 10 years. Four years ago, the company had about 130 customers running the i5/OS-based

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• Trial Date Set in Oracle vs. Rimini

  July 15, 2015 Alex Woodie

  Rimini Street and Oracle are prepping for a September trial that should help conclude the five-year legal battle over Rimini’s third-party ERP maintenance business. However, the clock is just starting on a fresh lawsuit Rimini filed against Oracle in which it hopes to clarify the legality of its new business model. Despite the legal murkiness, both Rimini and its top competitor, Spinnaker Support, report brisk sales. The trial in Oracle vs. Rimini that’s slated to begin in about two months should decide whether Rimini stole Oracle’s copyrighted material relating to its JD Edwards and Siebel applications and, if so,

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• Faction Offers IBM i Hosting In Cloud Marketplace

  July 15, 2015 Alex Woodie

  Faction, one of the largest owners of cloud data centers that you’ve probably never heard of, is getting into the IBM i hosting business through a partnership with Data Storage Corp. While Faction doesn’t intend on shifting its focus very far from its core business of hosting VMware environments, adding IBM i to the mix will be beneficial. Faction supplies tens of thousands of virtual machines to its business clients via eight cloud “nodes” running in data centers in the US and the UK It’s one of the top five providers of VMware based clouds, and is listed on

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