• iSphere Plug-in Expands RSE/RDi Toolset

  June 25, 2015 Susan Gantner

  Followers of my Guru tips know that I’m an RSE (a.k.a. RDi) fan. These days I would be lost trying to write or maintain RPG code without things like RSE’s Outline, Error feedback, editor filtering, and Undo. But you know how it is: the more you use a toolset and come to depend on all the great things it can do you for you, the more you also begin to come up with thoughts like but I sure wish it could do X. . .. One of the great things about RDi (and its predecessors, RDP and WDSC) is

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• Data Loss In A Disaster Exceeds Expectations

  June 22, 2015 Dan Burger

  Just how big of a mistake is it to do nightly backups? Depends what your definition of big is. If a disaster takes down your system at the end of a working day, but before the scheduled backup occurs, how much data will you lose? You probably don’t have an accurate answer to that question. But if you knew, it might change the way you think about how data loss would affect your business. Most pros who think about data loss and loss prevention have implemented disaster recovery plans, even though the majority of them have little or no idea

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

  June 22, 2015 Hesh Wiener

  Yale has many impressive graduates, including Eli Whitney, who declared, “Keep your cotton-pickin’ hands off my gin.” The university has also wrapped sheepskin around less admirable characters, including a father and son who conned first America and then Britain into trusting their wrongheaded but likely heartfelt beliefs. We are, of course, referring to Elisha and Benjamin Perkins, doctors who promoted quack medical apparatus. Their saga shows what a minefield medicine can be, even for a great institution like Yale. And then there’s the colchicine story. Dr. Watson of IBM, mind the gaps! The former fame and subsequent

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• Audit Time: How Do Your Source And Objects Match Up?

  June 22, 2015 Alex Woodie

  When an auditor comes into your IBM i shop, chances are good he will check that processes are in place to control source code. But all too often, your underlying source code will not match up correctly with the program objects that actually run in production, indicating a process problem. A free new tool from Rocket Software called iAudit is designed to help IBM i shops identify this divergence of source code and object before the auditor comes around. Regulatory audits are once again on the rise. Whereas the Sarbanes-Oxley Act enacted in the wake of the Enron scandal at

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• Western User Groups Attempting A Comeback

  June 22, 2015 Dan Burger

  Here it is, the top three things most unlikely to be seen in the IBM midrange community: Frank Soltis wearing a beanie with a propeller on top; Big Blue handing over IBM i to the open source community; and a freshly minted IBM i user group. The first two are pretty much out of the question, but the last scenario, I’m here to tell you, is happening not once, not twice, but three times. And you thought pigs would fly before a new local user group would put out a welcome mat. We don’t keep birth rate statistics on IBM

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• The AS/400 Turns 27, And Still Has Much To Teach IT

  June 22, 2015 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The collective brain trust here at IT Jungle expends a lot of its intellectual and emotional energy on watching the ecosystem of customers who use the progeny of the venerable AS/400. Many of you have been using IBM midrange systems since the days of the launch of the System/38 back in the late 1970s and you have been long-time users of the systems for nearly a decade when the AS/400 made its debut on June 21, 1988, and when this platform made good on the name International Business Machines. You will have to forgive me for still being in

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• Why You Might Want To Encrypt Your Syslogs Now

  June 19, 2015 Alex Woodie

  Every day millions of IBM i server events are packaged up in the syslog standard and sent offsite for safekeeping and analysis. In many cases, the syslog files are sent in plain text across the wire because, hey, they’re just boring old log files, and what could anybody ever do with those, right? Wrong, says IBM i security software company Raz-Lee Security. Syslogs are a bread-and-butter data format for IT professionals around the world. Just about every device in the data center uses the syslog format to transmit data about what it’s done. All sorts of IT activities are

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• Surround Tech Goes Up The Stack

  June 17, 2015 Alex Woodie

  Surround Technologies is a well-known provider of .NET-based tooling for modernizing IBM i applications. If you want to outfit your 5250 application with Web, Windows, or mobile clients using Microsoft technologies, its flagship Accelerator series can provide that. But with the latest version, Surround Tech is going up the stack by offering pre-built apps for things like document management, content management, and even human resources. Modernizing legacy IBM i applications and moving from 5250 to modern Web and mobile apps is one thing, says Surround Tech CEO Lee Paul. But what IBM i shops need these days goes beyond application

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• Mad Dog 21/21: Big Apple

  June 17, 2015 Hesh Wiener

  IBM was once America’s most valuable company; today Apple enjoys that distinction. Apple’s liquid assets alone significantly exceed the total market value of IBM’s shares. Apple could acquire Big Blue for cash and still have tens of millions left over. Hoping that the knack for making money will rub off, IBM has cozied up to Apple. But saving IBM will take more than a bunch of iPad apps and some press conferences. IBM isn’t going to escape the consequences of its stupidity by shilling for Apple’s most problematic product, the iPad, in Apple’s worst market, Japan. In Apple’s most recent

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• LaserVault Moves IBM i Backups Forward

  June 17, 2015 Alex Woodie

  There’s no shortage of ways to back up your IBM i data, each of which fills a need according to one’s particular budget and requirements. LaserVault recently provided one more option with UBD Replacador, which is aimed at those wanting to de-duplicate and backup their IBM i data to an IBM Storwize array. The company also announced a significant new feature in its software-based virtual tape library (VTL) solution. IBM’s Intel-based Storwize arrays have traction in the IBM i base, particularly among small and midsized businesses that want the benefits of a centralized storage array but not the cost and

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