• Where Have All The QSYSOPR Messages Gone?

  March 4, 2015 Alex Woodie

  In the old days, you could rely on IBM i applications to always send error codes to a predictable place, such as QSYSOPR. But with the proliferation of newer Web-based applications and apps developed in Java, PHP, and other languages, that is no longer the case. HelpSystems is addressing this dilemma with a new release of its Robot/CONSOLE message monitoring software that looks for errors and alerts that IBM i admins may otherwise miss. While RPG remains by far the most popular language for developing IBM i applications, the number of IBM i apps written in more “modern” languages like

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• UCG And Expedient Partner For Expanded IBM i Hosted Services

  March 4, 2015 Dan Burger

  United Computer Group built a trustworthy reputation alongside its growing IBM midrange customer base by offering online backup services. It also offered disaster recovery services to organizations that have figured out the limitations of their downtime survival endurance. UCG has made the investments in equipment and staff to deliver service that meets high expectations, and now it’s taking the next step. Expedient, a company with 11 data centers in seven markets from Chicago eastward, including the northeast regions of the United States, and UCG decided they could use one another’s help, so they formed a partnership. Expedient provides colocation

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• HANA On Power Marches Toward GA

  March 4, 2015 Alex Woodie

  SAP is now inviting its Power customers to participate in the final beta program to harden the HANA-on-Power code before it’s released to production. IBM Power Systems and IBM i customers are said to be “champing at the bit” about the prospect of using a single in-memory database to power both transactional and analytic applications in a single server. SAP officially unveiled its plans to get HANA running on Power last June at its Sapphire conference in Orlando. Over the summer, less than 10 joint IBM-SAP customers participated in a tightly controlled “test and evaluation” program that involved the first

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• There Is No Lack Of RPG Programmers, IBM i Community Contends

  March 4, 2015 Alex Woodie

  Balderdash! That’s the general response to a story we ran two weeks ago in this newsletter about Computer Sciences Corp. blaming its earnings miss in part on an RPG programmer shortage. “There is no shortage of RPG programmers,” says one RPG programmer in the Northeast, “but there is a shortage of RPG programmers who will work at 1985 wages.” CSC said a lack of RPG talent was partly to blame for the company’s $230 million revenue shortfall during in the fourth quarter. “RPG is not a programming language where a lot of people are learning it today, so there is

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• Git To GitHub

  March 3, 2015 Aaron Bartell

  In my last article, the git tooling was introduced as a mechanism to track changes made to source code. This article expounds on that by showing how to make your local IFS git repository (“repo” for short) publicly available to others. I say “publicly” because that is the purpose of this article, though it could just as easily be applied to a situation where you wanted a private repo for a specific set of users (i.e., co-workers and/or consultants). For the purposes of this article we will be walking through setting up a GitHub.com public repo. Note, GitHub has

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• Case-Insensitive Searching Of Spooled Files

  March 3, 2015 Ted Holt

  We rely heavily on the DSPSPLF (Display Spooled File) command. We use it all day long, you and I, usually by selecting option 5 from various work-with displays. And yet this workhorse on which we depend suffers from a glaring deficiency–searching for text is case-sensitive. We expect case sensitivity from primitive operating systems like Unixsaurus, but not from the powerful IBM i. Here are a few ways to locate text in spooled files regardless of case. First is the modern–and in my opinion, the best–way: IBM Navigator for i, the browser application that replaces System i Navigator. This app runs

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• Old Stuff, New Ways: Avoiding Record Locks

  March 3, 2015 Jon Paris

  Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. Recently I was teaching a group of RPGers the joys of qualified data structures. I happened to mention how much simpler some of the new DS capabilities had made the techniques I use to avoid problems caused by record locks. It turned out that more than half of the audience had never heard of the technique. I guess that we all have a tendency to think that the techniques and tools that we use are common knowledge amongst other programmers. As an educator I should perhaps be less

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• IBM Boosts Capacity On FlashSystem Arrays

  March 2, 2015 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  If you are looking to shop for all-flash storage systems to attach to your IBM i or other systems in the datacenter, you might want to take a gander at the new FlashSystem arrays that Big Blue launched last week. IBM has partnered with memory manufacturer Micron Technology and moved from the enterprise multi-layer cell (eMLC) memory used in the FlashSystem 840 and V840 machines to more capacious and presumably less expensive NAND MLC memory in the new Flash System 900 and V9000 machines launched last week. From the looks of things, the basic feeds and speeds of the FlashSystem

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• Infinite Success Is Modernization Via Migration

  March 2, 2015 Dan Burger

  “We see lots of interesting ways forward for IBM i applications,” says Infinite Corporation president and CEO Bruce Acacio. He’s talking about IBM midrange shops looking to modernize, but he’s specifically interested in shops that have decided to leave the IBM i platform behind and migrate their applications to Linux, Windows, or Unix systems. Infinite helped “just under 200” IBM i shops make that migration in 2014, Acacio says. He expects that number to reach 400 in 2015. Decision makers have had modernization in mind for several years during which they’ve been in talks with Infinite about options and the

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• Top 9 New Features In Kronos iSeries Central 7

  March 2, 2015 Alex Woodie

  It might seem there’s only so much you can do in the field of time and attendance (T&A) management. But in fact, there’s always something new. “Just when we think we’ve done it all, there’s always somebody saying, ‘Hey what about this?’ and down the path we go,” says Kronos vice president Barry Moore. That path was remarkably fruitful with the recent delivery of iSeries Central suite version 7.0. While the Windows-based Workforce Central suite gets all the attention and glory at Kronos headquarters in Chelmsford, Massachusetts (look, a cloud version!), the rock-solid iSeries Central suite continues to be relied

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