• Spooky New Security Vulns Lurking on IBM i

  November 1, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Halloween has come and gone, but the scares will stick around for a while for IBM i administrators, who have been given more than a dozen fixes by IBM to address some pretty serious security vulnerabilities recently revealed in the heart of the operating system, including in spooky old friends Java and OpenSSL.

  On October 27, IBM issued a security bulletin for two CVEs, including CVE-2023-40685 and CVE-2023-40686, which describe two separate but related security flaws in the Management Central component of IBM i Navigator in IBM i versions 7.2 through 7.5.

  The first privilege escalation vulnerability, CVE-2023-40685, could …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, November 1

  November 1, 2023 Jenny Thomas

  There is so much happening in our world today that as startling as it is that we have already reached November, it might be a good thing to see this calendar rollover and have a new year to begin again. For now, we’ll focus on our little piece of the world, which also has a lot if different things happen as we try to keep up with the advancements in AI, quantum computing, and, of course, Power Systems. So let’s kick it off with some good news from our fearless leader (and editor in chief) TPM as he takes a …

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• Last Chance To Be A Part Of The IBM i Marketplace Survey

  November 1, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Soon, Forta will close out its annual IBM i Marketplace Survey, so now is your last chance to participate and help us all better understand what is going on in the IBM i on Power Systems community.

  The IBM i Marketplace Survey and its accompanying report and the webinar that goes over the results of the survey, which are both presented each February, are an invaluable resource for the IBM i community. This is particularly so since IDC, Gartner, Forrester, and the other IT market researchers and consultancies have long since stopped tracking Power Systems in any kind of detail …

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• Power Systems Still Climbing Despite This Weird Economy

  October 30, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Back in the old days, IBM used to talk about System z, Power Systems, and storage as separate things because they are, largely, separate things. Even if customers of the mainframe and Power platforms sometimes buy IBM storage for their machines, and even if some of that storage is actually based on Power platforms themselves.

  But to be able to brag about the System z business every quarter and to make the rest of its Infrastructure group look like a bigger thing, Big Blue merged its Power Systems and Storage divisions into something it has called Distributed Systems for the …

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• What IBM i Shops Are Thinking About Right Now

  October 30, 2023 Ron Venzin

  If you listen to the national and global media, it is hard to figure out what is really going on in the world at the strategic and tactical levels of individual companies. The global happenings are like climate trends, but each company generates its own weather and reacts to the weather generated by the customers and competitors in its own market. Or markets, as the case may be.

  Because we all live in the weather as we are trying to keep an eye on the climate – people really do talk about the economic climate but no one talks about …

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• Guru: The Transition From Modern RPG IV To Modern SQL

  October 30, 2023 Bob Cozzi

  Seven or eight years ago I was working with a client who needed more contemporary reporting than provided by the legacy Query/400 product. Initially I looked at Db2 Web Query and realized the documentation was sparse and the tutorials for most things, even “getting started” were virtually non-existent. It was also about four times more expensive than I felt it was worth to a P05 or P10 client. I mentioned the documentation issue to the folks at IBM and they agreed. Some of it was eventually resolved, but not enough in my opinion to get the masses to replace Query/400 …

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• As I See It: Luddites

  October 30, 2023 Victor Rozek

  Having enjoyed a life of relative plenty, it’s easy to give myself more credit for the abundance I take for granted than I actually deserve. I habitually forget that almost everything I own, eat, drive, and wear was produced by someone else, often at great cost.

  I had that thought recently as I looked at my iPhone, a miracle of technology, designed domestically, but assembled in foreign mega-factories by people whose range of choices is infinitely more limited than mine. I recalled something horrific that happened over a decade ago in a Chinese Apple assembly plant run by a Taiwanese …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 44

  October 30, 2023 Doug Bidwell

  Last week was busy, and this week is quiet when it comes to PTFs. With the release of Technology Refreshes coming out starting to roll out next week, this stands to reason.

  Now, a note about the ESS Outage. Due to extensive infrastructure upgrades, the ESS website and all of its components, including Base Composer and Cloud Management Console functions, will be fully unavailable from November 3, 2023, at 11 a.m. UTC until November 6, 2023, at 3 a.m. UTC.

  Now, there is also a security vulnerability, which you can read about in Security Bulletin: IBM i is vulnerable to …

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• RDi and RPG Enhancements in the 2023 Fall TRs

  October 25, 2023 Alex Woodie

  RPG developers will see some compelling new features coming out of the recent Technology Refresh (TR) announcement from IBM, including enhancements to the RDi development environment as well as new capabilities in the RPG language itself.

  RPG is nearly 65 years old, but like old dogs, the programming language can learn new tricks. The enhancements that IBM has brought to its venerable language with IBM i 7.5 TR3 and 7.4 TR9 continue a strong run of improvements, according to IBM i Product Manager Alison Butterill.

  “Every one of the TRs since we announced 7.5 has had at least some RPG …

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• Understanding The Power Of Power10

  October 25, 2023 Laurie LeBlanc

  The Power10 doesn’t disappoint when it comes to performance, reliability, availability, and security. But that’s not all it provides. With support for hybrid cloud, poised to support AI, and unmatched scalability, the Power10 will help you move into the future.

  We all know one of the best things about IBM Power running IBM i is that it is stable and reliable – so reliable that some companies keep their hardware for 10 years or more. While this could be viewed as a good thing for the business, there are many reasons to upgrade your hardware. Legacy hardware increases your risk …

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