• As I See It: The Wheeler Dealer

  May 19, 2014 Victor Rozek

  Unless you have been in a protracted digital coma, you have probably noticed that the Internet is starting to look like a dead man walking. And if you have a high tolerance for duplicity, you may find it amusing to watch the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) go through public paroxysm deciding on the least offensive way to dress the body for viewing. Officially, the FCC exists to “regulate interstate and international communications.” But like most regulatory agencies, unofficially it is an industry front group. Nonetheless, it is classified as an “independent U.S. government agency,” which sounds suspiciously oxymoronic. And that

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• State Of IBM i Security? Dismal As Usual, PowerTech Says

  May 19, 2014 Alex Woodie

  Organizations are taking unnecessary risks by neglecting to properly secure their IBM i environments, according to PowerTech‘s 2014 State of IBM i Security report, which it released last week. While PowerTech spotted all kinds of security shortcomings–ranging from too many powerful profiles to using lax security levels–the most glaring problem may have to do with poor password management. Bad password hygiene leaves IBM i shops open to external hackers and internal threats, PowerTech says. You are not going to find Heartbleed-level password problems, where billions of once-trusted passwords instantly became vulnerable overnight. But considering the level of fine-tuning that’s

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• IBM i Shops Pay The Power8 Hardware Premium

  May 19, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The initial entry Power8 systems were announced a month ago, and we have been analyzing the IBM i 7.1 Technology Refresh 8 and IBM i 7.2 releases of the operating system over the past few weeks because that software runs on lots of different hardware and the Power8 systems were not going to be available until June. We are getting close to the date when the machines will be available and so I figured I had better get the lead out and do some configuring and pricing. IBM i customers are not going to be happy, I think. Once again,

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• We’re Integrated, We’re A Platform, Let’s Catch The Wave

  May 19, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In my 25 years of watching the AS/400 and its progeny, I have had my share–some might say more than my fair share–of crazy ideas about how to modify, grow, stimulate, and vitalize the market for OS/400 and IBM i systems. As I sit here and contemplate the rising market for integrated systems, I am busting my brain to try to figure out how to leverage this wave on the behalf of all of us. While bare-bones rack and tower servers still dominate shipments worldwide, integrated machines, often with pre-tuned and pre-configured software stacks, are finding their places in the

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• IBM Patches Heartbleed Vulnerability in Power Systems Firmware

  May 15, 2014 Alex Woodie

  If you thought your IBM i server was completely immune to the Heartbleed vulnerability, think again. On Friday, IBM issued a security bulletin directing customers to upgrade their Power Systems firmware with a patch for the Heartbleed vulnerability in OpenSSL. In its security bulletin, IBM advised that Power Systems firmware was affected by the Heartbleed vulnerability, CVE-2014-0160, and advised customers to take action. The bulletin applies to the Power Systems server Firmware, HMC, and SDMC. You can find the bulletin at www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=nas8N1020034. According to IBM’s bulletin, the vulnerability impacts all current Version 770 (including Power 710, 720, 730,

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• IBM Patches Heartbleed Vulnerability in Power Systems Firmware

  May 15, 2014 Alex Woodie

  If you thought your IBM i server was completely immune to the Heartbleed vulnerability, think again. On Friday, IBM issued a security bulletin directing customers to upgrade their Power Systems firmware with a patch for the Heartbleed vulnerability in OpenSSL. In its security bulletin, IBM advised that Power Systems firmware was affected by the Heartbleed vulnerability, CVE-2014-0160, and advised customers to take action. The bulletin applies to the Power Systems server Firmware, HMC, and SDMC. You can find the bulletin at www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=nas8N1020034. According to IBM’s bulletin, the vulnerability impacts all current Version 770 (including Power 710, 720, 730,

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• Admin Alert: When Journaling Slows Down Your System, And What To Do About It

  May 14, 2014 Joe Hertvik

  One interesting feature of the IBM i operating system is that under certain circumstances, journaling can actually slow down batch job performance. Here’s a real-life case study of how journaling can slow down processing and what tools IBM provides to handle the situation. When Journaling Attacks After migrating a production IBM i partition to a new Power 7+ machine from Power 6 hardware, a batch job that previously took five hours to complete was now taking over 11 hours to finish and had to be cancelled each time it ran. This package rebuilt an item table in the company’s ERP

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• Interpreting Stream File Timestamps

  May 14, 2014 Ted Holt

  Fortunately, IBM i has an Integrated File System (IFS), into which you can store any kind of data your heart desires. Fortunately, IBM provides an API that your programs can use to retrieve information about IFS stream files. Unfortunately, this API is rooted in the Unix world. Unfortunately, timestamps are stored in what I would call a bizarre manner. Fortunately, you are intelligent enough to learn how this API works. When you need to know programmatically about a stream file, you can use the stat API. Like many things UNIX, stat is idiosyncratic, especially in the way that it reports

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• Using Built-In Global Variables In DB2 For i 7.2

  May 14, 2014 Michael Sansoterra

  The long awaited announcement of IBM i 7.2 comes with several enhancements to DB2 for i. In this tip, I’m going to explore the new set of built-in global variables that come with DB2 for i 7.2. If you’re unfamiliar with global variables, see New in DB2 for i 7.1: Use Global Variables to Track Environment Settings or the CREATE VARIABLE statement. The list of built-in global variables can be divided into three groups: Group 1: Client TCP/IP Info CLIENT_IPADDR VARCHAR(128) CLIENT_PORT INT As their names imply, these global variables return the IP address and port of the current client’s

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• Magic Software Still Has The Touch In Q1

  May 12, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Software development tool maker Magic Software Enterprises is riding up the wave of mobile and cloud software development and tools to integrate legacy systems into these new-fangled apps and devices. In the first quarter ended in March, Magic Software reported revenues of $40.95 million, up 22.6 percent from the year ago period. Its costs did not rise as fast as sales, and neither did research and development costs and other operational costs, and so the company was able to bring $4.85 million to the bottom line, an increase of 29.4 percent over the same quarter in 2013. The company’s cash

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