• PowerHA On IBM i Lags Behind AIX

  November 11, 2013 Dan Burger

  Hardware-based high availability has been in the IBM playbook for several years, and Big Blue has made it one of its Power Systems priorities. Steve Finnes, IBM’s worldwide product offering manager for PowerHA on AIX and IBM i, isn’t one to play favorites when it comes to one platform over another. But when it comes to PowerHA, even Finnes will admit the product’s popularity on the AIX side far surpasses the embrace by the IBM i community. In a conversation with IT Jungle at the Enterprise2012 conference, Finnes estimated the AIX users of PowerHA totaled “probably over 10,000 clients.” And

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• IBM Enhances Disk And Flash For Power Systems

  November 11, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We are winding down our coverage of the fourth quarter Power Systems platform announcements, and this week we take a look at the substantial enhancements for I/O controllers, disk drives, and flash storage that IBM has made. There is a little something for everybody in here. First up are two new flash-based solid state drives that weigh in at 387 GB and 775 GB capacities. These units come in a 2.5-inch form factor and plug into SAS controllers in the Power Systems machines or their remote I/O drawers that hang off of them. The new devices have twice the I/O

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• Admin Alert: The 4 GB Access Path Size Time Bomb

  November 6, 2013 Joe Hertvik

  Many IBM i shops run enterprise software originally created more than 10 years ago. While this allows you to run older applications on newer hardware, older apps can also cause issues with files that are no longer suitable for today’s processing. This week, let’s look at one older file parameter that if not changed, can stop application processing dead in its tracks: The 4 GB Access Path Size Time Bomb. Time Bomb, What Time Bomb? The time bomb I’m referring to is the Access path size (ACCPTHSIZ) parameter in some application files. In older versions of the OS/400 operating system

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• Digging Out Data Duplication

  November 6, 2013 Hey, Ted

  Sometimes an SQL query should return one row, yet it returns more than one. The problem turns out to be multiple matching rows in a secondary table. Is there a way to easily isolate the secondary table that causes more than one match? –J Yes, there is an easy way. But first, let me set up the problem for the edification of other readers. Sometimes we execute an SQL query with the expectation that the result set will contain only one row (record), and we are surprised to get back two or more rows instead. At least one table (physical

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• Allow Repeated Change With Before Triggers

  November 6, 2013 Paul Tuohy

  Recently, during a modernization project, I have been making use of the Allow Repeated Change (ALWREPCHG) option with before triggers. ALWREPCHG allows a before trigger to make changes to the record being inserted or updated, and that lets you do some really powerful database magic! The Scenario A table contains a date that is stored in a packed numeric column. The requirement is to change the data type of the column to a proper date data type. This change will require coding changes to at least 20 programs. The “big bang” approach of changing, testing and implementing the 20-plus programs

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• Mobile Apps Get More Native-Like with Sencha Touch Update

  November 5, 2013 Alex Woodie

  Sencha last month rolled out an update to its Sencha Touch framework that makes it easier to develop HTML5 applications that work more like native mobile apps written for iOS, Android, Windows, and Blackberry devices. Sencha (formerly ExtJS) develops a JavaScript library for developing touch-enabled apps that execute in browsers running on smartphones, tablets, and PCs. The framework uses HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript to create user interface “themes” that make apps look like they were developed for specific operating systems. With the Sencha Touch 2.3, the software offers support for additional themes, including iOS 7, previous iOS versions, Android, Windows

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• Fiserv Expands Footprint in Banks That Use IBM i

  November 5, 2013 Alex Woodie

  Fiserv doesn’t often advertise it, but it is a big driver of IBM servers with a pair of core banking applications, Signature and Premier, that run on the IBM i OS. Lately, the Brookfield, Wisconsin, software company has been selling lots of add-on solutions to these IBM i customers. In September, Fiserv announced that The First National Bank of Long Island implemented its Common Origination Platform to help price and write consumer, business, and mortgage lending needs. FNBLI has run the Signature application on IBM midrange gear since 1987, and will begin using the Common Origination Platform in application service

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• ASTI Buys UDO Distribution Business of Verbatim

  November 5, 2013 Alex Woodie

  Alliance Storage Technologies (ASTI), which bought Plasmon’s Ultra Density Optical (UDO) business in 2009, bolstered its grip on the worldwide market for UDO products last month when it completed the acquisition of the UDO distribution business of Verbatim, which continues to manufacture UDO media. UDO may be dead in many people’s eyes. After all, Plasmon, which developed the technology with the idea of serving the long-term data storage needs of IBM mainframe and IBM i customers in heavily regulated industries, couldn’t make a viable business out of it and called it quits. But the folks at ASTI–in particular its CEO,

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• HiT Certifies DBMoto for Google Cloud

  November 5, 2013 Alex Woodie

  Developers who are writing applications that use Google Cloud SQL and the App Engine Datastore for Google can now use HiT Software‘s DBMoto data replication tools to hook into “legacy” data stores (such as IBM i apps) and feel good about it because they’re certified. The certification performed by HiT for its DBMoto and DBMoto cloud G Edition is key, as it added visibility to the pool of developers who are riding “the Big G’s” cloud platform. This is good news for HiT Software, the BackOffice Associates subsidiary that moves data to and from DB2 for IBM i databases,

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• Magic Conjures Up an In-Memory Data Grid

  November 5, 2013 Alex Woodie

  Magic Software last week announced that it has added an in-memory data grid element to xpi, its application integration platform. Magic’s IMDG, as it calls the new grid living in the Magic xpi Server software, will deliver higher performing integration services required by new cloud, mobile, and big data applications. Magic designed xpi (formerly iBolt) so non-programmers could build real-time connections between two or more applications in a loosely coupled manner. The software uses a combination of graphical business process modeling, application-specific adapters, and wizards to create composite applications that connect processes residing in a variety of systems, including IBM

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