• Reader Feedback On The Possibilities With IBM i Entry Systems Sporting Power8

  September 30, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Great article Tim, you are definitely on the right track . . . but, I believe, you need to take it one step further. We need to develop the successor to the IBM i operating system. (No, Linux is not the answer.) While incorporating all the truly wonderful aspects of i, (single level storage, SLIC, etc.), it needs to be designed from the ground up as a 2D and 3D graphical system. Likewise, we need a new event-based, object-oriented programming language. (No, not Java). ASNA‘s Visual RPG would make a fine starting point. Then, if done right, instead

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• Cloud Computing Enters The Growth And Innovation Phase, IDC Says

  September 30, 2013 Alex Woodie

  If you thought this whole cloud thing was just a passing fad, you’d be wrong–at least according to the industry watchers at IDC, which this month made some pretty tall predictions concerning the size, scope, and growth of the cloud computing phenomenon. According to IDC, spending on public cloud computing (as opposed to private cloud services) will grow from $47.3 billion this year to $107 billion by 2017. That represents a 23.5 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR), which is more than five times the rate of growth for the IT industry as a whole. As the “3rd Platform”

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• Mad Dog 21/21: I Think We’re All Bezos On This Bus

  September 30, 2013 Hesh Wiener

  During the next two years, IBM hopes to boost its cloud computing revenues to $7 billion. About $4 billion would come from existing operations, in part a consequence of reclassifying activities. The remaining $3 billion would be new, mainly from acquisitions. IBM’s key cloud rivals, Microsoft, Google and notably Amazon, provide everything from client devices to apps to platforms. IBM falls short; its cloud has vast gaps. Consequently, whenever IBM’s customers or IBM’s own personnel, even CEO Ginni Rometty, go mobile, they are obliged to use other vendors’ equipment and services. When it comes to gappy cloud offerings,

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• Something New For Enterprise Mobile

  September 30, 2013 Dan Burger

  One of the reasons companies shy away from projects such as mobile computing and application modernization is because they don’t have the skills and/or the time to devote to the project. It’s a fairly common occurrence given that most IT departments are short-staffed and modern skills training doesn’t fit into the schedule or the budget. And if you think that only happens in small and midsize organizations, you haven’t talked with ClearBlade‘s Eric Simone. Simone works with large enterprises–mostly in the banking, insurance, and healthcare fields–that depend on big iron: Power Systems and mainframes. Many of these, he explains,

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• Just Watching Or Making An IBM i Modernization Plan?

  September 30, 2013 Dan Burger

  Move deliberately. Move carefully. But for the love of Frank, just move. Get started with an application modernization project. Evolve or dissolve might be putting it a little too harshly, but there are plenty of business reasons for modernization. Three that come to mind are data integration, data accessibility, and a user interface that promotes the first two. The IBM midrange community–known by the greater IT community as “those legacy dinosaurs,” has a boatload of successful app modernization achievements. The majority of the boats are still at the dock, unfortunately. “A lot of our IBM i companies are bleeding edge.

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• Power8 And The Potential Oomph In Midrange And Big Boxes

  September 30, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In last week’s issue of The Four Hundred, I did a little thought experiment about how the Power8 processors from IBM would affect the entry part of the Power Systems market. I also talked about how a 12-core processor spinning in excess of 4 GHz was a lot of machine for an entry IBM i shop running a database and ERP applications. But, the good news is that IBM wants to sell Power-based systems more effectively against X86 machinery, and that means the performance is going up and the price per unit of performance is coming down. But what

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• Cleaning Up Excessive Job Logs On Your IBM i System

  September 25, 2013 Hey, Joe

  Thanks for the article on managing IBM i spooled files. We often find it useful to examine user job logs to see exactly where a problem is. But lately, we’ve been getting too many spooled files in QEZJOBLOG. We’re getting 17,000 QZSHSH and QP0ZSPWP job logs each day from website jobs. Any ideas on how to make these useless job logs go away? –Dale Preventing A Job Log From Being Generated My first thought is to see where these jobs are coming from. If you can find the CL program, job scheduler, or submit jobs statement that launches these

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• CPYFRMIMPF And Fixed Data

  September 25, 2013 Ted Holt

  It seems that every time I see Copy from Import File (CPYFRMIMPF) mentioned in a Web forum, the question concerns CSV files. CPYFRMIMPF also handles files of fixed-length fields. Such files have certain advantages over CSV files, and there’s more to using them than the IBM documentation tells you. Don’t get me wrong. CSV files are great. I use them often. But consider that fixed-length data has its advantages. Two that come to mind are: Fixed-length character fields may contain any character without the nuisance of special treatment. In CSV files, character fields require special handling of the characters used

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• Create A Generic Auditing Trigger With SQL

  September 25, 2013 Hey, Mike

  Note: The document accompanying this article is available for download here. I am writing a trigger receiver program using RPG with embedded SQL that will go through the before and after record images and create an audit record in an audit file for each field that was changed on an update operation. I am developing a “shell” trigger program that I’d like to be able to modify slightly, and use the shell as a basis to write these audit records for each file with a trigger on it. Instead of writing multiple (IF this field changed THEN DO…) for

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• Liaison Enables More Flexibility in Tokenization Solution

  September 24, 2013 Alex Woodie

  Customers who adopt the latest format-preserving tokenization software from Liaison Technologies will have more flexibility to adapt tokens to different types of data they want to encrypt, the company announced this month. Liaison sells an all-inclusive data security product called Liaison Protect that includes encryption, tokenization, and encryption key management for a range of platforms, including IBM i, Windows, Linux, and Unix. Most organizations are probably familiar with the types of encryption solutions that are available on the market. What makes Liaison Protect unique is that it also includes tokenization, which refers to the process of replacing sensitive data in

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