• Parris Named Power Systems GM, Rosamilia Moves Up

  May 7, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  There are more executive changes at IBM and some familiar faces in the IBM i community have been promoted to new positions within Big Blue. When IBM launched the new X86-priced PowerLinux systems two weeks ago, I didn’t see it at first, but way at the bottom of the press release there’s a quote from Colin Parris, who is referred to as general manager of Power Systems at IBM. Tom Rosamilia, who ran the System z mainframe business for a stint, took over the combined Power Systems and System z business back in August 2010, appointing Parris the

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• Two Ask TPM Questions: Real IBM i Clouds And Apple Buying IBM i

  May 7, 2012 Hey, TPM

  In AWS/400: Amazon Builds An AS/400-oid Cloud, you wrote: I really do wish IBM would realize that IBM i is already a platform cloud of sorts, just waiting for it to be deployed on its SmartCloud so customers can get access to it and use it on a pay-per-use basis. If not, maybe we can get Amazon to roll in a few thousand Power System nodes and make use of DB2 Multisystem and other features to have Amazon build a truly scalable DB2 for i database service and build EC2-like images that work as RPG and COBOL compute engines

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• Software Change Management Migrations Are Not Impossible

  May 7, 2012 Dan Burger

  Tossing out enterprise grade software–even if it is inadequate or too damn expensive–is never a decision to be taken lightly. Good decision making depends on good information gathering and solid planning. In IBM i shops where application development has been a vital function for many years, change management software has been essential to the creation of quality industrial-strength code. But like any other software, software change management tools are not always a good fit or automatically conducive to a pleasant vendor/customer relationship. A term you don’t hear a lot about outside of personal conversations is company lockdown or sometimes called

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• Mad Dog 21/21: Gun-bae, Google, And Thanks For All The Tuna

  May 7, 2012 Hesh Wiener

  In late April, Google started selling the Galaxy Nexus GSM mobile phone from its Play Store, the website that dispenses Android applications. The Nexus is a developers’ phone. When it first became officially available in the United States last November in a CDMA variation sold exclusively through Verizon it was aimed at app developers who wanted an Android 4 platform. But then Google realized that it had overlooked another market, and a very important one at that: web creators. Now Google and its manufacturing partner Samsung are scrambling to educate site builders about the promise of yakju and takju on

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• ‘New’ Infor’s Cloudy IPO Picture

  May 7, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Will the “new” Infor go public, or will it not? There are indications both ways. The location of its new headquarters, which is currently under construction a few blocks from Wall Street, sure seems to say yes. But a recent equity investment by Summit Partners casts some doubt on an initial public offering by Infor. Infor was well on its way to an IPO of stock several years ago, former CEO Jim Schaper confirmed in press interviews. However, the economy imploded in late 2007, causing companies of all stripes to hunker down to weather the downturn in the hopes of

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• Abacus Solutions Puffs Up An IBM i Cloud

  May 7, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  You can find a million places that offer you cloudy instances of Windows or Linux operating systems on X86 servers running out there on the Internet, but finding similarly cloudy slices of Power-based machinery sporting the OS/400 or IBM i operating systems can be a challenge. Especially if you don’t want to make long-term commitments and only want to buy a relatively small slice of a machine. But this week at the COMMON midrange trade show, Abacus Solutions is throwing its data center in the ring with its i in the Cloud offering. Yeah, it would be better if they

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• Apps And IBM i Evangelism

  May 7, 2012 Dan Burger

  “You’re only as old as your apps feel.” I can’t get that thought out of my head. Thank you, Trevor Perry. Of all the things that were said Friday by Preacher Perry and the other ordained evangelists at the iBelieve revival meeting, those few words summed it up best for me. If the IBM i is going to escape eternal damnation in some IT closet in Hades, application developers are going to be responsible for saving its soul. Old applications, dependent on and limited by the 5250 data stream and green type on a black background must go. I can

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• Admin Alert: Secrets Of The IBM i IPL Parameters

  May 2, 2012 Joe Hertvik

  IBM i operating systems contain a number of attributes that are used to control IPL processing when you start or restart a partition. Some attributes (such as Start To Restricted State) are well-known, while others are seldom looked at. This week, let’s take a look at your system’s IPL attributes and how they can help you perform specific functions on your system. Viewing And Changing Your IPL Parameters You can view and change your IPL parameters by typing in the Change IPL Attributes (CHGIPLA) command from a 5250 green screen and pressing the F4 key. When you do this, you’ll

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• How Do I Format Date Literals? Let Me Count The Ways

  May 2, 2012 Hey, Ted

  I have a strange SQL problem. I have an SQL DELETE command that works perfectly in interactive SQL. But when I use Run SQL Statement (RUNSQLSTM) to execute it, it does not find any rows to delete. –Jabir Strange, indeed. I gave Jabir some suggestions, but none of them helped. Jabir found his problem himself. In one of those environments (he didn’t say which), the date format was *MDY, while the date format of the other one was *DMY. SQL was interpreting a date value in two different ways. It’s fortunate that Jabir did not test with a date that

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• CL Error-Handling With APIs

  May 2, 2012 Ted Holt

  Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. I had the great pleasure of meeting Brian Rusch in Milwaukee last month, when I spoke to the Wisconsin Midrange Computer Professionals Association (WMCPA). Brian told me about the method his shop uses to handle CL program exceptions. I’d like to share it with you. IBM has established an architecture for exception handling. When a program exception occurs, the system may send one or more diagnostic messages that give information about the error. The system does send an escape message, which summarizes the problem and cancels the program.

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