• Database Neglect and IBM i Inuendo

  March 12, 2012 Dan Burger

  The future is tied to the past. It’s just not tied too tightly. Understanding that change occurs and better things come as a result is a pretty healthy attitude. Much better than forbidding change or refusing to acknowledge it exists. Change happens. But it’s almost always evolutionary rather than revolutionary. People prefer the level of disruption to be minimal–smooth transitions being far better than unexpected jolts. The row IBM hoed from AS/400 to IBM i is an example of both. This isn’t a history lesson on the IBM midrange. It’s an example of what can happen when innovative thinking is

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• IBM Does March Madness Rebate On Power 770s

  March 12, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It looks like IBM is a bit eager to peddle some relatively big Power Systems iron to put the finishing touches on its first quarter. And it is no surprise, with a number of long-running promotions getting mothballed in recent weeks. If there is any rule of marketing, it is that you need to keep constantly changing things up to hit the hot buttons of different customers, so IBM is trying a rebate deal with an extremely short time window, and only on one machine: The Power 770. There have been two generations of Power 770 boxes. The original ones

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• Admin Alert: Getting Started With An i 6.1 Upgrade

  March 7, 2012 Joe Hertvik

  For the second time in two years, my organization is participating in a multi-partition/multi-machine i5/OS V5R4 operating system upgrade to i 6.1. The second time around is interesting because I can build on lessons from last year’s upgrades. In the hope that it can help you with your V5R4 to 6.1 upgrades, here are some of my notes for planning the upgrades. Deciding Between Upgrading To i 6.1 or i 7.1 With IBM dropping support for i5/OS V5R4 and the fact that Big Blue hasn’t released the i 8.x operating system yet, customers still have a choice whether to

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• Interpreted CL Members

  March 7, 2012 Hey, Ted

  I am thinking of writing a program that will read a source member of CL commands, interpreting them and running them dynamically one at a time. I can think of several situations in which such a utility would be more suitable than compiled CL programs. Before I re-invent the wheel, I want to know if IBM i already has something like that. –Tom Yes, there’s something like that. You can do this sort of thing with input spooling. I’ve only used input spooling on occasion, so I’m not an expert, but I can show you how it works. Create a

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• Commenting Interactive Code

  March 7, 2012 Ted Holt

  The tips I regularly feature in this august publication deal with some aspect of source code syntax. Today I turn my attention to another part of the programming process. I want to talk about a work habit that you might find useful. I would say that everyone who writes any type of source code at all knows the importance of comments, but that would be incorrect. I have followed (and written) too much code that was inadequately commented. Effective comments in source code serve as a great boon to the humans who must read or modify source code. As Ashley

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• Reader Feedback On Thinking Strategically About IT As A Service

  March 5, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Hi, Dan: There’s too much talk about the dollars and cents equation. If all of IT is reduced to the budget equation, as CFOs can and often do, then the ability to use IT as a resource to gain and keep a competitive edge is lost. Outsourcing, SaaS, cloud, GUI, web, and so on are all used as market buzz by vendors looking to sell. I especially tire of rags constantly quoting vendor staff when it’s obvious where the spin lies. Not all of IT can be reduced to an enterprise application solution or even a web-enabling green screen tool.

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• IBM Helps Open Schools For The Next Generation Of IT Workers

  March 5, 2012 Jenny Thomas

  The importance of a good education is universally accepted, but it is no longer a guarantee of a good job. In fact, in many instances, a degree doesn’t guarantee any type of job these days. Which is why we should all be happy to hear that IBM is looking to change the odds of America’s students landing a job after graduation. Last week, IBM released a “playbook” to help educators and business leaders in IT build schools specifically designed to connect public education to employment. At the same time, IBM announced a plan developed with the City of

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• IBM i Is Looking Very Collegiate

  March 5, 2012 Dan Burger

  Last week I was talking with Jim Buck, who heads up the IBM i curriculum at Gateway Technical College in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Each year the best of the Gateway graduates find their way into jobs with IBM i shops. It’s a credit to Buck’s dedication and understanding of the importance of blending specialized training with the ability to solve business problems. He’s very well networked in the business and education communities, and supports COMMON as a volunteer on educational committees. Buck’s efforts have been rewarded with the COMMON Education Foundation Scholarship Award and the System i Innovation Award for Education

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• IBM’s Spring Ritual: Job Cuts

  March 5, 2012 Dan Burger

  It’s almost a traditional rite of spring at IBM. Call it spring house cleaning . . . if you have a gallows sense of humor. Jobs were on the chopping block last week as Big Blue added slightly more than 1,200 employees to the unemployment statistics, according to statistics provided by Alliance@IBM, an IBM employee advocate group that is aligned with the Communications Workers of America trade union. The Global Technology Services (GTS) division received the deepest cuts, with 691 jobs eliminated. The Application Management Services (AMS) division was trimmed of 118 jobs. The Systems Technology Group (STG)

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• Reader Feedback On: The Application RISC Machine System/500

  March 5, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Interesting article. . . . Your comment: “But so were the IBM Fort Knox and Future Systems projects, too.” They both failed big time. I’m not sure if younger readers know this. I can’t address all the features you discussed. My hang-up has always centered around programmers and operators (in the loosest sense) who keep getting themselves in trouble and it takes too much time and money to pay a consultant to pull them out of a ditch. We (IBM) should have learned by now how to properly instrument, analyze, and recommend “fixes” before they become problems, not after the

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