• As I See It: The Other Final Frontier

  October 10, 2011 Victor Rozek

  In its 123 years of existence, National Geographic magazine has explored some inhospitable landscapes. Intrepid adventurers have hacked across the Amazon jungle, inched their way through underwater cave systems on the Yucatan Peninsula, and pulled sleds in sub-zero temperatures through ice and snow until they ran out of North. But in this month’s issue they tackle what may be the most impregnable and unfathomable landscape of all: The teenage brain. Teenagers have been the source of parental discontent since Ayla roamed the Neanderthal frontier looking for a split-level cave. Neanderkinders no doubt lost their spears, failed to tidy up the

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• Oracle Drives Java Technology Forward at Annual Conference

  October 10, 2011 Alex Woodie

  One of the side benefits of Oracle‘s acquisition of Sun Microsystems was it gained control over Java, and therefore gained a wedge against its Java-loving rival IBM. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison declared victory over IBM Power Systems in the Java performance category at its Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco last week, while at the same time, Oracle and IBM teamed up at the nearby JavaOne 2011 conference to discuss the future of the world’s most popular programming environment. Java doesn’t command the level of respect and acceptance that RPG does on the IBM i platform, and it

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• Speaking of IBM i Innovation . . .

  October 10, 2011 Dan Burger

  A lot of people wouldn’t pay attention to innovation if it walked into the room and sat down next to them. Some recognize it and cross to the opposite side of the street if they see it coming their way. A few treat it like it’s their best friend. Who are these people and do you ever find them running an IT department in an IBM i shop? Yes, you do. And the best known (kind of like being the best known mountain climber in Florida) is Roxanne Reynolds-Lair, the CIO at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising (FIDM)

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• IBM Readies October Power Systems Announcements

  October 10, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The word on the street is that IBM is gearing up for some new Power Systems announcements. The exact nature of the announcements is not clear, but I am hearing a little bit of this and a little bit of that about what Big Blue has cooking for its IBM i, AIX, and Linux customers who use Power-based systems. What I can tell you for sure that whatever Big Blue is up to, and contrary to what some of its own roadmaps have been pointing to, it is not calling it the Power7+ server refresh. I don’t yet know if

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• Admin Alert: How to Retrieve Password Parameters for Auditors

  October 5, 2011 Joe Hertvik

  Your organization’s fiscal year may have ended on September 30. Meaning you could soon be visited by auditors looking for information on how your organization operates its AS/400-class machine (iSeries, System i, Power i). Your auditors will be particularly interested in your password configuration parameters and whether they meet standards. To that end, here’s a quick drill for retrieving password setup values at audit time. What Auditors Want Auditors generally require you to provide the following sets of password related parameters. Your password configuration parameters–The rules users follow for creating passwords. Configuration and program code for Password Validation Program

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• Another Way to Pass Parms to SBMJOB

  October 5, 2011 Bruce Guetzkow

  Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. A couple of years ago I needed to develop a process where a group of items could be selected from a screen and a report listing those items could be generated. On the surface, a simple task. Of course, if you give a mouse a cookie, they’re going to want a glass of milk, or another report. . . and another. Again, not too complicated. All that should be needed is a way to submit a call to a variable list of programs. As long as each program

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• Call Again and Again and Again…

  October 5, 2011 Paul Tuohy

  Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. In programming terms, recursion is the process whereby a function may call itself. Traditionally, this is something we are not used to in RPG. Programs and subroutines cannot call themselves. Or if you did somehow manage it (and you could), you would get unpredictable results. But the introduction of subprocedures opened up the possibility of using recursion because subprocedures can call themselves. It is usually very difficult to come up with practical examples of using recursion, and most of those examples are usually very specific to an application.

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• Admin Alert: How to Retrieve Password Parameters for Auditors

  October 5, 2011 Joe Hertvik

  Your organization’s fiscal year may have ended on September 30. Meaning you could soon be visited by auditors looking for information on how your organization operates its AS/400-class machine (iSeries, System i, Power i). Your auditors will be particularly interested in your password configuration parameters and whether they meet standards. To that end, here’s a quick drill for retrieving password setup values at audit time. What Auditors Want Auditors generally require you to provide the following sets of password related parameters. Your password configuration parameters–The rules users follow for creating passwords. Configuration and program code for Password Validation Program

  … Read more

• Another Way to Pass Parms to SBMJOB

  October 5, 2011 Bruce Guetzkow

  Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. A couple of years ago I needed to develop a process where a group of items could be selected from a screen and a report listing those items could be generated. On the surface, a simple task. Of course, if you give a mouse a cookie, they’re going to want a glass of milk, or another report. . . and another. Again, not too complicated. All that should be needed is a way to submit a call to a variable list of programs. As long as each program

  … Read more

• Call Again and Again and Again…

  October 5, 2011 Paul Tuohy

  Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. In programming terms, recursion is the process whereby a function may call itself. Traditionally, this is something we are not used to in RPG. Programs and subroutines cannot call themselves. Or if you did somehow manage it (and you could), you would get unpredictable results. But the introduction of subprocedures opened up the possibility of using recursion because subprocedures can call themselves. It is usually very difficult to come up with practical examples of using recursion, and most of those examples are usually very specific to an application.

  … Read more

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