• Cloud Computing: Just Another Word for the Internet?

  June 27, 2011 Alex Woodie

  When terminology from the IT department breaks through into the mainstream culture, you know you’re onto something really hot. This is the case with the term and the concept behind “cloud computing,” which has spread like a west Texas prairie fire. However, for all the hype surrounding cloud computing, surveys show that only a fraction of organizations have adopted or are actively pondering a cloud offering. And the most popular cloud application? Email. Apparently, “the” cloud is the same as “the” Internet. According to a recent survey by CDW, only 28 percent of organizations are actively implementing or maintaining

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• Building a Legacy

  June 27, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The IBM i platform and its bigger brother, the System z mainframe, take a lot of guff for being a legacy platform. But guess what? Solaris is turning 30 next year, as is HP-UX the year after that. AIX will be 25 this year, Windows server variants are almost 20 years old (remember Windows for Workgroups 3.1?), and Linux pretty much freeze-dried after a hectic 20 years of development. OS/400, of course, just turned 23 last week, but has deeper roots back into CPFon the System/38 in 1978 and SSP on the System/36 in 1983. They are all legacy environments

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• Admin Alert: Things to Think About in a Power i Development Environment

  June 22, 2011 Joe Hertvik

  Working in both public and private companies during my career, I’ve been subjected to my share of IT audits. My impression is that while auditors are usually very savvy about your production environment, there are other issues that maybe they should be looking at but don’t. If your production environment is in tip-top shape, audit-wise, here are some other things you might consider looking at to avoid trouble. Why Aren’t Auditors More Interested in Development Environment Infrastructure? Not to give anyone ideas, but I’ve always wondered why auditors don’t investigate development environments as seriously as they audit production environments. After

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• Forcing Keyword Parameters

  June 22, 2011 Ted Holt

  Programming languages use two conventions for passing arguments (commonly referred to as parameters) to a called routine. Some languages use positional parameters. That is, the parameters must be passed to the routine in a certain order. The other (and less error-prone) method is to password parameters in keyword format. IBM i allows you to force callers to use keyword format–to a point–when they use your CL commands. Here’s how. But first, let’s review the two major problems inherent in positional parameters. First, it is easy to get a parameter value into the wrong position. Take the following OCL command for

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• SQL Implicit Cast of Character Strings and Numeric Values

  June 22, 2011 Skip Marchesani

  Awhile back I was teaching an SQL class in Fargo, North Dakota. During one of the afternoon lab sessions, one of the students asked if he could use the CONCAT function on two numbers, or two numeric columns, without first casting them to character values. I knew the answer was “No”, and that the numeric values had to be cast to character first before the student concatenated them together. Instead of just giving the student the answer, I played good teacher and I told the student to try it and let me know how it worked. Imaging my surprise when

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• Education Matching Innovation: OCEAN Tech Conference

  June 20, 2011 Dan Burger

  Ho-hum or gung-ho? Which is it going to be? It’s just about that time for the annual OCEAN Tech Conference, an opportunity to see and hear about the new technologies that apply to the IBM i platform. You know, it’s only a legacy system if you allow it to be one. And if you and your IT staff have no modern skills, what does that make you? A legacy programmer? A legacy systems admin? The OCEAN Tech Conference is not the only place where you can pick up the pace of what’s happening in your IT department. But it’s a

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• How to Succeed In The i Biz By Really Trying

  June 20, 2011 Dan Burger

  Brian May has been an integral part of the Young i Professionals organization since its inception. He is a frequent speaker at COMMON conferences and a member of several advisory committees for that organization. He’s a subject matter expert in RPG. Numerous local user groups have brought him in as a guest speaker. You might say he gets around. A couple of months ago May landed at Profound Logic, where he is now an IBM i modernization specialist for the application development and modernization tool maker based in Dayton, Ohio. His primary project at this stage is rebuilding product

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• Outboard Disk Array Sales Keep Pace With Servers in Q1

  June 20, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The server market did alright in the first quarter thanks to a rebound in spending on RISC and mainframe servers (including Power Systems machines from IBM running its quasi-eponymous IBM i operating system) and a desire by companies to install fatter boxes across the architectural board to support virtualization. Sales of companion external disk arrays, not surprisingly, also did well as companies continue to suffer from information constipation. Storage arrays are not always refreshed at the same time as servers, but at this point in the evolution of servers, storage, and networks, it probably makes sense to get all the

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• The Good Word on U.S. SMB IT Spending

  June 20, 2011 Jenny Thomas

  When more and more people are saying the same thing, it’s gotta be true. Right? Participants in the small and medium-sized business (SMB) market–including the companies themselves and the vendors that supply thing to them–are certainly hoping so as more good news comes from a recent study by IDC. According to the IDC, IT spending growth has returned more rapidly than expected since the recession officially ended in 2009. IDC’s recent forecast found the nearly 8 million SMBs in the United States will spend more than $125 billion on advanced technology in 2011, an increase from approximately $120 billion

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• Last Chance to Take the 2011 Top i Concerns Survey

  June 20, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The AS/400 turns 23 this week, as we point out elsewhere in this issue of The Four Hundred, and this is your platform as much as anyone else’s. That is why you should take a few moments and participate in the Top i Concerns survey, which is one of the few ways that the joes and janes of the IBM midrange have a chance to send some input more or less directly to Big Blue. The Top i Concerns survey is being conducted by COMMON Europe, which had hoped to have a representative number of participants ahead of

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