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2022: An IBM i Year In Review: Part 2
December 19, 2022 Alex Woodie
In part one of this now annual recap of the IBM i world that we do here at IT Jungle, we reminisced on the biggest stories of the first six months of the year. There was quite a bit going on, with the launch of IBM i 7.5 and more. But getting into the last half of the year – now that’s where the real action began.
July
The first full month of summer started off with a bang when IBM, after much anticipation, unveiled the long-awaited scale-out Power10 machines. The Power10 rollout included the S1014, with …
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Guru: String Manipulation Using SQL
October 24, 2022 Mike Larsen
Recently, I was working with an employee file where first and last name were concatenated with a comma separator. A requirement of the project was to parse the name and populate a different table where first and last name are separate columns. I won’t address the design of the employee file, but I will show how I completed the request.
In Figure 1, I use the position string function via SQL to extract the first name.
Figure 1. Extract first name
In this example, I use the trim, substring, and posstr functions to position to the first …
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Guru: Regular Expressions, Part 1
July 25, 2022 Mike Larsen
In the first part of this series, I will show how to replace characters in a string using SQL and regular expressions. I know I can replace characters using RPG or SQL, and they work great, but there are some cases where I find using regular expressions is a bit easier.
For the examples I’ll show, I’m using the REGEXP_REPLACE function. REGEXP_REPLACE allows me to search for a particular value within a string and replace it with another value.
In the first example (Figure 1), I want to search a string that has both letters and digits and I want …
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Top Five Failures In State of IBM i Security For 2022
April 18, 2022 Alex Woodie
HelpSystems last week officially unveiled its annual State of IBM i Security report, the 18th straight year for the series. Like with past reports, the 2022 version highlights some of the continuing challenges that IBM i customers face when trying to secure their systems. A few key areas stand out above the rest.
The IBM i server is a bit of an enigma when it comes to security. While it is widely perceived to be one of the most secure computing platforms on the planet – and “virus-proof” to boot – the reality is that a good number of IBM …
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IBM Encourages IAS and IWS Users to Move to Java 8
December 1, 2021 Alex Woodie
IBM is now encouraging IBM i customers to move to Java 8 for their Integrated Web Application Server (IAS) and Integrated Web Services (IWS) environments. While the IAS and IWS environments can still run on older versions of Java, they are not fully supported by IBM, the company announced last month.
IAS is a lightweight Java application server for IBM i that serves as a foundation for developing and running Java Server Pages (JSP) and Java servlet-based applications. It is based on WebSphere Application Server Liberty, the slimmed down and open version of the traditional IBM WebSphere environment. It has …
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Db2 PTF Group Enhancements Target Web Services, Audit Journal
October 4, 2021 Alex Woodie
It is indisputable that the Db2 for i database is the beating heart of the IBM i platform. There were no earthshattering enhancements to this database in the latest batch of Technology Refreshes for IBM i 7.3 and 7.4 that IBM announced and shipped last month. But there were a few items worth mentioning that shipped in the Db2 PTF Group, including new HTTP commands for calling the database via REST and new SQL-based commands for querying the security audit journal.
The top new Db2 for i feature arguably is the new set of functions for HTTP requests to consume …
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So You Want To Do Containerized Microservices In the Cloud?
June 30, 2021 Alex Woodie
As a modernization consultant working in IBM’s Rochester, Minnesota, lab, Amy Anderson gets to hear from some of the most tech-savvy IBM i shops in the world. Her job requires her to know where shops are now, listen to where they want to go, and chart a path that takes them there. That can sometimes be quite a challenge, especially considering the rapid pace of technological change at the moment.
“One of the things that we’re seeing now is the whole industry now is focused on modernization,” Anderson said during her session at the recent NAViGATE conference hosted by COMMON …
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In Search of Multi-Modal Data Integration
May 5, 2021 Alex Woodie
As the number of data sources that companies use goes up, so too does the complexity of the data pipelines that bring it all together. Instead of using a mix of different tools and technologies for ETL, ELT, and batch integration, some users are seeking a single multi-modal data integration tool that can deliver multiple integration approaches.
One company providing multi-modal data integration is Equalum. The company’s DataOps offering works in various methodologies, including capturing real-time database updates using change data capture (CDC) technology; batch-based extract, transform, and load (ETL) and ELT; and REST- and SOAP-based data integration using …
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How The Latest TRs Bolster The Core IBM i OS
October 7, 2020 Alex Woodie
Yesterday was Technology Refresh (TR) day for IBM and its IBM i operating system, and Big Blue didn’t disappoint. The company unveiled new releases of IBM i 7.4 and 7.3 that bring a slew of new capabilities to the core operating system as well as surrounding offerings like Db2 Mirror, ACS, and RDi. In this article, we’ll look at enhancements to the core OS and related key features.
During a COMMON webcast Tuesday, IBM i Chief Architect Steve Will touched broadly on a number of enhancements that soon will be available in the TRs. Most of the new capabilities will …
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Guru: Calling RPG Programs From Python, Part 1
March 30, 2020 Mike Larsen
In a prior article, I showed how to pass parameters to a Python script and execute the script from an RPG program. Based on feedback and my own curiosity, I wanted to see how I could pass parameters to an RPG program and call it from Python. After a bit of research, I found the Python interface itoolkit.
itoolkit is an open source project provided by IBM as an interface to the XMLSERVICE toolkit, which allows us to call RPG programs, service programs, CL programs, and PASE Shell commands. itoolkit can be installed using an SSH terminal with …
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