• IBM Cranks Up the Performance for Run SQL Scripts

  April 24, 2024 Alex Woodie

  Access Client Solutions (ACS) users who are tired of waiting for database fields to resolve in the Run SQL Scripts (RSS) facility will be happy to hear that IBM felt their pain and RSS will return data much more quickly to return data with ACS version 1.1.9.5, which IBM shipped earlier this month.

  The speed-up of field resolution time was listed as a concern to at least one IBM i user, who took to IBM Power Ideas Portal to voice his or her concern. “Simply put the resolution of potential field makes content assist almost unusable,” the user wrote. “I …

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• Drilling Down Into New IBM i Perpetual And Subscription Pricing

  April 15, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As we reported in last week’s issue, Big Blue increased pricing on its pricing for per-core perpetual software licenses, per user licensing fees, Software Maintenace, and subscription prices back on January 1. We missed the change – again, apologies for that – and let you know about the basics of these and other hardware and software price changes. This week we are going to look at the effect of these changes on the cost of the base IBM i systems software stack.

  To review: On September 9 last year, IBM announced the price increases that went into effect as …

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• ZendHQ Now Runs Fully on IBM i

  April 10, 2024 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops running the ZendPHP distribution of the open source programming language and runtime will be interested to know that Perforce Software recently added full support for IBM i with ZendHQ, the extension for ZendPHP that provides observability and orchestration functionality for PHP-based applications. Previously, IBM i shops had to run part of ZendHQ on Linux or Windows.

  Perforce Software originally launched ZendHQ back in June 2022 to give ZendPHP customers more visibility and control of their increasingly complex PHP environments. ZendHQ is a superset of functionality that bundles existing tools that were originally developed for Zend Server customers, …

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• Some Clarity – Well Actually Less – On IBM i Subscriptions

  March 4, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As we pointed out a few weeks ago, it looks like at least some aspects of Big Blue’s subscription model for pricing hardware and systems software is a work in progress. We accidentally saw an IBM document dated February 15 that had updated some aspects of the subscription pricing for machines in the IBM i P05 and P10 software tiers and said that others would be updated on May 7.

  In the time that it took us to write that story, which wasn’t long, IBM took the PDF down and said that it needed to make edits to that …

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• RPG Training Program Spun Up by Trucking Industry Outsourcer

  February 7, 2024 Alex Woodie

  If you’re in the trucking business and need RPG programmers, you might want to check out the outsourcing firm DDC FPO, which has spun up a new program in the Philippines to train junior RPG programmers to work at American trucking firms.

  DDC FPO is one of the country’s largest business process outsourcing (BPO) firms serving the trucking industry. The company, which is headquartered in Evergreen, Colorado, works with more than half of the country’s less-than-truckload (LTL) operators. About one-third of the bills of lading generated daily are generated by DDC FPO workers, the company claims.

  The IBM i platform …

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• A Few Power Systems Items At The Cusp Of The New Year

  January 10, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Welcome back, everyone. We hope you had a joyous vacation, and that you took your vitamins and got your rest to take on a new year.

  It is generally pretty quiet in the IT racket in late December of one year and early January in the next year, and the bridge between 2023 and 2024 is no different. But there were a few items that came to our attention that we want to make you aware of.

  In announcement letter AD23-1087, dated December 12, 2023, Big Blue has put some 5250 Enablement features that were withdrawn from marketing in …

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• Rocket Launches CM-Kit for Continuous Modernization

  December 13, 2023 Alex Woodie

  You’ve read about continuous integration and continuous delivery, or CI-CD. Now Rocket Software wants you think about a related topic called continuous modernization, which refers to an uninterrupted re-invention of your applications via Web enablement and APIs. It recently launched a new suite of software, called the Continuous Modernization Kit, to help customers deliver that on their IBM i servers.

  Web-enablement of greenscreen 5250 applications has been a thing since at least the late 1990s, when the dot-com boom drove the initial commercialization of the Internet. That was followed closely by mobile enablement, which Apple turbocharged with its 2007 launch …

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• White Hats Completely Dismantle Menu-Based Security

  February 6, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Think menu-based security can prevent cybercriminals from accessing the most important parts of your IBM i system? Think again, as the white hat hacking group Silent Signal recently demonstrated in a real-world penetration test of a bank’s IBM i system through a seemingly restricted green-screen interface.

  Life was demonstrably simpler for midrange administrators before the Internet took off. Before we had all these different protocols providing access to applications and data – ODBC, FTP, SQL, Remote Command, etc. – an administrator could feel somewhat confident that users weren’t accessing things they shouldn’t by simply configuring their menus in a restrictive …

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• Smart Modernization Is The Answer To IBM i Talent Shortage

  September 28, 2022 Jose Caso Jacobs

  When we are at the COMMON POWERUp 2022 conference a few months ago, we were amazed by the number of IT managers that approached us because of a shortage of IBM i programming talent. The dearth of programmers that are experienced with the business as well as legacy and modern programming techniques has pushed a lot of businesses up against the wall, with lost agility and in some cases delayed projects.

  As bad as that is, the situation could be worse. We have all heard the horror stories, where the executive suite or upper IT management push to switch away …

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• What Is Code Transformation Even?

  June 20, 2022 Miranda VanHorn

  Transformation is a complex concept. It can mean many different things depending on whom you are asking. It could be UI transformation, where an improvement in the user interface provides all end-users a memorable, personalized, and deeply engaging experience.

  It could also refer to code transformation, which improves the performance of applications using a new language or architecture, or it could be a total digital transformation where the system is entirely modernized for business success.

  A transformation could also mean changing a physical process of using pen and paper (e.g., documentation or signing of contracts) into a systematic approach using …

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