• 2021: An IBM i Year in Review, Part One

  December 13, 2021 Alex Woodie

  It’s mid-December. and since nothing much else is going on, let’s take a quick waltz through the IT Jungle archives to see what kind of year it was. It all started back in January, when…

  Our esteemed founding editor tried to convince IBM what is plainly obvious: That the IBM i installed base is “still its very largest enterprise computing customer base” (emphasis added). Yes, there are more Red Hat licenses, but when it comes to unique companies, IBM i, with around 120,000 customers around the world, is still tops. Will IBM do the hard work to find a (virtualized) …

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• Consider Modernizing Your Approach to IBM i Security, Too

  November 10, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Many IBM i users are facing the reality that they need to modernize their IBM i applications, especially those based on monolithic blocks of fixed-format RPG. But other aspects of the IBM i experience can use some renovating too, including how organizations manage their security settings. Luckily, in the last few Technology Refreshes to IBM i, IBM has provided a slew of new SQL-based services for doing just that.

  Traditionally on IBM i, administrators had two main approaches for viewing and changing security settings. They could view and control the settings directly using commands, often automated through CL programs. Or …

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• Sibley Highlights Power10’s Security and AI Capabilities

  October 13, 2021 Alex Woodie

  As the vice president and global offering management for Cognitive Systems at IBM, Steve Sibley often gets the honor of delivering the keynote address at the annual POWERUp conference. During his keynote at last week’s show, Sibley used the time to delve into the latest Power10 processor and its extensive list of new features, including some designed specifically to boost AI and security.

  “One of the real privileges I have as project manager for Power Systems to be able to take the key innovations our team is developing in Rochester and our different development labs around the world, and bring …

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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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• IBM Improves Run SQL Scripts with ACS Update

  September 22, 2021 Alex Woodie

  In recent years, Access Client Solutions (ACS) has become an indispensable utility for a range of tasks involving the IBM i. A good reason for that success is the adoption of Run SQL Scripts, which has been enhanced with the latest Technology Refresh for IBM i 7.3 and 7.4.

  ACS is a Java-based product that IBM first unveiled in 2012 and that has replaced other versions of Client Access, including the dedicated Windows utility. No matter what type of computer or device you’re using to work with the IBM i server, be it Windows, Linux, or Mac, you can access …

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• Surprise! It’s IBM i Technology Refresh Time

  September 13, 2021 Alex Woodie

  IBM surprised the midrange world last week by announcing Technology Refreshes (TRs) for IBM i 7.3 and 7.4, which became generally available on Friday. The fall TRs, which typically are announced in October, brought support for the new Power10-based Power E1080 server in addition to a slew of enhancements to the operating system and surrounding IBM i products.

  The big piece of news with the new TRs – IBM i TR 7.3 TR11 and 7.4 TR5 – is support for servers based on IBM’s speedy new Power10 processor, which is the first Power chip based on its 7 nanometer …

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• Calling All IBM i Platforms. . .

  August 16, 2021 Daniel Magid

  In a microservices world, all elements of what used to be monolithic application programs are now chunks of code linked to each other using any number of application programming interfaces, or APIs. Those APIs can be based on a remote procedure call, or RPC, architecture, which is a kind of generic distributed client/server approach, or the REST – short for representational state transfer – architecture favored by parts of the commercial Web software stack that has dramatically grown in popularity in the past two decades. Either way – and in fact, there are more than two ways – APIs are …

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• Guru: One-Shot Requests and Quoted Column Names

  July 19, 2021 Ted Holt

  If I had a dollar for every time someone has asked me to query data for them over the years, I could have retired already. (I did not say I would have, but that I could have.) It’s nice when the users can retrieve the information they need to do their jobs without help from IT, but when a request is too complex for them, I’m always glad to help.

  I’ve used many tools over the years for one-shot requests for raw data. These days my tool of choice is the Run SQL Scripts tool, which is part of IBM …

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• Guru: Understanding Database Performance Using The Performance Data Investigator, Part 2

  June 28, 2021 Dawn May

  This is the second in a two-part series on how you can use the Performance Data Investigator (PDI) to investigate performance of Db2 for i. While the SQL Performance Center in Access Client Solutions is more commonly known than PDI, using both tools is a good way to analyze database performance.

  In Part 1, I reviewed the Database content package, focusing on the charts for I/O reads and writes, SQL CPU utilization, and database locks. In this tech tip, I continue by reviewing the charts related to SQL Cursor and Native DB Opens as well as the SQL Performance …

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• Guru: Understanding Database Performance Using The Performance Data Investigator, Part 1

  June 21, 2021 Dawn May

  This is a two-part series on how to use the Performance Data Investigator (PDI) for investigating performance of Db2 for i. While the SQL Performance Center in Access Client Solutions is the tool of choice for Db2 performance analysis, there is valuable information that you can get from using PDI. PDI is often a useful starting point to help guide you in the correct direction when trying to identify performance issues. In my experience, PDI is under-utilized for Db2 investigation. For those not familiar with PDI, you may want to read the article, Getting Started with the Performance Data Investigator …

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