• Fall 2023 IBM i Tech Refresh Brings Something For Everyone

  October 11, 2023 Alex Woodie

  As expected, IBM yesterday unveiled its fall Technology Refresh (TR) for IBM i, with updates starting to become available on November 17. IBM announced no new products as part of the fall 2023 TR cycle, but it did spread the love around by giving just about everybody something to cheer about in IBM i 7.5 TR3 and 7.4 TR9.

  Lots of different products that make up the IBM i environment will see some pretty meaningful enhancements with this release. If you spend a lot of time in Navigator for i or ACS, you will see new stuff. We haven’t had …

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• IBM Releases Db2 For i Extensions For VS Code

  October 9, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Interested in developing new ILE applications in VS Code that utilize the Db2 for i database? Then you’re in luck, because IBM recently created and released vscode-db2i, an open source database extension for Code for IBM i, the uber popular development environment that enables ILE programming in VS Code.

  It is tough to overstate the popularity of Code for IBM i, which Liam Allan created and released just over two years ago. The open source plug-in provides ILE functionality for Microsoft’s VS Code, enabling programmers to write and edit RPG, COBOL, C, and CL code in the lightweight, browser-based …

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• Guru: Retrieving The Long And Short Object Name

  August 14, 2023 Bob Cozzi

  Many releases ago, IBM i received “Long SQL Names” for files and libraries. These new longer names (up to 128 characters) were well received by SQL enthusiasts, but largely ignored by the mainstream IBM i developer. As each version of IBM i emerged, more and more shops experienced one or more objects with a longer-than-10-character name.

  Recently I created a file named BOAT_TRAFFIC. This name is clearly longer than 10 characters. I used SQL DDL (the CREATE or REPLACE TABLE statement) to create the file. Using SQL DDL is the only real way to create an object with a long …

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• Midsummer Security Indicators: Hot and Gloomy

  August 2, 2023 Alex Woodie

  The hot summer heat is smothering Americans like a tight polyester jacket these days. Also having big impacts on Americans are hackers, security vulnerabilities, spam, and malicious emails, which seem to be peaking with the seasonal fry.

  Security software company Securin scanned 8 million addressable IPs among US state government systems, and discovered 119,000 instances of high-risk services that could be easily exploited, according to a report released yesterday, dubbed “The State of Cybersecurity in America.”

  All told, Securin found 3,700 exposed databases (Db2 among them), 3,400 exposed Secure Shell (SSH) endpoints, 2,780 exposed File Transfer Protocol (FTP) systems, and …

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• SoCal Gears Up for OCEAN Tech Con 23

  July 17, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Southern California’s IBM i community is getting ready for the biggest event on its calendar: OCEAN Tech Con 23. The three-day, in-person event kicks off next week with a full slate of speakers and presenters who will discuss the latest advances in the platform.

  The OCEAN user group’s annual summer soiree starts the morning of Thursday, July 27, with a one-hour keynote by IBM’s IBM i chief technology officer, chief architect, and distinguished engineer Steve Will. The title of the address, “IBM i @ 35: integrate + innovate,” gives you an idea what Will will talk about.

  The educational component …

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• New “High Priority” DDM Vulnerability Affects IBM i

  July 10, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Unauthenticated users can remotely run CL or PASE commands on IBM i as a result of a newly discovered vulnerability in the operating system’s Distributed Data Management (DDM) architecture. IBM issued a patch for the flaw, which it classified as moderate. However, the Hungary-based ethical hacking group that discovered the flaw, Silent Signal, recommends treating it as a high priority.

  IBM disclosed the DDM security flaw and availability of program temporary fixes (PTFs) for IBM i version 7.2 through 7.5 via a security bulletin on June 30. The flaw was assigned CVE-2023-30990 by the Common Vulnerability Scoring System, and given …

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• The IT Balancing Act

  May 1, 2023 Bill Langston

  Medical research suggests that how well you can maintain your balance is a powerful predictor of your longevity. Balance is also a good indicator of longevity for your IBM i environment. The challenge is striking the right balance between “vertical” technology that helps your company work efficiently and accurately, and “horizontal” technology that reduces risk.

  Over the past few years, unprecedented forces shifted IT priorities and may have knocked your company’s IBM i environment off balance.

  Enabling IT Balance

  IBM i exists because of how well it runs complex business applications and manages data. We take for granted that the …

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• Greymine Launches PerfScan To Monitor And Manage IBM i Performance

  April 17, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It is not every day that the IBM i market gets a brand new vendor with a shiny new product, and so today we are celebrating the official launch of PerfScan, a new performance management and monitoring tool aimed at the IBM i market that will expand out to cover all of the platforms running on IBM’s Power Systems – that means AIX and Linux – as well as running on adjacent systems in the datacenter – that means Linux and Windows Server and any weird legacy stuff that customers might ask for.

  PerfScan is the first product – and …

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• Big Blue Refreshes The Technology for IBM i 7.4 And 7.5

  April 12, 2023 Alex Woodie

  As expected, IBM yesterday unveiled its Technology Refreshes (TRs) for IBM i, including version 7.5 TR2 and 7.4 TR8. These are relatively minor releases that bring incremental improvements to core areas of the platform, including IBM i Navigator, IWS, PowerHA, and RPG, among others. There’s nothing groundbreaking here, but the enhancements are undoubtedly just what many users need.

  We’re going to dive into each of the enhancements and do full coverage of them in the coming weeks here at IT Jungle. For today, we’re going to provide a broad overview of the new stuff that IBM just announced this …

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• Wanted: Code For IBM i Contributors

  April 10, 2023 Alex Woodie

  If you have a knack for IBM i development and a passion for open source, then Liam Allan, the creator of the Code for IBM i project, would like a word. That’s because Allan, faced with large demands from his day job at IBM, is seeking help from the IBM i community to develop and maintain the Code for IBM i project.

  “Myself and the core team (three other people) are a little overwhelmed by our workload, balancing jobs and maintaining a large project is tough,” Allan wrote in a March 9 blog post on Ryver, the Web-based forum …

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