• IBM Delivers a Db2 Mirror Update

  January 12, 2022 Alex Woodie

  IBM updated its Db2 Mirror continuous availability solution last month with support for ObjectConnect, which shrinks the amount of disk space required to copy objects from one IBM i server to another. It also updated the high-speed networking protocols at the heart of the Db2 Mirror solution, which should improve the security of data flowing over networks and makes Db2 Mirror clusters more feasible over longer distances.

  IBM has provided ObjectConnect commands on the IBM i server for years as a way to replicate IBM i objects. The software is useful because it improves the efficiency of copy operations by …

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• AWS Offers Mainframe Migration Service. Is IBM i Next?

  December 6, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Amazon Web Services, the world’s largest cloud service provider, last week unveiled a new service to help IBM mainframe customers modernize their workloads and move them to the cloud. Will the cloud giant, which says it’s completely driven by the needs of its customers, launch a similar service for midrange workloads running on IBM i?

  AWS Mainframe Modernization is a new service AWS launched at its re:Invent conference last week that aims at making it “faster and easier to migrate mainframe and legacy workload to the cloud.” In addition to AWS components, the service includes roles for systems integrators, such …

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• Every IBM i Shop Must Have An API Integration Strategy

  October 6, 2021 Daniel Magid

  I have had several very exciting conversations with IBM i users recently about new technology as they have reached out to Eradani for help in advancing their IBM i applications using APIs. More and more I hear how IBM i pros are learning new things and innovating to transform their IBM systems into examples of leading-edge computing. One of the cool things IBM i users are recognizing is that the value of APIs comes not just from making IBM i data available to other applications and outside users, but also from adding additional function to RPG applications by calling out …

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• Rocket Software Names New CEO

  October 6, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Rocket Software yesterday announced that Milan Shetti, currently the company’s president and a former Hewlett-Packard vice president, next month will take over the CEO position from Andy Youniss, who will step back from day-to-day operations but will remain with the company he co-founded more than 30 years ago.

  Youniss co-founded Rocket Software in 1990 in the garage of his home near Boston, Massachusetts with a  plan to develop and sell tools for IBM’s DB2 database, as it was then called (it only recently was renamed Db2, with the lowercase “b”). Its first product was a resource monitor for IBM’s …

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• IBM i Open Source Gets Better With Fall 2021 TRs

  September 20, 2021 Alex Woodie

  The open source community has become a big source of new software for the IBM i platform in recent years, if not the biggest contributor. To that end, the recent Technology Refreshes (TRs) for IBM i 7.3 and 7.4 bring a dozen or so new or updated packages to the platform.

  One of the most exciting additions to IBM i’s open source repertoire is tn5250, a bare-bones terminal emulator for accessing IBM i system and application screens. Distributed via Source Forge, tn5250 is a Windows program that enables users to access green screens from the Secure Shell (SSH) terminal. …

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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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• Guru: The Deception of Fractional Labeled Durations

  August 9, 2021 Ted Holt

  Hey, Ted:

  We measure certain processes in tenths of an hour. For whatever reason, we cannot make date/time arithmetic work properly when dealing with this data. There must be something that we don’t understand — what we’re doing seems simple and straightforward. Can you help?

  — One Confused Reader

  What this reader wants to do makes perfect sense. He wants to take a value like 8:00 AM, add a fractional number of hours to it, let’s say 1.1, and come up with 9:06 AM. Let’s try an example.

  declare global temporary table StampData
   ( Stamp   timestamp );
      
  insert into session.StampData 

  …

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• IBM Thwarts Ransomware in FlashSystem with New Data Safeguard

  July 26, 2021 Alex Woodie

  The steep uptick in ransomware attacks this summer has gained the full attention of business and tech leaders at businesses of all sizes. It also has the attention of IT vendors, including IBM, which last week added a new data protection mechanism to FlashSystem intended to help thwart ransomware attacks.

  Ransomware, which has been simmering on the security backburner for years, has roared to life this summer, thanks to several high-profile attacks that caused severe business disruptions, including Colonial Pipeline, JBS, and Scripps Health, among others. While the attacks on these large companies were headline-grabbing, they bely the full …

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• Time To Design – And Deliver – The Application System/360

  July 19, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The stupidest thing IBM ever did was create a system other than the System/360. It had the perfect name and it had the right idea of creating a compatible line of small, medium, and large enterprise systems that ran a widening variety of operating systems and workloads, often concurrent on the same machine. The AS/400 really should have been the third generation of System/360 machines, and the systems today would be somewhere around the sixth of seventh or even tenth generation, however you want to think about it.

  Every decade or so in IBM’s history, it has tried to converge …

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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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