• 2022: An IBM i Year in Review, Part One

  December 14, 2022 Alex Woodie

  Well, it’s that time of year again – time to look back on the year and contemplate what happened. It was another eventful year in the midrange, with new servers and new operating systems. The IBM i user and vendor communities also worked to make it a rewarding year.

  2021 started innocently enough back in . . .

  January

  Cybercriminals earned a gazillion demerits for their early 2021 Christmas present to cybersecurity professionals: Log4j, the most critical security vulnerability to hit the IT world in years. With a perfect CVSS severity rating of 10, Log4j sent security professionals scrambling in …

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• IBM i RFE Site Moving to New Location

  April 4, 2022 Alex Woodie

  IBM last month announced that it’s moving its Request for Enhancements (RFE) program to a new place. From now on, IBM i users will be asked to submit and vote on RFEs via its new IBM Ideas website, where IBM is centralizing the RFE programs for various products, including IBM i.

  In the summer of 2016, IBM opened a new RFE program on its developerWorks site at www.ibm.com/developerworks/rfe/. That website marked Big Blue’s first formalization of its requirements process, which up until that point was spread across four entities: the COMMON Americas Advisory Council (CAAC), COMMON Europe Advisory …

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• IBM Pulls Plug on Systems Magazine, Pushes Community Site

  November 4, 2020 Alex Woodie

  IBM Systems magazine will cease publishing at the end of 2020, ending a two-decade-plus run as an IBM-backed magazine serving the IBM i, AIX, and System z communities, IBM announced this week. In its place, Big Blue plans to ramp up the IBM Community website, which, you will remember, absorbed the old developerWorks content earlier this year.

  IBM Systems Magazine has been produced by MSP TechMedia, a division of MSP Communications, under a license from IBM. The media partnership between the two companies, which has been ongoing for at least 22 years, included two magazines: the monthly IBM Systems …

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• Update On Migration Of developerWorks Content

  January 15, 2020 Alex Woodie

  On New Year’s Day, IBM fulfilled its promise to turn off the developerWorks Connections website, which hosted technical content posted by members of the IBM i community. But before it hit the “delete” button, Big Blue worked with content owners to migrate the most active content to other websites, to redirect browser traffic, and to archive the rest.

  IBM made good on its previous promise to ensure that no content was left behind when it permanently shuttered the popular developerWorks Connections website. It was forced to make that promise after it caused an uproar in October, when it announced that …

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• 2019: An IBM i Year To Review

  December 16, 2019 Alex Woodie

  And. . . stop! Put down your pencils, class. The test is over. We have made it through another year. Well, okay, we have almost made it through most of this year. But with just two weeks left, now is the time to wrap it all up and revisit the biggest IBM i stories to make news in the year that was 2019.

  It all started back in January, when…

  IBM jacked up the prices on IBM Lab Services engagements by more than 10 percent. Whereas it used to cost $3,125 per day to have the benefit of an IBM …

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• No developerWorks Content Will Be Left Behind, IBM Promises

  November 25, 2019 Alex Woodie

  IBM faced a stiff backlash last month when it announced plans to shut down a popular developerWorks portal, leaving it up to content owners to find a new home for their content. Since then, the company has taken steps to reassure worried customers that no content will be lost as part of the move.

  IBM hasn’t significantly changed its plans, which call for the developerWorks Connections website and all developerWorks Connections applications to be taken offline or deactivated on December 31 of this year. All of the content that is hosted there – including thousands of blogs, files, forums, wikis, …

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• IBM to Kill DeveloperWorks Connections Site

  October 30, 2019 Alex Woodie

  IBM announced last week that it’s planning to sunset the developerWorks Connections website and developerWorks Connections applications on December 31, 2019. The company is planning to launch new websites and apps to host community discussions around its platform. The IBM i community reacted poorly to the announcement.

  IBM started warning developerWorks users about the pending change on October 14. On a FAQ page, IBM stated:

  “As part of the overall IBM effort to reduce the number of duplicate client interaction portals and simplify the user experience with the digital side of IBM, we are sunsetting the developerWorks Connections platform …

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• IBM i TRs Bring Database Enhancements, Too

  October 30, 2019 Alex Woodie

  The heart of the IBM i server is its database, so it’s natural that we would see some enhancements to Db2 for i with delivery of IBM i 7.4 Technology Refresh 1 and 7.3 TR 7 next month. The new features may not be earth-shaking, but they deliver some useful functionality nonetheless.

  Let’s start with some foundational changes to the database itself, including the way that database engineers architect the tables that store information in the database. With 7.4 TR1, IBM i shops can now add a new child table to the database without having an exclusive lock on the …

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• IBM i Badges Reward You For Community Participation

  October 20, 2019 Alex Woodie

  If you are proficient on the IBM i platform and active in the IBM i community, then you might be interested in the new IBM i Community Badge Program sponsored by Big Blue that rewards IBM i professionals with digital certificates for actively engaging with the community. Nearly 100 badges have already been handed out, so don’t be surprised when they start popping up on the Web.

  The IBM i Community Badge Program officially debuted last Tuesday, October 8 – the same day that IBM launched the latest Technology Refreshes (TRs) for IBM i 7.3 and 7.4. The program, which …

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• IBM i 7.3 And 7.4 Get Their Autumn Tech Refreshes

  October 9, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Big Blue is hosting its IBM Systems Technical University this week, and used the occasion to quietly launch the Technology Refreshes, or TRs as they are known, for IBM i releases 7.3 and 7.4. If you were running around the Venetian Hotel, you could probably stitch together the extent of the updates to the platform, and to be honest, we are still trying to get all of the details, which were not available as we went to press.

  We will tell you what we know now, and then circle back and drill down into the details as appropriate.

  First of …

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