• Guru: Qualified Files – Underused and Unappreciated

  September 14, 2020 Ted Holt

  When IBM adds a new feature to the RPG compiler, they do so for a reason. That’s why I try to learn new techniques. I hope they’ll improve the quality of the source code I write. One relatively new feature that I do not see widely used is the qualified file. In the following paragraphs, I’d like to tell you why I like qualified files and how to use them.

  To understand the need for qualified files, it may be good to begin with a brief lesson on the history of the RPG language. When RPG was originally developed, the …

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• IBM’s Possible Designs For Power10 Systems

  August 31, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In the past two weeks, we have been telling you about the future Power10 processor that will eventually be able to support the IBM i platform as well as AIX, Big Blue’s flavor of Unix, and Linux, the open source operating system that is commercially exemplified by IBM’s Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution. The leap in performance with Power10 is akin to those we saw between the generations spanning from Power6 through Power9.

  This week, we want to contemplate the systems that will be using the Power10 chip and how they will be similar to and different from past and …

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• Cobalt Iron Supports Multiple LPARs with VTL

  July 22, 2020 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops will be able to back up multiple LPARs to an individual virtual tape library (VTL) from Cobalt Iron, the company announced recently. The new capability overcomes a limitation that has existed since the company started to support IBM i with its data protection service a couple of years ago.

  Cobalt Iron is a Lawrence, Kansas-based provider of enterprise data protection services. The company’s flagship offering, called Compass, provides backup, recovery, and related services for or all major computer platforms, including servers running on-prem, virtualized environments, and systems and applications running in clouds.

  Some of Cobalt Iron’s customers …

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• IBM Revamps Entry Power Servers With Expanded I/O, Utility Pricing

  July 14, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Believe it or not, but it has been two and a half years since the first Power9 server shipped and it has been more than two years since the entry Power Systems machines – that would be the Power S914, the Power S922, and the Power S924 machines, code-named “ZZ” after the country-rock-blues band from Houston – were first announced. And today, these machines are getting an I/O makeover.

  And specially for IBM i shops, IBM is rolling out a single-core version of the Power S922 that will offer better bang for the buck as well as lower acquisition cost …

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• Guru: One Way To Deal With Two Null Formats

  July 8, 2019 Ted Holt

  Hey, Ted:

  We are building a new system and want to use modern programming and database techniques. I have had quite a time trying to get nulls to act right. It gets confusing fast because RPG handles them differently than the way embedded SQL does. When using SQL for I/O, how do we handle the two null formats?

  — Brian

  There are several ways to go about the “problem” of nulls. Let me give you one simple method, but keep in mind that it’s not the only way.

  First, let’s create a table and put some data into it.

  create 

  …

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• Speaking The SQL Lingua Franca On IBM i

  June 3, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  No matter what the job is, we all start out somewhere that is pretty far from being an expert and we depend on our elders and mentors to help us learn all the tricks and get good at the work.

  So it is with the nearly ubiquitous database query language, Structured Query Language, or SQL for short. It started out in the head of IBMer Ted Codd back in 1969, which was coincidentally when the System/3 minicomputer launched and its successor many generations later, the System/38 in 1978, was the first IBM system and the first system in the world …

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• Deep Dive On IBM i 7.4 And IBM i 7.3 TR6 Hardware Limits

  April 29, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As everybody knows by now, IBM has announced both the Technology Refresh 6 for IBM i 7.3 and the shiny new IBM i 7.4 release. We did a brief overview of these operating system releases in last Wednesday’s issue, concurrent with the launch and ahead of their respective May 10 and June 21 general availability dates, to put them into perspective. Now, it is time to get into the nuts and bolts and bits and bytes of what Big Blue has announced.

  Rather than try to do it all in one story or possibly two, we are breaking it …

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• Power Systems Refreshes Flash Drives, Promises NVM-Express For IBM i

  April 29, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  There was a time after Mark Olsen retired a few years back when the presentations concerning Power Systems hardware as it related to the IBM i platform were not as detailed as we were used to. But a new team of people are running the show now, and they are getting better and that helps us all understand what Big Blue is doing on the hardware front even better.

  As part of the April 23 announcements, IBM added a bunch of new storage and networking peripherals to its Power8 and Power9 system lineup. You can read all about it in …

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• Melding System Monitoring And Capacity Planning

  April 24, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  (Sponsored Content) Installing a modern system to run enterprise applications is a pretty tough task, but the job is not done once the iron is in and the databases and applications are up and running. Sophisticated organizations, whether they are large or small, do sophisticated application and system monitoring to keep an eye on how things are running, they have job schedulers that synchronize work to optimize for performance as well as drive up system utilization, and they use all of the information gathered to better plan for the kinds of systems they will need in the future …

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• Guru: Why And How Not to Use The Aretha Franklin I/O Method

  March 4, 2019 Ted Holt

  The Aretha Franklin I/O Method is still used heavily in RPG shops even though a better method has existed for decades. In the following paragraphs, I explain the Aretha Franklin I/O Method, tell you why you should not use it, and show you the superior method.

  First, let me give credit where credit is due. Although I had been using the Aretha Franklin I/O Method since my System/34 days, I never knew it by that name. Then Dan Cruikshank (now retired) of IBM informed me of this terminology. Here’s how it works:

  Assume an RPG program that needs data from …

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