• No Plan To Support New Nav on Older IBM i Releases, IBM Says

  January 19, 2022 Alex Woodie

  IBM has no plans to support the new version of Navigator for i (i.e., “New Nav”) with older releases of the operating system, despite the existence of the severe Log4j security flaw in the heritage version of Navigator (“Old Nav”). The early, unexpected death of Old Nav also will hasten the adoption of New Nav for customers on current releases, and New Nav will become the default version with an update in March, IBM says.

  Earlier this month, IBM announced that no security patches would be forthcoming for Old Nav, which uses the Log4j code at the heart of a …

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• End of Life Looms for PHP 7.3

  October 13, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Organizations that are running PHP version 7.3 have just over a month to upgrade to a newer version and avoid losing bug fixes and security fixes when 7.3 hits the end of life (EOL) on December 6. The good news is that PHP version 7.4 and 8.0 are stable and will be supported for some time. The not-so-good news is it appears a large number of IBM i shops are still running older releases of the PHP language.

  According to an informal poll conducted by Seiden Group last month, about half of the IBM i shops that participated in a …

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• Rocket Maps IBM i Apps for Modernization Ventures

  September 29, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Many IBM i shops want to start modernizing their applications, but they don’t know where to start. One possible beginning is a new software offering called Rocket Process Insights that that documents how IBM i applications work, and provides a heatmap and statistics that show which screens are the most commonly used.

  The new offering, which Rocket Software unveiled last week, has been a long time in coming, according to Chris Wey, the president of the company’s Power Systems Business Unit. “It’s a brand-new solution from the company and we’re really excited about it,” he told IT Jungle. “It’s …

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• New Nav Puts SQL Services Within Reach

  September 15, 2021 Alex Woodie

  IBM delivered new Technology Refreshes (TRs) for IBM i 7.3 and 7.4 last week, and there’s a lot of good stuff in there. Arguably one of the biggest announcements is the overhaul of IBM i Navigator, which the folks at IBM have taken to calling “New Nav.” But what makes New Nav so special?

  IBM rewrote New Nav from the ground up in Angular, a JavaScript framework for building Web and mobile applications, and PrimeNG, a popular component library for Angular. The combination of these two technologies gives New Nav a fresh-looking interface that will appeal to users of all …

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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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• RPG Gets the ‘Splits’ with Latest TRs

  May 5, 2021 Alex Woodie

  The latest batch of Technology Refreshes (TRs) for IBM i 7.4 and 7.3 wasn’t a barnburner by any means. But the twice-yearly update brought a little bit of new stuff for everybody, including RPG programmers, who gain three new built-in functions, one of which is called %SPLIT.

  RPG remains the most popular language on the IBM i platform, with a solid 87 percent share, according to the recent HelpSystems Marketplace Report, nearly twice the share of Java and over four times the share of COBOL. Good old Report Program Generator, for what it’s worth, is the closest thing to the …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 23, Number 16

  April 19, 2021 Doug Bidwell

  This is what we refer to as Download Heaven here at the IBM i PTF Guide. There is a lot of stuff going on this week. So brace yourself. First, there are new cumulative PTF package updates, or Cumes, as well as the new Technology Refreshes for IBM i 7.3 and IBM i 7.4. There is also a new release of Access Client Solutions.

  Here is the rundown of PTF Groups by IBM i release level:

  PTF Groups 7.4:

  • Technology Refresh 4
  • Latest Cumulative PTF Package C1091740
  • SAP support required PTF list
  • IBM HTTP Server for i
  • IBM i

  …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 23, Number 15

  April 14, 2021 Doug Bidwell

  It’s Ketchup Day here at the IBM i PTF Guide, now that we are back in the groove and getting them back on the normal Wednesday track.

  There was a little bit going in this week, ahead of the launch of the Technology Refreshes for IBM i 7.3 and IBM i 7.4, which were unveiled this week and which The Four Hundred will be analyzing in detail over the coming weeks. Many parts of the software updates will be available starting April 16, but the Database Group for IBM i 7.3 and IBM i 7.4 and the Db2 Mirror …

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• IBM Completes Migration of Knowledge Center to IBM Documentation

  April 7, 2021 Alex Woodie

  For years, the IBM Knowledge Center has been the go-to place to get technical information about how things work in IBM i. Got a question about RPG opcodes or ALLOBJ authority? The Knowledge Center was the place for you. As part of its broader overhaul of its online resources and properties, IBM recently completed the migration of its Knowledge Center to the new site, called IBM Documentation.

  IBM i professionals can find all of the content they have grown accustomed to finding at the Knowledge Center on the new IBM Documentation site, which can be found at www.ibm.com/docs/en. There …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 23, Number 13

  March 31, 2021 Doug Bidwell

  There is a lot of stuff going on this week. First, there are patches for Db2 Web Query, but only for IBM i 7.3 and IBM i 7.4, and we have to wonder if this will eventually be backported to IBM i 7.2 and maybe even IBM i 7.1 given that release has been given extended extended support and is not available on Power9 in limited form in logical partitions.

  There are also three security issues affecting the IBM i platform, as follows:

  • Security Bulletin: IBM Java SDK and IBM Java Runtime for IBM i is affected by CVE-2020-14803 and

  …

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