• The Power S812 Gets Yet Another Stay Of Execution

  July 6, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The Power S812 entry server, which is based on the Power8 processor and which has no analog in the Power9-based Power Systems lineup, has received yet another reprieve from being removed from the Big Blue product catalog. It is a wonder why IBM doesn’t just say it will sell this Lazarus machine indefinitely and get it over with, to be honest.

  The Power S812, particularly the “Mini” variant that IBM announced on Valentine’s Day in 2017, are the skinniest – in terms of processing and memory capacity – of the Power Systems line that supports the IBM i operating …

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• Tapping The Sky For Disaster Recovery

  July 6, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The killer app for IBM i in the cloud, at least for the next several years, is very likely going to be disaster recovery and high availability. Not just because it is so much less expensive to provide these vital infrastructure services on the cloud than it is on premises, but because so many people still need DR and HA but cannot afford it.

  The cloud is changing that, and a partnership between Skytap, the upstart provider of IBM i server instances in the cloud, and Maxava, the now established but once upstart provider of HA and DR software …

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• Guru: RDi V9.6, Part 9 – RDi Helps with Refactoring Code into Procedures

  July 6, 2020 Susan Gantner

  I’m guessing that you have some RPG code in your shop that’s desperately in need of some refactoring. I have yet to visit an RPG one that wasn’t in that position. If by chance you don’t know what I mean by “refactoring” or why you may need it, I highly recommend that you read Ted Holt’s excellent series of Guru tips on refactoring RPG. I’ve included links to those tips in the Related Stories section below.

  I was inspired to go back and review the entire series after I attended Ted’s session Refactoring RPG: What, Why & How at an …

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• Wire IoT Up To IBM i With Node-RED

  July 6, 2020 Alex Woodie

  The Internet of Things (IoT) brings a new way to think about our digital world. From sensors on a manufacturing line to Twitter messages from the other side of the world, the IoT brings it all together. And with Node-RED, a low-code framework that is available on IBM i, wiring up these data flows into useful applications is surprisingly easy.

  Created by IBM, Node-RED is a Node.JS-based framework for developing event-driven data applications, or “flows,” that deliver a data payload in the form of the JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) data standard, from a source to a destination. Node-RED flows …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 22, Number 26

  July 6, 2020 Doug Bidwell

  Well, we made it through half of 2020, and that is something of a miracle. Let’s hope the second half is not so dramatic. The odds are not favoring that at the moment, but hope springs eternal and that is how we have made it through the past 15,000 years of pre-history to today, if you think about it. It’s helpful to take the long view at critical times.

  As far as PTFs go, there is a new HIPER for the Virtual I/O Server, or VIOS, which we know all you IBM i shops love. The HIPER is IJ25390, and …

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• You’re Only As Old As The Applications You Feel

  June 24, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  You didn’t actually think that we would have forgotten that Sunday, June 21^st, was the 32^nd birthday of the Application System/400, did you? Of course we didn’t forget.

  It was also Father’s Day and the first day of summer, and to be perfectly frank (Soltis), I got a new smoker from my wife and I spent the afternoon learning about the joys of hickory smoked barbeque ribs. It is a gift that just keeps giving, because I made about 40 pounds of meat in various kinds and flavors because I needed to try everything all at once. …

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• IBMiUnit Moves RPG Unit Testing Forward

  June 24, 2020 Alex Woodie

  As IBM i shops break up their monolithic programs into more reusable chunks, it’s reasonable to assume that they would adopt unit testing to make sure those chunks are working properly before promoting them into production. Unit testing hasn’t been widely adopted on the IBM i platform, which is why RPG developers who are looking for a unit testing tool may be interested in a new framework called IBMiUnit.

  IBMiUnit is an open source project that helps programmers test any RPG-based program, subprocedure, or method, including RPG-based SQL. The software, which is modeled off the popular JUnit and xUnit frameworks, …

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• An Investment In APIs For IBM i From Remain Software

  June 24, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Application programming interfaces (APIs) are not new. But API creation and consumption has surged in recent years as developers adopt more modular and extensible architectures for new and modernized applications. IBM i developers are getting into the act, too, which is leading vendors like Remain Software to cater to them with new tools, like its recently announced API Studio.

  A recent survey by API marketplace provider RapidAPI concluded that almost 67 percent of developers expect their API use to increase in 2020 compared to 2019. The company’s CEO, Iddo Gino, said the survey results confirm what the company has seen …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, June 24

  June 24, 2020 Jenny Thomas

  This will be our last Monitor until after the Fourth of July break, which marks the halfway point in the year for us, and this seems like a good time to look back at what 2020 has been for computing. Thanks to the global pandemic (which we are not happy about), we have seen entire workforces move to a remote format and conferences got virtual practically overnight. Sure there have been bumps in the road, but by and large, our ecosystem has been able to overcome and survive. It will be interesting to see how many people go back to …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 22, Number 25

  June 24, 2020 Doug Bidwell

  We’ve got some movement this week on the PowerHA front – new PTFs are available! Get more information here.

  	
  7.2 PowerHA (for IBM i 7.2 and 7.3)	SI73520
  7.4 PowerHA				SI73521
  

  Also, don’t miss this fix: MF67243 – IPL-SRCB6005122-UNPRED SYSTEM HALT DURING IPL TO APPLY PTFS

  This isn’t a HIPER yet, but, sometimes you just have to put these on. Sometimes a fix lets you put on other fixes and this is one of those.

  Security Bulletin: OpenSSL for IBM i is affected by CVE-2020-1967

  5733-SC1	7.1 – SI73429
  		7.2, 7.3 & 7.4 – SI73430
  

  Security Bulletin: …

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