• VS Code Is The Full Stack IDE For IBM i

  March 15, 2023 Jeff Tickner

  Back in January, we talked a bit about the rise of the VS Code integrated development environment that was open sourced by Microsoft back in 2015 and that has been increasingly adopted by developers on all kinds of platforms, not just Windows Server. This week, we want to talk about the new features we are exposing in VS Code for users of the application development tooling available from ARCAD Software.

  First of all, we have brought the cross reference information in our ARCAD Observer tool into VS Code in a way that developers can access the object-level and field-level …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 8

  February 27, 2023 Doug Bidwell

  We are playing catch up a bit here at the IBM i PTF Guide, and apologies for that but it goes that way sometime. There are a bunch of security vulnerabilities that you need to be aware of, including one that covers systems software not from IBM, as we usually track, but file transfer software from Forta (formerly known as HelpSystems). We are going to be keeping a closer eye on third party software security bulletins going forward.

  So first, we have CVE-2023-0669, which explains that GoAnywhere MFT from Fortra (formerly HelpSystems) suffers from a pre-authentication command injection …

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• RPG Use “Skyrocketed” Says IBM i Marketplace Report

  February 20, 2023 Alex Woodie

  RPG has always been the number one development language on IBM i, the platform with which it is most closely linked. But as open source languages like PHP and Java spread on IBM i, some speculated that RPG’s popularity would begin to slip. That hasn’t happened, according to Fortra’s most recent IBM i Marketplace Survey Results report. In fact, usage of RPG has “skyrocketed,” it says.

  From 2015 to 2020, the percentage of Fortra (formerly HelpSystems) Marketplace Survey-takers who chose RPG as one of their development languages stayed steady, hovering around the 84 percent to 89 percent level. Structured Query …

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• Zero-Day Vulnerability in Fortra’s GoAnywhere MFT Being Actively Exploited

  February 15, 2023 Alex Woodie

  A critical security vulnerability in Fortra’s (formerly HelpSystems) managed file transfer (MFT) solution, GoAnywhere MFT, is being actively exploited to steal data from companies and possibly even to spread ransomware according to published reports. Fortra told customers to consider every managed credential in their GoAnywhere environment to be compromised, shut down cloud instances of the service, and issued an emergency patch for the zero-day security vulnerability.

  Security reporter Brian Krebs was the first to share news of the vulnerability, which is described as remote code injection flaw that requires administrative console access for successful exploitation. In a February 2 post …

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• Realizing The Promise Of Cross Platform Development With VS Code

  January 25, 2023 Jeff Tickner

  An integrated development environment is like a tractor or a truck, or indeed any other kind of tool. There are farmers who want a tractor from John Deere or Ford or Massey-Ferguson, contractors who want a Ford or Dodge or GMC truck, and carpenters and electricians who use Dewalt or Milwaukee Electric or Makita cordless tools.

  No matter the choice of tools, ultimately these blue collar workers are going to farm and build things, and the choice of tool should not interfere with that effort. White collar – or far more likely no collar T shirt – programmers are no …

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• 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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• The Steady Growth Of The Low Code Movement

  December 14, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  With IT talent in short supply and expensive as too much demand chases too little supply – a hard concept to get your brains around with over 42 million software developers working around the world creating and maintaining software that has an economic value in excess of $1 trillion a year – it is no surprise that some are looking to low code tools to help automate some aspects of their business.

  Low code is not just happening in the datacenters of small and medium businesses writing new applications to take on new problems and add new functionality to systems. …

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• Top 5 New IBM i Features to Check Out Now That Fall TRs Are GA

  December 7, 2022 Alex Woodie

  All of the new features that IBM unveiled earlier this fall with the Technology Refreshes for IBM i 7.4 and 7.5 (as well as another stealth “non-TR” TR for 7.3) are now generally available. Some of them shipped before December 2, but pretty much all of them are now GA. With so much enterprise computing goodness ready to download, what will you adopt first?

  We know it’s not Christmas yet. But with so many new features, it can be hard to figure out what to do first. While everybody has their own computing priorities, we have our own ideas for …

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• IBM Publishes Power10 Performance Optimize Guide

  December 7, 2022 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops looking to squeeze the most performance out of their Power10 servers have a lot of options available at their disposal. IBM covers many, if not all, of them in its latest performance paper, titled “IBM Power10 performance optimization for IBM i,” which it released last week.

  The Power10 is the most powerful processor IBM ever built. Compared to the Power9 processor, the Power10 delivers 20 percent to 30 percent higher performance per core. And with 25 percent more cores per socket, that means oodles of more processing power to do useful work.

  At a system level, the …

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• Thoroughly Modern: Digital Solutions For IBM i And Beyond

  November 7, 2022 Marcel Sarrasin and Scott Gingerysty

  IT leaders need to develop strategies that address business goals but also look ahead to a changing economic climate and disruptions. Digital innovation (web, mobile, APis, cloud, etc.)  is one of the fastest growing areas of IT. And it’s no wonder – taking on these initiatives while using an iterative approach can deliver quick wins and attainable near-term impacts. This allows organizations to invest in ways that are sustainable.

  As organizations look to new business models, seeing technology as a way to accomplish business objectives is the right approach. Competition, market disruption, growth, cost optimization and responding to client needs …

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