• 2024: An IBM i Year In Review

  December 4, 2024 Alex Woodie

  It’s hard to believe that yet another year is coming to a close. As 2024 rolls to its merciful end, it’s time for us to take stock of the major events and announcements that impacted the IBM i community.

  January

  News broke in late January that revenue in IBM’s Power Systems business grew for the second year in a row in 2023. TPM’s model showed $1.53 billion in external Power Systems sales for the year, which was a hair above the 2022 figure, which was a hair above the 2021 figure. It’s not 2010-era numbers, when the figure was north …

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• What’s New on PHP? Seiden Delivers the Goods

  October 23, 2024 Alex Woodie

  PHP has been around so long on the IBM i server that it’s practically a legacy technology at this point (not that that’s a bad thing). But if you haven’t looked at PHP lately, you might be surprised at what’s going on with the newer releases. PHP guru Alan Seiden recently brought us up to speed with the Web development language with a webinar sponsored by TUG.

  Seiden has been involved with PHP on IBM i for about 20 years. He was playing around with the open source language even before IBM and Zend worked together to bring the first …

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• IBM Introduces Mapepire, The New Db2 For i Client

  September 9, 2024 Alex Woodie

  IBM has released a new client for connecting applications to the Db2 for i database. Dubbed Mapepire, the open source client is designed to be faster, lighter weight, and easier for developers to work with compared to existing ODBC and JDBC database clients, especially in cloud environments.

  Building an application-side database client using existing Db2 for i’s database drivers, such as ODBC and JDBC (included in the JTOpen Java toolbox for IBM i) typically entails cramming a lot of overhead into the client component, says Liam Allan, who helps develop new open source development tooling at IBM.

  “For example, jtopen …

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• IBM Kills Off Fax/400, But Alternatives Are Available

  August 19, 2024 Alex Woodie

  IBM will cease supporting Facsimile Support for i, commonly known as Fax/400, with the next release of the IBM i operating system, it announced last month. That tees up an opportunity for third-party vendors like Fresche Solutions and others to fill the void for a communication technology that is still used by businesses.

  The IBM Facsimile Support for i (5798-FAX) product was not among the group of 16 IBM i products that IBM initially withdrew from sales and support with its discontinuance of support letter back on May 7, the same day that it announced the latest technology refreshes (TRs) …

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• Future-Proof Your Data Strategy With LANSA BI

  July 22, 2024 Stephen Strake

  Last October, with no warning at all, IBM suddenly pulled the plug on its Db2 Web Query business intelligence tool for the IBM i platform. This left a lot of customers in the lurch, since Db2 Web Query is based on but very different from the WebFOCUS business intelligence tool from Information Builders.

  IBM and Information Builders, we later learned, could not come to terms on how to re-license the WebFOCUS engine at the heart of Db2 Web Query, and thus far, IBM has not provided an alternative BI platform or a migration tool for any third-party applications.

  The upshot …

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• Fresche Bolsters MFA with IBM i Exit Point Coverage

  December 6, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Organizations relying on Fresche Solutions’ multi-factor authentication (MFA) to protect their IBM i assets can now implement more fine-grained enforcement by protecting access to IBM i exit points, the company announced recently. The MFA offering also now hooks into enterprise-level MFA solutions.

  MFA has emerged as a minimum standard for protecting critical IT assets and data, as well as for preventing ransomware attacks. Even if a cybercriminal were to obtain the user ID and password to access sensitive applications and data, MFA serves as a difficult-to-overcome barrier that slows, if not prevents, them from actually getting into systems.

  Fresche Solutions …

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• Eradani Lays Waste to API Payload Restrictions

  November 15, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Eradani Connect customers who need to pass large amounts of data to IBM i via external API calls have often been stymied by a built-in restriction in IBM i that limits their payload to a mere 16MB. Those customers will be thrilled that Eradani has launched a new big data connector that smashes those payload restrictions to smithereens.

  Eradani Connect is a packaged application designed to simplify the creation and execution of API calls on IBM i. The software functions as a middleware layer that makes it easy for .NET, JavaScript, and Python developers to get access to the IBM …

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• Rocket Buys Data Integration Provider B.O.S.

  September 18, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Rocket Software has announced the acquisition of B.O.S., a German provider of data integration software. While the software company targets primarily the mainframe with its data integration solutions, Rocket says it’s considering broadening support to IBM i.

  B.O.S. was founded more than 30 years ago to develop data integration solutions that connect the IBM mainframe to other systems. It boasts more than 1,200 installations in 25 countries, including Fortune 50 firms as well as government organizations.

  The company’s flagship product, called tcVision, helps customers move data from their mainframe sources, such as Db2, IMS, VSAM files, ADABAS, and CA DATACOM, …

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• White Hats Completely Dismantle Menu-Based Security

  February 6, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Think menu-based security can prevent cybercriminals from accessing the most important parts of your IBM i system? Think again, as the white hat hacking group Silent Signal recently demonstrated in a real-world penetration test of a bank’s IBM i system through a seemingly restricted green-screen interface.

  Life was demonstrably simpler for midrange administrators before the Internet took off. Before we had all these different protocols providing access to applications and data – ODBC, FTP, SQL, Remote Command, etc. – an administrator could feel somewhat confident that users weren’t accessing things they shouldn’t by simply configuring their menus in a restrictive …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 4

  January 23, 2023 Doug Bidwell

  Here are some reminders to start off the IBM i PTF Guide this week.

  First, there are new releases for Access Client Solutions and the ODBC database driver. (See ACS_NAV in the Guide for the links.) The funny bit – funny odd, not funny hilarious – is that version 26 of ACS did not allow companies to create a database source for ODBC, which is serious shortcoming. Now, there is a new version 27 that will let you do it. Here is the updated software:

  Description				   Version
  IBM i Access Client Solutions (1.1.9.1)	   1.1.9.1
  ACS Windows App Pkg English (64bit)	   

  …

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