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IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 22

June 5, 2023 Doug Bidwell

Welcome back after the Memorial Day holiday, and our thanks to all who have served and who currently serve.

There is a slew of security issues that you need to deal with on the IBM i platform. So let’s get to it.

First, we have Security Bulletin: IBM Java SDK and IBM Java Runtime for IBM i are vulnerable to exposing sensitive information due to flaws and configurations (CVE-2023-30441), which you can find out more about here. The vulnerability can be fixed by applying the latest Java Group PTF. Releases 7.5, 7.4, 7.3, and 7.2 of IBM i will …
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Thoroughly Modern: Good Security Is Just As Important As Good Code

June 13, 2022 Pauline Brazil Ayala

Can my IBM i really be hit with a virus? Can it be hit with ransomware?

These are the questions I regularly get from clients as a security expert with more than 20 years of experience. With the pervasiveness of these ransomware threats and sophisticated cyberattacks that we’re seeing in recent times, it only makes sense that we pay close attention to these threats.

Security on the IBM i is a complex topic, and it is not one that is easily tackled with a few bullet points and tweaks of systems settings. Just like programming on the platform, for that …
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Locking Down Exit Point And IFS Vulnerabilities On IBM i

March 24, 2021 Pauline Brazil Ayala

It’s true that the IBM i server is among the most securable servers on the planet. But all too often, customers do not take the time to secure their environments properly. This is particularly true for two of the most oft-neglected components of the IBM i environment: exit points and the IFS.

IBM introduced exit points with the launch of OS/400 V3R1 way back in 1994. We remember that version well here at Trinity Guard, because soon after that, we developed the industry’s first exit point monitoring software for the AS/400 at PentaSafe, the spiritual predecessor of our company. …
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Guru: Use The Administration Runtime Expert To Validate Your System Configuration

June 22, 2020 Dawn May

Using the Administration Runtime Expert (ARE) to validate system configuration settings is an easy way to confirm configuration values are set the way you want them to be. You can use ARE to ensure these system configuration settings are consistent across multiple IBM i partitions or to verify settings have not changed on an individual partition. In this second in a series of articles on ARE, we’ll walk through the steps to set up a basic template to validate system configuration settings.

The first step is to identify what system configuration attributes you want to make sure are consistent or …
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Guru: Introduction to the Administration Runtime Expert

June 1, 2020 Dawn May

Business-critical applications must be up and running reliably without failure. When something unexpected occurs, you must identify the cause and correct it quickly. Whether you’re a developer launching a new application, enhancing an existing application, or maintaining a legacy application, or an administrator managing the infrastructure, we all want to find ways to make our jobs easier, and unexpected surprises are not fun. I expect the relentless push to do more with less is only going to intensify while the tolerance for failure keeps dropping. Yet identifying points of failure can be tricky as complexities scale.

IBM i offers a …
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Guru: Copy From Stream File FMTOPT(*NOCHK)

April 13, 2020 Bob Cozzi

Using SQL frequently, as I do, I tend to look for solutions to problems that can be resolved using the database language (i.e., SQL). Sometimes I have to invent a missing piece of the puzzle. Often that entails writing a User-Defined Function (UDF) for use in SQL, but sometimes a CL command is the better choice.

Recently I had a situation where what the client calls an “EDI File” was being downloaded using sftp on the IBM server running i. This file is created at a vendor that runs IBM mainframes (an actual mainframe by the way) and the file …
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Guru: Passing Parameters To Python

August 5, 2019 Mike Larsen

Python scripts offer great benefits to developers, whether used standalone or in conjunction with RPG programs. As I’ve been exploring Python and recently I had a need to execute a Python script from an RPG program. In addition to executing the script, I also wanted to pass it parameters.

One of the benefits of passing parameters is to give us the ability to soft-code programs or scripts. Soft-coding makes programs more flexible and re-usable, and helps to reduce maintenance.

To illustrate how to do this, I’ve coded a very simple RPG program and an even simpler Python script. I’ll start …
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Guru: IBM i Save File Compression Options

April 1, 2019 Michael Sansoterra

As I finished populating some test tables with a large volume of data on a small and transient IBM i partition in the cloud, I thought life was good. But my countenance fell as I realized the tables plus OS hogged over 70 percent of the disk space. I wondered how to get all the data into a single save file for safe keeping.

The buzzer in my mind was loud and clear: it ain’t gonna work, you don’t have enough room. As I loathed the thought of using multiple save files to save my test data, I remembered that …
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Building Out The .NET Stack Around Mono for IBM i

March 13, 2019 Alex Woodie

The first release of a Mono .NET port to IBM i was issued last year. Since then, the IBM i open source community has been busy building many of the other middleware components that will make it easier for developers to build IBM i applications using Microsoft tooling.

Mono was ported to AIX and IBM i (via the PASE AIX runtime) last year, which gave IBM i and AIX shops the capability to run the open source .NET runtime on Power Systems servers, thus opening the door to allowing Microsoft‘s highly regarded suite of development tools to be …
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Guru: DB2 For i XML Composition And The IFS

June 11, 2018 Michael Sansoterra

Hey, Mike! Regarding Composing An XML Document From Relational Data, Part 1, I have built an XML document using DB2 and i. When I run the query, I get a worthless result set. How do I use the SQL XML functions to get a usable XML file?

This question comes from reader RA, and he doesn’t exaggerate. The result set from his XML-based query looks like this:
```
....+....1....+....2....+....3....+....4....+
************Beginning of data************** 

XMLDATA 
-------- 
#CGULIB#

  1 RECORD(S) SELECTED.

 ************End of Data********************
```
Notice that DB2 for i does nothing to make the XML attractive to human eyes as the entire XML …
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