• Db2 PTF Group Enhancements Target Web Services, Audit Journal

  October 4, 2021 Alex Woodie

  It is indisputable that the Db2 for i database is the beating heart of the IBM i platform. There were no earthshattering enhancements to this database in the latest batch of Technology Refreshes for IBM i 7.3 and 7.4 that IBM announced and shipped last month. But there were a few items worth mentioning that shipped in the Db2 PTF Group, including new HTTP commands for calling the database via REST and new SQL-based commands for querying the security audit journal.

  The top new Db2 for i feature arguably is the new set of functions for HTTP requests to consume …

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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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• Eradani Drives Simplification with API Tool Update

  September 15, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Eradani has always sought to simplify the application programming interface (API) enablement process as much as possible for its IBM i customers. And with the launch of Eradani Connect version 4.1, which features a new GUI, pre-built templates of APIs, and a catalog for the REST-style Web services created with the tool, the Northern California company is taking the simplification mantra to new levels.

  The world is chock full of Web services. Whether it’s real-time weather data, a shipping services, an ecommerce application, or a tax calculator, somebody somewhere is providing information over the Internet. These external APIs generally are …

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• GraphQL’s Emerging Role in Modernization of Monolithic Applications

  August 30, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Every now and then, a technology emerges that lifts up everything around it. GraphQL has the potential to be a technology like that, and that’s good news for customers running older, established applications, such as those that run on IBM iron.

  IBM’s mainframe and its midrange IBM i server often are maligned as old, washed-up, legacy platforms, but people who say that are missing a key distinction: it’s usually not the server that’s old. In most cases, it’s the application that was first deployed in the Clinton Administration (or earlier) that is the problem.

  Companies typically have many reasons for …

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• Calling All IBM i Platforms. . .

  August 16, 2021 Daniel Magid

  In a microservices world, all elements of what used to be monolithic application programs are now chunks of code linked to each other using any number of application programming interfaces, or APIs. Those APIs can be based on a remote procedure call, or RPC, architecture, which is a kind of generic distributed client/server approach, or the REST – short for representational state transfer – architecture favored by parts of the commercial Web software stack that has dramatically grown in popularity in the past two decades. Either way – and in fact, there are more than two ways – APIs are …

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• Domino 12 Comes To IBM i

  August 16, 2021 Alex Woodie

  HCL Technologies, which now owns the Lotus Notes and Domino family, started shipping Domino 12 two months ago. Surprisingly, the new version is now available on the IBM i platform, where a substantial number of companies still run Notes and Domino applications.

  Back in late 2017, you will remember, an agreement was struck between IBM and HCL Technologies regarding Notes and Domino, the groupware software that had languished on the Big Blue vine for years. HCL made development of Domino 10 a priority, and finally shipped the 10th edition of the product on IBM i in early 2019. …

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• So You Want To Do Containerized Microservices In the Cloud?

  June 30, 2021 Alex Woodie

  As a modernization consultant working in IBM’s Rochester, Minnesota, lab, Amy Anderson gets to hear from some of the most tech-savvy IBM i shops in the world. Her job requires her to know where shops are now, listen to where they want to go, and chart a path that takes them there. That can sometimes be quite a challenge, especially considering the rapid pace of technological change at the moment.

  “One of the things that we’re seeing now is the whole industry now is focused on modernization,” Anderson said during her session at the recent NAViGATE conference hosted by COMMON …

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• In Search of Multi-Modal Data Integration

  May 5, 2021 Alex Woodie

  As the number of data sources that companies use goes up, so too does the complexity of the data pipelines that bring it all together. Instead of using a mix of different tools and technologies for ETL, ELT, and batch integration, some users are seeking a single multi-modal data integration tool that can deliver multiple integration approaches.

  One company providing multi-modal data integration is Equalum. The company’s DataOps offering works in various methodologies, including capturing real-time database updates using change data capture (CDC) technology; batch-based extract, transform, and load (ETL) and ELT; and REST- and SOAP-based data integration using …

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• On Your iRadar: Super Smart Chatbots

  April 28, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Don’t look now, but thanks to breakthroughs in natural language processing (NLP), we’re on the cusp of having chatbots that can provide human-like question-answering capabilities. Within a matter of years, according to experts, basic communication between companies and their customers will be handled by AI, leaving humans to handle tougher cases and VIPs.

  The key breakthrough driving advances in NLP are large language models, specifically a class of language model called a transformer network. These transformer networks use deep learning methods to essentially learn the right sequence for words to go together. The order of words has been one of …

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• How The Latest TRs Bolster The Core IBM i OS

  October 7, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Yesterday was Technology Refresh (TR) day for IBM and its IBM i operating system, and Big Blue didn’t disappoint. The company unveiled new releases of IBM i 7.4 and 7.3 that bring a slew of new capabilities to the core operating system as well as surrounding offerings like Db2 Mirror, ACS, and RDi. In this article, we’ll look at enhancements to the core OS and related key features.

  During a COMMON webcast Tuesday, IBM i Chief Architect Steve Will touched broadly on a number of enhancements that soon will be available in the TRs. Most of the new capabilities will …

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