• RPG Gets the ‘Splits’ with Latest TRs

  May 5, 2021 Alex Woodie

  The latest batch of Technology Refreshes (TRs) for IBM i 7.4 and 7.3 wasn’t a barnburner by any means. But the twice-yearly update brought a little bit of new stuff for everybody, including RPG programmers, who gain three new built-in functions, one of which is called %SPLIT.

  RPG remains the most popular language on the IBM i platform, with a solid 87 percent share, according to the recent HelpSystems Marketplace Report, nearly twice the share of Java and over four times the share of COBOL. Good old Report Program Generator, for what it’s worth, is the closest thing to the …

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• What’s New With BRMS, PowerHA, And Db2 Mirror

  April 28, 2021 Alex Woodie

  The latest IBM i Technology Refreshes (TRs) brought a number of enhancements to various parts of the operating system and related licensed products. That includes new stuff for its backup and recovery product, BRMS, as well as the two high availability offerings, PowerHA and Db2 Mirror.

  On the Backup and Recovery Media Services (BRMS) front, IBM added several new features with IBM i 7.4 TR4 and IBM i 7.3 TR10, including new SQL services that returns log information for BRMS activities. This new SQL service generates the same information that the Display Log for BRM (DSPLOGBRM) command does, but it …

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• Big Blue Unveils Spring 2021 IBM i Technology Refreshes

  April 12, 2021 Alex Woodie

  IBM tomorrow will announce the latest round of Technology Refreshes (TRs) for the current versions of the operating systems. With IBM i 7.4 TR4 and 7.3 TR10, IBM is focusing its efforts on extending automation across various components of the operating system, including the database, security, and high availability. But a surprise also awaits IBM i enthusiasts who are visually inclined.

  IBM gave IT Jungle a preview of the announcements that will go public tomorrow, and (very kindly) gave us permission to cover them in today’s issue of The Four Hundred. That means that the announcement materials will not …

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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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• The Fall Technology Refreshes Are Almost Here

  October 5, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  There has been a spring-fall rhythm to the cadence of software updates for along time, but the creation of the OpenStack cloud controller by NASA and Rackspace Hosting really snapped the commercial Linux distros into an April and October cycle of commercial rollups. And so, after many years of Technology Refreshes that follow the same rhythm, we come to expect updates to IBM i about now.

  And starting tomorrow, IBM will be rolling out the fall Technology Refreshes for the current releases. That would be IBM i 7.3 TR9 and IBM i 7.4 TR3. And these, unlike those partial Technology …

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• The Technology Refreshes That Are Not TRs As We Know Them

  May 27, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  All of us have been expecting the Technology Refreshes – that is IBM i 7.3 TR8 and IBM i 7.4 TR2 – to come out on May 15. And when that didn’t happen, a bunch of us started scratching our heads a bit. Thus far, as we go to press, Big Blue has not put out a formal statement to customers about what is going on, but a number of big IBM i customers received a notification from somewhere up the chain of command about the situation, while at the same time, unbeknownst to many, IBM i chief architect Steve …

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• Here’s What’s In the Latest IBM i Technology Refreshes

  April 15, 2020 Alex Woodie

  As expected, IBM today officially unveiled its spring Technology Refreshes for IBM i. Among the goodies that will become available for IBM i 7.4 TR2 or IBM i 7.3 TR8 (or both) are enhancements to Db2 Mirror, a new approach to tape library virtualization, improvements to open source, and new features and functionality around Db2, RPG, RDi, and security, too.

  Months ago, IBM execs circled April 14 on their calendars as the day for the big IBM 7.4 TR2 and IBM i 7.3 TR8 reveal, with the idea that the following week’s POWERUp conference in Atlanta, Georgia (now canceled, but …

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• Big Blue Changes Gears Slightly With IBM i TR Plan

  April 6, 2020 Alex Woodie

  The coronavirus has infected over a million people around the globe and forced hundreds of millions of employees to work from home. But it won’t stop IBM from announcing the next batch of Technology Refreshes, ostensibly IBM i version 7.4 TR2 and IBM i version 7.3 TR8, sometime in the next couple of weeks. Its plans for sharing the information, however, have changed.

  IBM has essentially shuttered its lab in Rochester, Minnesota, which falls under that state’s social distancing orders to help prevent the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19. More than 80 percent of the United States is …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 22, Number 6

  February 12, 2020 Doug Bidwell

  Alright people, the big news for the week is that Rational Developer for i, version 9.6.0.7, has just been released. Other than that, it has been relatively quiet on the PTF front. There are some nips and tucks for the three releases that are still being supported.

  They are as follows:

  PTF Groups 7.4

  • SAP support requited PTF list for IBM i

  PTF Groups 7.3

  • SAP support requited PTF list for IBM i

  PTF Groups 7.2

  • SAP support requited PTF list for IBM i
  • Temporary Storage PTFs

  PTF Groups 7.1

  • Nothing to see here, move along. . . .

  New …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 21, Numbers 51 And 52

  January 6, 2020 Doug Bidwell

  The PTFs keep rolling even through the holidays, so this is our time to get caught up with the last two weeks of patches in 2019 as the new year is beginning.

  In PTF Number 51, we dug a little deeper into the issue we found out about just as The Four Hundred was going on hiatus where LPARs are hanging on machines that have the latest Technology Refreshes applied to IBM i 7.3 and IBM i 7.4 in cases where the Hardware Management Console (HMC) is not managing the partitions.

  The details of the issue with the Technology Refreshes …

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