• Take The IBM i Marketplace Survey

  October 2, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In days gone by, IBM used to have a great amount of insight into what was going on at AS/400 shops. But somewhere between the iSeries and through the System i down to Power Systems running IBM i and what is, apparently, being called Db2 instead of DB2 these days, with or without i, Big Blue stopped having the kind of insight that helped us not only understand the trends in our community, but how they related – or didn’t – to the larger IT community.

  This community, which is more than a marketplace but still encompasses that, has always …

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• One IBM i Route Into the API Economy

  September 27, 2017 Alex Woodie

  The so-called API Economy is emerging as a legitimate engine for driving the growth of commerce around the world. But with mostly monolithic apps written years ago, the IBM i installed base isn’t well positioned to be a major player. However, there are alternative pathways into the API Economy for IBM i shops, if they know where to look.

  The API Economy refers to the idea that, by exposing bits and pieces of our internal systems out to the world through well-defined application programming interfaces (APIs) – which usually manifest REST-based Web services, although SOAP and XML files will work …

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• A Fast Idle For IBM i Development

  September 27, 2017 Alex Woodie

  One thing that’s clear about Liam Allan is he doesn’t take things slow. At just 20 years of age, Allan is one of the brightest young developers on the platform. Now the British coder is sharing his latest creation with the IBM i world: a lightweight ILE development tool dubbed Idle.

  There are many options when it comes to IBM i development tools, especially if open source, Web-native languages are your thing. There’s no shortage of environments for creating PHP, Node.js or Java apps. The opening of the IBM i platform has been a great thing in that regard.

  But …

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• Latest App Dev Design Tool From MRC Arrives

  September 27, 2017 Dan Burger

  The common thread that runs through application development tools is a desire for simplicity. Ease of use, whether to tool is being used by an experienced programmer or a technologically challenged power user is the prize many companies are searching for. And not all end users have the same Web application goals. Some apps are designed for report writing, business intelligence, executive dashboards, e-commerce, customer portals, or mobile users. And that list could be much longer.

  At michaels, ross & cole, the IBM i software tool developer that prefers lower case letters and the shortened handle mrc, its Java-based …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, September 27

  September 27, 2017 Dan Burger

  Total cost of ownership comparisons have always been an important tool for combating the high up-front cost that competitors use against the IBM i on Power system. Updated reports — one for midsize companies and one for enterprise companies —  recently hit the streets. Two weeks ago, you may have seen an IT Jungle story on these reports. This week their importance is noted in Steve Will’s blog.

  Mention IBM marketing at a gathering of IBM i users and watch the sparks fly. Now IBM has its own Watson Advertising division. This should be interesting. Find out more about Watson …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 38

  September 27, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  Hello fellow IBM i-ers. (Yes, that looks ugly.) This week in the IBM i PTF Guide, you will discover that the Java Group for V6R1 has been updated. Even though V6R1 for IBM i is no longer supported, the licensed programs for that release may be on a different support level.

  By the way, Java Group has been updated in all releases, not just for V6R1, as have the HIPERs and the Backup Recovery Groups. Lots of PTF action this week. Best news is no new Defective PTFs since September 8!

  A big “Thank You” to Charles Charalambou for …

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• The Necessity Of A Power Systems 911

  September 25, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  People are starting to talk about the future, and in some cases perhaps impending, Power9 systems from IBM and its OpenPower partners. The chatter is about machines with two, four, eight, or 16 processors, so far at least. But the one thing I am not hearing anyone talk about is an entry Power box, either with or without the Cognitive Systems label, that has a modestly configured processor complex that is suitable for the IBM i workloads in the current customer base and yet allows them to affordably and quickly expand their capacity to absorb more and more workloads in …

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• Evaluating Your IBM i Encryption Options

  September 25, 2017 Alex Woodie

  In the wake of the Equifax breach, companies are taking a hard look at their security practices, including the use of encryption that renders data unreadable. While database encryption is not a panacea for securing a Db2 for i database – especially if there are other vulnerabilities in an IBM i system – it can play an important role in protecting sensitive data from leaking out into the world.

  Encryption has emerged as a topic in the wake of the massive data breach at Equifax, which lost critical data like names, addresses, and Social Security numbers for 143 million Americans, …

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• Guru: IBM i, .Net, and XMLSERVICE Program and Subprocedure Calls

  September 25, 2017 Richard Schoen

  Our businesses have years of existing IBM i legacy applications that contain priceless business logic. We need to re-purpose that code without re-writing so our existing IBM i business logic can be accessed and used by our desktop applications, web applications, web services, and mobile device applications, which often expect JSON or XML-based data. Instead of re-writing your existing business logic, surface it so the code can be called as-is.

  For this article we’ll focus on the XMLSERVICE remote program call and remote subprocedure calls that can be used to call existing logic based in existing RPG, COBOL and CL …

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• Watson In The Real World

  September 25, 2017 Dan Burger

  The fundamental value of IBM’s Watson technology and the ability to put it to work effectively in IBM i shops is still being sorted out. Certainly, technical challenges exist, but that’s not unique to new technology like cognitive computing. IT by nature is challenging. Learning to do more with technology that’s been around for years also has its challenges. Acquiring knowledge, skills and best practices should be, and generally is, an ongoing habit.

  Sharing what we know about solving challenges helps everyone in the community. So it is with Watson and IBM i. Who is making it work and who …

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