• 40 Years Of DB2, But Even More For That No-Name Database Embedded In The System/38

  October 2, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Last week, Big Blue celebrated the 40^th anniversary of the launch of its Database 2 relational database management system for its venerable System/370, System 308X, and System/390 mainframes. It is now called Db2, because marketing people can’t leave anything alone, and even though we now have this thing called Db2 for i, IBM didn’t mention this red-headed stepchild of a relational database as part of its celebration.

  Not even once. And that’s just fine by us because the integrated relational database management system that has been the heart of our venerable System/38 and its progeny was never DB2/400 or …

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• API Dev Tool Delivers For Trucking Outfit

  October 2, 2023 Alex Woodie

  When the IT leaders at Ward Transport & Logistics set out to find a product that would allow them to call outbound APIs from their IBM i server for a new dynamic pricing system, they had an inkling of what they wanted. But when they looked for an API development tool in the IBM i market, they were surprised at what they found.

  From its headquarters in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Ward Transport & Logistics provides less than truckload (LTL) service to customers throughout the region. The company’s 1,600 employees help Ward’s customers move freight with a fleet of 750 power units …

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• Guru: TryIT – You’ll Like It

  October 2, 2023 Ted Holt

  I have watched children play Whac-a-mole, but I’ve never played it myself, perhaps because the game unpleasantly reminds me of programs that I have had to work on. I fix one bug, only to see another bug rear its ugly little head. Life’s too short to endure such nonsense. Besides, it is embarrassing for someone to tell me that the program I supposedly just fixed is still broken.

  Suppose you’re working on a 4,000-line RPG program and you comment out lines 650-660. What you don’t realize at the time is that a variable used in line 2755 has to …

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• It’s Time To Tell Us How It Is And What You’re Doing

  October 2, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The IBM i Marketplace Survey and its accompanying report and the webinar that goes over the results of the survey are an invaluable resource for the IBM i community. This is particularly so since IDC, Gartner, Forrester, and the other IT market researchers and consultancies have long since stopped tracking Power Systems in any kind of detail and certainly don’t spend a lot of time on the IBM i portion of it.

  Big Blue itself may have lots of insight into its customer base, but it certainly shares very little of that information with the IBM i community. (We get …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 40

  October 2, 2023 Doug Bidwell

  In case you have been sleeping under a rock, or under an apple tree, or under a bridge, the IBM i 7.3 operating system release reached its end of standard support this Saturday on September 30. So now if you plan to keep IBM i 7.3 in production, you have to pay for an extended support Software Maintenance contract with Big Blue. You also have to do the math on whether it is worth it to hang back or to move to IBM i 7.5, which has been generally available since May 2022.

  Here is the rundown of PTF Groups …

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• Shield Builds on Success with Nagios for IBM i

  September 27, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Traditional system monitoring tools on IBM i are valuable, but they have one big downside: They often require an operator to sit there and stare at the screen to detect when things go wrong. “That gets old very quickly,” says Chris Hird, the Shield Advanced Solutions director who found an alternative approach in Nagios.

  Nagios is unique among monitoring tools – at least in the IBM i world – in that it actively runs checks for a variety of systems on monitored machines on a continuous basis. It is constantly pinging target server (and network and storage devices) to check …

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• Why You Should Be Concerned About the MGM ‘Vishing’ Attack

  September 27, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Las Vegas casino giant MGM Resorts International has lost millions of dollars this month and suffered damage to its brand as a result of a high-profile ransomware attack that is still ongoing across several of its properties. The hackers that infiltrated MGM’s computer systems are said to have used a low-tech social engineering technique dubbed “vishing” that just about any company is susceptible to, including IBM i shops.

  The systems that hackers shut down on September 11 may or may not be IBM i servers or connected to them. MGM has been an IBM i user in the past, just …

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• IBM Bolsters Database Security with Guardium 12.0

  September 27, 2023 Alex Woodie

  A new release of the Guardium database security software is expected to help customers detect insider threats faster and better comply with audit mandates, according to IBM. Guardium 12.0 also brings expanded support for databases and easier management in hybrid cloud environments, the company says.

  IBM bought Guardium back in 2009 in order to improve its capability to monitor databases for possible security violations and SQL injection attacks. The security software helped to automate database security tasks by implementing a policy-based control layer for transactions as well as anomaly detection routines to single out potentially criminal behavior that would otherwise …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, September 27

  September 27, 2023 Jenny Thomas

  Investing in the future of the IBM i is not something we hear much about. So, when we learned about a new fellowship program from Kisco Systems, we were all ears. The goal of this new program is to encourage IBM i customers to launch careers by helping them develop IBM i skills in house. Applicants for the fellowship must be sponsored by an active IBM i customer and will receive: free IBM i and RPG training; a one-year COMMON membership including registration for two conferences; and recognition in the IBM i community through podcasts and the COMMON Education Foundation. …

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• The IBM i Marketplace Survey Needs Your Input

  September 27, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It is hard to believe it, but this is the tenth year that Fortra, formerly known as HelpSystems, is taking a survey of the IBM i customers base so it can put together a report to tell us all how we are doing.

  The IBM i Marketplace Survey and its accompanying report and the webinar that goes over the results of the survey, which are both presented each February, are an invaluable resource for the IBM i community. This is particularly so since IDC, Gartner, Forrester, and the other IT market researchers and consultancies have long since stopped tracking Power …

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