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IBM i Community To Get Closer Look At Watson
February 27, 2017 Dan Burger
The cogs in cognitive are turning. And there are indications that IBM is ready to go beyond the story of how it works to stories about it is working. The messengers remain somewhat tight lipped, but we can expect cognitive to be a celebrated technology at the COMMON conference in early May.
Watson, the face of IBM cognitive computing, is highly recognizable. Bluemix, IBM’s cloud platform for building, running, and managing apps and services, including Watson, is getting more attention. And the number of APIs that pull this together with integration points for all platforms, including IBM i, …
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More IBM i Predictions For 2017
January 25, 2017 Alex Woodie
The great thing about crystal balls is everybody gets their own view. One man’s (or woman’s) view of the future is different from the next. When prophesizing about the IBM i platform, people tend to have different viewpoints, which is part of what makes this exercise so much fun (well that, and all the extra coffee and donuts we editors enjoy while letting you do all the work).
We gave you a taste of things to come with our first installment of 2017 IBM i predictions. Back by popular demand, here’s round two of IBM i predictions, beginning with the …
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IBM i Trends, Concerns, And Observations
January 23, 2017 Dan Burger
There is far more going on in IBM i shops than many non-IBM i people would expect. And the truth of the matter is that some IBM i shops might be surprised to find out what other shops are up to. The IBM i Marketplace Survey is one of our windows into that world. And it’s just been compiled for the third consecutive year. We have been watching and reporting on this survey and the trends it identifies because it is one of the best finger-in-the-wind indicators of the directions IBM i shops are headed.
There are more than a …
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IBM i Open Source Business Architect Lays Out A Plan
January 18, 2017 Dan Burger
Enterprise level application development is no place for open source languages. Can you believe it? That was once the widely accepted truth. Jiminy Crickets! Things have changed. The number of the stable open source distributions available with comprehensive support and maintenance goes well beyond common knowledge. Industry giants, successful SMB players, and mom and pop businesses are finding good reasons to use open source. Even IBM uses open source for internal business reasons.
There are reasons for you to do the same.
Before you recoil and brace for a “mind your own business and I’ll mind mine” retaliation against open …
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IBM i Modernization Gets a Newlook Accelerator
December 14, 2016 Dan Burger
Legacy applications tend to outlive the predictions of their imminent demise. The trouble they cause can be costly, though, as maintenance and vanishing skills for out-of-date programming languages are problems. Modernizing applications remains a priority in many IBM midrange shops, where reuse of existing IBM i 5250 screens and RPG (and COBOL) code is being closely examined. Tools like Accelerator from Surround Technologies and Newlook from Looksoftware are getting attention, too.
The latest collaboration from these two software vendors results in the generation of an IBM i-based user interface that’s accessible from any desktop or mobile device with a browser.
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Vulnerabilities In 3DES Encryption Put It Out To Pasture In IBM i
November 14, 2016 Alex Woodie
IBM i customers should stop using 3DES, also known as Triple DES, ciphers due to the SWEET32 vulnerabilities that could leave sensitive information unprotected as it moves between client and server via the OpenSSL and OpenVPN protocols. This was the gist of a security alert sent last week by IBM, which also issued new PTFs to address the problems in its own IBM i products.
On November 4, IBM issued security bulletin N1021697, which discussed what to do about so-called SWEET32 security vulnerabilities in OpenSSL and OpenVPN. The security problems, which are detailed in CVE-2016-2183 (for OpenSSL) and
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RPG Open Source Horse Pulls IBM i Community Plow
November 7, 2016 Dan Burger
The RPG development community is shrinking. I don’t mean because old programmers are riding into the sunset. I’m talking about collaboration and its ability to guide development that benefits the community by addressing the chAllanges of next generation applications for IBM midrange shops. Not that a collaborative open source culture is thriving here. But it could and it should. There are efforts to get this under way. And that will figuratively shrink the community.
Tim Rowe, IBM i business architect for application development and systems management, supports the idea.
“Why not have an RPG open source community? We have a
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What’s In A Save File?
October 4, 2016 Ted Holt
Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here.
Juliet wondered, “What’s in a name?” Ted wondered, “What’s in a save file?” The Display Save File (DSPSAVF) command would show me only so much, so I wrote a utility to give me more information. Maybe it will be helpful to you.
It’s common for me to exchange save files with other IBM i professionals. One problem I often run into is that someone (who might be me) cannot restore a save file to their system because the save file was created for a more recent release of
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How Do You Do That With RDi? Part 1: Copy A Source Member
September 13, 2016 Susan Gantner
I’m an RDi fan. I make no secret about that. Even so I occasionally find things that I need to do that just seem easier or faster to do with PDM in the green screen. I don’t really mind that. I nearly always have a green screen session sitting just next to my RDi workbench anyway. But when I can find a way to do a function as easily in RDi, I prefer to do that so that I don’t need to switch modes as much.
This tip is the first in a series on things that I find some
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TEMBO Adds Development Tool to Database Modernization Kit
August 17, 2016 Alex Woodie
TEMBO Technology Lab is beefing up its DB2 for i modernization solution. The South African provider of DB2 for i database modernization solutions has reached an agreement with Relational Data to resell its rapid application development tool for IBM i as part of its core Adsero Optima (AO) suite.
Based in West Jordan, Utah, Relational Data is a longtime provider of IBM i-based applications and tools to the education market. Its OnePoint suite of software automates a range of processes for schools, including recording grades, managing student and parent data, and streamlining back-office functions like operations, HR, and finance.
The