• The Ultimate Set Of Tools

  December 14, 2020 Rob McNelly

  Those of a certain age will certainly remember the moment in Fast Times At Ridgemont High when Jeff Spicoli got himself into a bind after he wrecked his friend’s car. Luckily, Spicoli’s dad was a TV repairman, and he had an ultimate set of tools. Spicoli knew that with those tools, he could fix it. That level of confidence is intoxicating, although in this case it was possibly misplaced.

  I have a friend that lives around the corner from me that actually does have the ultimate set of tools, and knows how to use them. For example, he recently rebuilt …

  Read more

• Big Blue Revives IBM i 7.1 With Power9 Support

  November 16, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We don’t get surprises very often in the Power Systems market, and even fewer in the IBM i sub-market. But last week, we did get a surprise – and it was a pleasant one – as Big Blue decided that it was going to allow for IBM i 7.1, which has long since been removed from marketing and which was just recently given extended extended support through April 2023, to run on selected models of the Power Systems line using Power9 processors.

  That IBM would allow for this is remarkable, and it shows the economic and technical difficulties that many …

  Read more

• Guru: RDi V9.6, Part 10 – Debugger Enhancements

  November 16, 2020 Susan Gantner

  Here I go again – more enhancements to talk about that have come about in RDi V9.6. This time, it’s the debugger that has been enhanced. The 9.6.0.7 fix pack included some new goodies for the debugger.

  Both of the enhanced features were popular Requests for Enhancement (RFEs) — the ability to display very large variable values and the addition of a condition to Service Entry Points (SEPs). These are further proof that the RFE process works. If you haven’t visited the RFE site to vote for your favorite suggested features for RDi, do it now. . . or maybe …

  Read more

• Big Blue Bolsters IBM i High Availability And Data Resiliency

  October 19, 2020 Alex Woodie

  High availability and data resiliency are critical topics in the minds of business owners these days, especially in light of the summer’s disasters, both natural and manmade. To that end, in the latest batch of Technology Refreshes, IBM has bolstered the services that provide high availability and data resilience in IBM i, PowerHA, and BRMS.

  Backup, Recovery, and Media Services (BRMS) is the licensed product that thousands of IBM i shops use to automate their backups and recoveries. Those backups usually involving tape, which was cited by 48 percent of IBM i shops in the 2020 IBM i Marketplace Survey …

  Read more

• 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 …

  Read more

• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 22, Number 21

  May 27, 2020 Doug Bidwell

  As we report elsewhere in this issue, there really is not going to be a Technology Refresh as we know it and as we were all lead to believe was coming for IBM i 7.3 and IBM i 7.4, but rather just a refresh of all the pertinent groups through the PTF process.

  Also, IBM’s Entitled Systems Support (ESS) has finally finished shedding its old coat, and the new one contains current resaves and a new way of asking for things! So be aware of that and take a gander. Moreover, Domino links have changed, thanks to Michael Mayer in …

  Read more

• What’s New In Open Source With The Latest TRs

  April 27, 2020 Alex Woodie

  New technology is exciting. And when it can help you run your business more profitably or efficiently, well, it becomes very exciting. With IBM i, the open source community is arguably the biggest contributor of new technology to the platform. IT Jungle recently checked in Jesse Gorzinski, the IBM i open source architect, to hear how the open source story has improved with the recent technology refreshes.

  Arguably the biggest open source-related enhancement with IBM i 7.4 TR2 and 7.3 TR8 revolves around a change in RPM, the new delivery method that IBM adopted two years ago to distribute new …

  Read more

• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 22, Number 16

  April 20, 2020 Doug Bidwell

  Hello good people of IBM i Land. Just a reminder: The Technology Refreshes for IBM i 7.3 and IBM i 7.4 are not going to be available until the middle of May, so the IBM i PTF Guide will not reflect the changes that are coming until then – even though they have been announced. However, the TR link in the Guide will provide insight into the info on the web about the upcoming TRs. So check it out.

  Also: Resaves are announced but not available yet. See TR link in Guide. And IBM i Access Client Solutions V1.1.8.4, …

  Read more

• IBM i 7.3 Encryption Bolstered With TR8

  April 15, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Customers running IBM i 7.3 got some good news on the security front when IBM announced that the operating system would get support for the latest Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol, version 1.3. And that’s not the only security-related enhancement this group of users received with the new Technology Refreshes.

  Last year, IBM gave IBM i shops the ability to use TLS 1.3, which is strongest publicly available encryption protocol used on the Internet today. TLS 1.3 debuted in the summer of 2018 and has since been adopted by nearly a quarter of sites on the Web, according to surveys. …

  Read more

• What’s New with RDi Version 9.6.0.7

  March 11, 2020 Alex Woodie

  IBM last month unveiled Rational Developer for i (RDi) version 9.6.0.7, the first release of the popular IBM i development environment in about a year. With this release, IBM is giving developers a handful of new capabilities, including the ability to create procedures out of pieces of code, as well as the ability to test incoming parameters.

  RDi is IBM’s flagship integrated development environment (IDE) for the IBM i platform. The product isn’t universally used across the IBM i community, and it’s not free. But many IBM i professionals swear by the graphical and modern IDE, particularly compared to older …

  Read more

Previous Articles Next Articles