• New IBM i Technology Refreshes Announced; Available Mid-March

  February 14, 2018 Dan Burger

  IBM yesterday announced that Technology Refresh 8 (TR8) for IBM i 7.2 and TR4 for IBM i 7.3 will provide support for Power9 hardware, enhancements for RPG, security enhancements, and a variety of new capabilities for licensed products. The support for Power9 will be covered elsewhere in this issue of The Four Hundred. Here, we’ll provide an overview of the IBM i operating system, licensed programs, and software.

  When TR enhancements include RPG, I like to begin there. Application developers using Rational Development Studio should take note of the new operation code referred to as DATA-INTO, which adds the …

  Read more

• TRs for IBM i 7.3 and 7.2: Enhancements, No Big Surprises

  October 4, 2017 Dan Burger

  With each Technology Refresh, we are reminded that the pace of enhancements IBM brings to its IBM i operating system and related software products is significant and that certain areas are more significant than others. So, the IBM i community is either aligned with these upgrades and eager to put them to use or it’s not yet ready, willing or able to be technologically current. As usual, there are IBM i shops watching as the enhancements unfold and making decisions on whether the enhancements can deliver benefits to their business in terms of productivity and solving business challenges.

  Steve Will, …

  Read more

• IBM Adds Support For Publishing JSON In DB2

  October 4, 2017 Alex Woodie

  At long last, IBM i shops will be able to publish JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) documents from their Db2 for i database. That much-desired capability will finally arrive as part of the latest Technology Refreshes (TRs) for IBM i versions 7.2 and 7.3, which were announced yesterday and ship this month. New SQL commands and security log enhancements round out the release.

  The capability to publish JSON documents has been a long time coming for IBM i shops, who until now have had to content themselves with the capability to consume and store JSON within their database, but who lacked …

  Read more

• Guru: Consuming A REST Web Service Using SQL And POST

  October 2, 2017 Mike Larsen

  In my prior article, I showed how to consume a REST web service using the GET verb. This time, we’re going to continue to build our knowledge of web services by working with the POST verb. In addition to working with a different verb, I’m also going to demonstrate how to pass a header and body to the service.

  The goal is to post information to an Amazon Web Service (AWS). I created a simple REST Amazon Web Service that accepts information about a pet which will be inserted into a pet store database. I pass a JSON structure …

  Read more

• Guru: Consuming A REST Web Service Using SQL And GET

  September 18, 2017 Mike Larsen

  The use of web services in the industry continues to grow, and sometimes it can be challenging to find information on how to work with them on IBM i. So, what is a web service? In a nutshell, web services allow systems to communicate via the web using file formats such as JSON and XML.

  This article demonstrates how to consume a REST web service using SQL. The example I’m working with uses the ‘GET’ verb to retrieve information from an Amazon Web Service (AWS). I created a simple REST Amazon Web Service that retrieves information about a pet from …

  Read more

• Does IBM i Need More Databases?

  August 14, 2017 Alex Woodie

  There are many things that differentiate IBM i from other platforms, including its storage, security, and programming models. But one of the most unique aspects of the IBM i platform is its integrated DB2 database, which is used exclusively by practically all IBM i customers. You just don’t find this on other platforms. But perhaps it’s time for IBM i to diversify its database support?

  In many respects, DB2 for i is the platform’s greatest strength. IBM i is renowned for its transaction processing prowess that drives ERP and other line of business applications, and DB2 for i (formerly DB2/400, …

  Read more

• IBM i, Watson & Bluemix: The REST Of The Story

  June 21, 2017 Dan Burger

  Integrated Web Services is nothing new for IBM i. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing new in Web services. A couple of years ago, IBM introduced Bluemix, an integration framework that, among other things, allows applications on other systems to connect with business logic running on i. The Bluemix tooling was designed to consume REST APIs, which can be used to connect Watson and IBM i. That’s where the newness is evident.

  The plumbing that’s necessary to make these things happen is being built by the IBM i development team led by Tim Rowe, business architect for IBM i …

  Read more

Next Articles