• Five Skills You Don’t Need To Manage IBM i (And Two You Do)

  March 25, 2019 Tom Huntington

  Much has been said to debunk the myth of an IBM i skills shortage or decry it as a disappearing act. Yet, year after year, respondents to the annual IBM i Marketplace Survey by HelpSystems list IBM i skills as a top concern. The results also show that organizations are addressing these concerns by adding automation, modernizing development, and getting rid of obsolete technology that breeds the dreaded word: legacy.

  But why do we on IBM i continue to carry the perception that so-called “IBM i skills” are scarce? Is it because the keywords in our job listings don’t …

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• Building Out The .NET Stack Around Mono for IBM i

  March 13, 2019 Alex Woodie

  The first release of a Mono .NET port to IBM i was issued last year. Since then, the IBM i open source community has been busy building many of the other middleware components that will make it easier for developers to build IBM i applications using Microsoft tooling.

  Mono was ported to AIX and IBM i (via the PASE AIX runtime) last year, which gave IBM i and AIX shops the capability to run the open source .NET runtime on Power Systems servers, thus opening the door to allowing Microsoft‘s highly regarded suite of development tools to be …

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• MB Software Gets A Handle On Remote SQL Jobs

  November 28, 2018 Alex Woodie

  System administrators who get frustrated with the inability to see which SQL jobs coming in through ODBC are causing problems on their IBM i server may be interested in a product called Work with Active SQL (WRKACTSQL) from MB Software and Consulting, which recently announced the tool will be free through the end of the year.

  SQL is just about as close to a universal language for business as you can get. While there are other (i.e. “native”) methods of fetching data from Db2 for i, nearly three-quarters of IBM i developers report using SQL, making it the number two …

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• What Is Happening With RFEs For IBM i?

  October 29, 2018 Alex Woodie

  IBM customers have been encouraged to vote on product enhancements for over a year as part of the Request for Enhancement (RFE) process, and a number of new features have actually made it into IBM i technology refreshes (TRs). What new or improved IBM i functionality will Big Blue work on next?

  It’s hard to say exactly which RFE items will strike a chord with IBM product managers, since the requests can be all over the board and impact a range of components, from the IBM i OS itself and the Db2 for i database to Access Client Solutions (ACS) …

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• Kisco Bolsters Network Socket Security

  October 10, 2018 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that are serious about security should monitor all potential ingress routes into their computer systems, including network socket connections. Now Kisco Information Systems is supporting the latest network socket technology in IBM i 7.2 with its network security tool, SafeNet/i.

  The Internet is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the network itself and its array of supporting technologies allow companies to connect with customers on the other side of the world in powerful and potentially lucrative new ways. But on the other hand, the Internet also allow intruders on the other side of the world to …

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• IBM i Data Vulnerable, Security Report Says

  May 9, 2018 Alex Woodie

  HelpSystems last month published its 15th annual State of Security report, in which it summarizes the security checks that it performs on its clients and prospects’ IBM i servers over the course of a year. This year’s report covers 158 systems, and if the results are to be extrapolated to the IBM i installed base as a whole, then there’s a lot of vulnerable data out there.

  If you’ve followed the HelpSystems and PowerTech reports over the years, then you’ve likely been made award of the irony that lies at the heart of IBM i security. The contradiction is this: …

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