Blog of Blogs, Videos and References

I'm a bit short on time this week since I'm recovering from the busy week at COMMON, so this blog is also short.

I wanted to share with you a few new blogs and videos that are available to you.

IBM has created new videos on IBM i that are out on YouTube:

• IBM i – Designed for Data
• Workload Optimized Systems
  
  

There are also some relatively new bloggers out there that you should know about:

• Mike Cain, a well-known expert on DB2 on i has a blog on …. db2 for i, which offers insight and perspectives on data management using IBM i.
• Erwin Earley has a blog, Power Implementers Blog, for hints and tips various technologies on IBM Power Systems. Many of the blog posts deal with using IBM Systems Director with Power Systems.

There are also some new and updated Redbooks that are available:

• There's a lot of informantion that's been published about the IBM PureSystems. Perhaps a great place to start is the Overview of IBM PureSystems
  
• Two Redbooks that were written last year have recently been updated.
  • Power VM Virtualization Introduction and Configuration
  • A draft version is available of Power VM Virtualization Managing and Monitoring

Finally, the IBM i developerWorks site while not new, is a great resource for the latest IBM i information. Be sure to check out the Community & forums link on that developerWorks site for links to all sorts of additional blogs, forums, wikis and more.

 

IBM i 7.1 Enhancements – Something for Everyone

Last week, IBM had a major announcement, which included several significant IBM i enhancements. There were so many great things announced for i that this blog will just review the latest updates at a high level and future blogs will discuss some of these enhancements in more detail. This is a departure from my usual approach to technical topics – but there was just so much content in this announcement that I wanted to make sure it gets the awareness it deserves. There was no way I could pick just one topic to write about this week.

It's great to see so much function coming to i outside of a major release update. The challenge, of course, is how to document the new content. While the IBM i 7.1 Information Center gets updated on an ongoing basis, the IBM i developerWorks site is where you will find information on the latest updates and enhancements.

Once you get to the i developerWorks site, the “Technology udpates” link, found in the left-hand navigation pane, is where you can find more information regarding the ongoing enhancements being made to i. I wrote about this in the recent blog “iZone Shows You the Enhancements.” 

Once you get to the Technology Updates page, you will discover additional navigation options. Information regarding the latest DB2 updates, i operating system updates, hardware and firmware updates and more can be found from here.

There were a couple little gems within the 7.1 announcement last week, including native zip and unzip capability and improved scaling in locking support within the operating system. Other areas that were enhanced include:

• Application Runtime Expert
• Integrated Web service client
• DB2 Web Query
• Zend PHP
• IBM Toolbox for Java / JTOpen
• Rational tools
• A new Business Intelligence solution offering

The content of IBM i Technology Refresh 3 (TR3) is pretty amazing; not only is there support for the latest POWER7 systems and I/O features that were announced, but you will also discover support for Ethernet Link Aggregation and Ethernet Layer 2 Bridging. In addition, the Virtual Partition Manager can now be used to create IBM i client partitions.

For the complete summary of these i enhancements, refer to the 7.1 Release for Announcement. 

Finally, in case you haven't seen it, IBM has released a new video (filmed at the Spring COMMON Conference) where our i clients describe the value of i to their businesses. The video can be found here or on YouTube.

 

 

 

 

Recent Enhancements Documented in developerWorks

A few weeks ago “iZone Shows You the Enhancements”described how IBM has been developing updates to IBM i software that gets delivered via PTFs and how those enhancements are being written about on the IBM i developerWorks website. Recently, additional topics have been added to the developerWorks site; here's a brief preview of two of those enhancements.

 

Search my IBM i spooled and IFS stream files with OmniFind

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/ibmi/library/i-omnifind/omnifind.html

Have you ever wanted to search your spooled files for key words or phrases? How about searching text in IFS stream files? Do you need more than simple pattern matching in your search, such as word variations on the search terms?

In a previous i Can article, “Find a Needle in a Haystack Using OmniFind Text Search Sever for DB2,” Nick Lawrence discussed how to use the OmniFind Text Search Server for DB2 for IBM i to search text stored in a database column.

In V1R2, OmniFind adds new interfaces to support text indexing and searching IBM i spool files and IFS stream files.

The article that has been published on the developerWorks site provides more detail about how to leverage the new search support in your applications. The product is available at no additional charge and the capabilities it provides should prove very useful for many applications.

 

Manage Your IBM i Domino Servers using APIs

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/ibmi/library/i-dominoapi/index.html

Many customers run their Domino servers on IBM i. Domino on IBM i differentiates itself from on other platforms in that you can install multiple versions of Domino on one single IBM i partition and configure multiple Domino partitions (instances) of each version of Domino, while on other platforms on each server you usually only install and configure one Domino server instance. This enables IBM i to be the natural platform for enterprises who need to deploy multiple Domino servers.

But do you know that there is a set of Domino for IBM i unique APIs which can be easily used to manage your Domino server on IBM i automatically? This set of Domino for IBM i unique APIs allows you to list all the Domino servers, retrieve information from a server, get or set Domino server's Notes.ini, and so on. By using the Domino for IBM i APIs together with some of the Domino CL commands you can easily to write some programs to manage your Domino server automatically. If you are seeking a solution for this, take a few minutes to explore this article written by Bin Yang and Shuang Hong Wang of the IBM i Domino team.