Customer (Citizen) Identity and Access Management
Federated Authentication – there is no Plan B
Access Control – RBAC & ABAC
Identity Management Provisioning and Workflow – A core competence
Identity Management - Why Is the Level of Interest So Low?
Gifts to Give Yourself This Holiday
It’s the holiday season, and everyone is in the gift-giving mood. Be sure you don’t forget to invest in your company and career.
Written by Brian May
It’s a special time of the year. Family gatherings for the holidays, football season, and time in the woods all make this one of my favorite seasons. The month of December is also unique for IT departments. December is certainly not business as usual for most of us.
It’s time for budgets. That may mean requesting budget items for next year or spending surplus budget before the end of the year. It’s often when project work slows down a bit as end users, and IT staff alike, take time away from the office. It’s a time when stress is often at its lowest, and it’s just easier to get some things done.
SQL 101: Tools of the Trade - i Navigator’s Run SQL Scripts
A more “modern” alternative to STRSQL, discussed in the last two articles, is the i Navigator’s Run SQL Scripts tool. Let’s explore it together, shall we?
Written by Rafael Victória-Pereira
While STRSQL is a green-screen tool, Run SQL Scripts is part of the i Navigator package. You can access it by choosing the Run SQL Scripts option, either from the bottom-right pane of the i Navigator window after you’ve chosen the Databases tree node from the right panel, as shown in Figure 1, or by right-clicking the database name and choosing the respective option.
Energy, Vibe, and Atmosphere
This is IT. We must be willing to bend.
Written by Steve Pitcher
With a growing emphasis in talking about the state of the current IBM i workforce, also known as the “IBM i skills shortage,” it behooves oneself to keep the noise level to a minimum in order to make even-keeled decisions. In short, don’t necessarily believe all the hype you read.
I’d like to think of this as an extension piece to “The IBM i Skills Shortage Myth.” It’s not necessarily a “part two” per se, but more of a story that runs parallel. I’ve been trying to write this for about six weeks, but some things are just hard to put into words, especially when they involve how you feel as opposed to what you know. Besides, writing what you know is easy. Writing what you feel leaves room for reader interpretation, so you have to be more careful.
Six Key Drivers That Push Your Business Forward
Integration can be a competitive weapon that can positively impact the bottom line through encouraging revenue velocity, cost containment, risk mitigation, and long-term customer satisfaction.
Written by Mark Denchy
Business is moving faster and faster, as customers and business partners demand more automated interactions. IT is no longer supporting the business; it is becoming the core of the business. Digital transformation of businesses requires us to connect and interact with both customers and suppliers in new and unexpected ways.
Carol’s IBM i Security Wish List
Carol describes 10 things that she wishes were different when it comes to IBM i security.
Written by Carol Woodbury
It’s the time of year when all children are making their Christmas wish list, hoping Santa will deliver on Christmas morning. While I’m a few years beyond believing in Santa Claus (!), I’ve created my list, just in case.
Wish #1: V7R3
I wish all IBM i customers would upgrade to V7R3. The Authority Collection feature added in V7R3 alone justifies the upgrade. This feature helps administrators to stop over-authorizing and enables them to remove *ALLOBJ from profiles that don’t really need it. If you are considering upgrading to V7R2, skip that thought and move right to V7R3!
TechTip: Just a Bit About Git
With the information in this TechTip, you can get started with Git development on your IBM i!
Written by Liam Allan
In this article, we are going to talk about Git. I want to avoid the idea that this is a tutorial. A tutorial would be a very long and text-y article. This TechTip covers:
- Creating a repository from the MYPROJ directory that we created in the last article
- Explaining distributed development
- Cloning a repository and making changes
- Explaining Git status, diff, pull, and push
- Committing changes to existing or new files and pushing them
Mobile App Development: Do You Hear Me Now?
What you’re hearing is the crowd cheering as you cross the finish line.
Written by Pete Helgren
Looking back over the delivery of the requirements of your project, you’re beginning to think that maybe this mobile development stuff isn't quite as difficult as you once thought. So far, you have completed the first three requirements:
- Real-time access to IBM i data and local storage when no mobile connectivity is available
- Ability to take pictures, store them on the device, and upload them
- Ability to retrieve and store geolocation information
Mobile App Development: Getting Your Standalone App to Interface with Your IBM i
Need to interface a mobile app with your IBM i? A number of IBM i integration patterns can be leveraged to keep mobile apps in sync with enterprise systems.
Written by Glenn Johnson
Your IBM i system holds a lot of very useful data that can be leveraged for mobile apps. However, you need the right tools and methods to extract the data in the most effective way. This is where an integration platform comes in.
The purpose of system integration is to ensure smooth-running business processes across multiple systems. To do this, an IT department needs to be armed with integration and business process management tools that can recognize all of the needed integration patterns for your environment.
Therefore, IBM i users should look for mobile app development solutions that support nine familiar IBM i integration touchpoints.
TechTip: C# for RPGers - Introducing Lists
Lists are a special type of “thing” in C#; they have no parallel in RPG. This is most unfortunate, because lists are awesome!
Written by Rafael Victória-Pereira
The last couple of TechTips introduced Arrays and explained the foreach loop. This kind of sets the stage for the List data type. You can think of a List as an Array with all the bells and whistles and none of its limitations. For instance, when you define an Array, you have to define its size. That value is (more or less) definitive, because the memory will be statically allocated to store the variable. Lists, however, are dynamically allocated, which means that you don’t have to specify the size of the List. Actually, you can’t specify it. Instead, you’re able to specify the initial capacity, but even that is optional.
TechTip: IFS Containers Part 3, Installing Open Source from the Internet
One of the core tenets of open source is freedom to obtain and use software. Now it's time to see that benefit in action.
Written by Aaron Bartell
In the first article of this series, we learned about how IFS Containers could be manually created by copying things into a new directory and then running the chroot command against that directory. This was a laborious process that would cause the technology to not be used unless some amount of automation was introduced. In the second article, I introduced the IBM i Chroot (ibmichroot) project, which addresses the automation of creating IFS Containers in a matter of minutes and even more important, uniformity. In this article, we will navigate through the other core feature of the IBM i Chroot project: package installation.
Practical RPG: Processing Stream Files, Part 2
In part 1, we processed a directory. In part 2, we process one file in that directory.
Written by Joe Pluta
Stream files are not database files.
While that statement is obvious to programmers, it's not always clear to the greater community. The end users, the folks whose jobs we are supposed to be supporting, use various forms of stream files to store their data, and they don't understand why we can't for example just "use this spreadsheet" as part of our application. And while that's an interesting philosophical discussion, as programmers we sometimes have to simply get things done, and that in turn means taking whatever data the user sent us. I've spent a lot of time over the years importing data primarily from Excel—and more specifically from comma-delimited files. Two techniques exist: CPYFRMIMPF and parsing the data in RPG. CPYFRMIMPF is a completely different animal that perhaps can be covered another day. Today, I just want to talk about parsing a stream file.
RPG Academy: Write Better Code - Commenting and Documenting Strategies
Usually, programmers don’t comment their code appropriately, for a variety of reasons: “I don’t have the time,” “My code speaks for itself,” etc. Mostly, they simply hate doing it. Let me try to refute these excuses with practical strategies and tools.
Written by Rafael Victória-Pereira
As I’ve said throughout this series, a procedure’s name and parameter list should be enough for the programmer to understand the objective of that piece of code. However, there are times when this is not enough: complex procedures, generic names, uninspired input/output parameter names…and the list goes on and on. The next section of this TechTip will help you in the process of creating proper documentation for your newly created procedures and functions, with a few tips of what you should and shouldn’t do.
Murphy’s Security Law
Holes are everywhere. Address them before someone addresses you.
Written by Steve Pitcher
A couple articles ago, I talked about the need for modernizing encryption on our IBM i partitions. Shutting one door can shut others, and shutting other doors may give you a false sense of security when you have a few windows open. You can drive yourself batty looking for these holes, but every now and then a hole finds you.
Maxava's Enterprise+ "Saves the Ship" for Averitt Express
An international shipping company has plenty of trouble if it can’t get its Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) system to replicate accurately under its high availability (HA) system.
Written by John Ghrist
This was the scenario faced in October 2015 by Averitt Express, a provider of freight transportation and supply chain management services based in Cookeville, Tennessee. Averitt offers customized shipping solutions, serves customers in more than 100 countries, and services more than 300 international destinations. Averitt also provides its customers a full suite of web-based shipping tools, EDI services, and transportation and operations management systems. Among other online services Averitt offers its customers are such conveniences as a Bill of Lading creation utility, a transit-time calculator, less-than-truckload service maps based on ZIP code, and downloadable certificates, permits, customs forms, and other documents on demand.
TechTip: The .NET Core Framework
Provide support for a variety of chip and OS targets.
Written by Joydip Kanjilal
Since the initial version of .NET Framework (the first beta version of .NET 1.0 was released in the fall of 2000), Microsoft has released many more upgrades over the years. With an intent to make the framework cross-platform, open source, and modular, the software giant has now come up with .NET Core Framework.
TechTip: PDO for PHP
Why do we use PHP with an HTML web page? Lots of reasons, but data access is one of the most important, and PHP Data Objects (PDO) is, for me, the best way to do that.
Written by David Shirey
There are lots of web languages out there, aren’t there? HTML5, JavaScript, PHP, CoyoTE. I actually don’t know if that last one exists, but given the number of special languages available for the web, I think I’ve got a 50-50 chance.
And increasingly, on the IBM i, we are being introduced to—and find reasons to use—more and more of these languages. Each has its own list of things that it does well and things that it doesn’t.
The IBM i Skills Shortage Myth
The problem isn’t IBM i skills shortage; it’s an “RPG II/III-fixed format-legacy-cycle” skills shortage.
Written by Steve Pitcher
Yeah, I said it.
An “RPG II/III-fixed format-legacy-cycle” skills shortage. The kind of shortage you don’t want to have if you care about the future of your business. So forgive me if I take exception to the argument about IBM i having a skills shortage. It doesn’t. IBM i’s history is rooted in being a business computer for business people. They run business programs to do business things. IBM i may have grown in terms of capabilities, but at its core it’s a business operating system. So when people talk about an IBM i skills shortage, it makes me wonder if we’ve lost the point about what IBM i really is.
IBM i Security Without Breaking the Bank
Stop neglecting IBM i security. Consider a risk assessment and two control layers to enjoy substantially less risk of data loss—without sending your organization into the red.
Written by Robin Tatam
The time is now!
While some companies take a proactive stance on becoming more secure, many more act as a result of regulation. Governments and industry bodies have enacted numerous enforceable mandates, typically as a result of a scandal or high-profile breach. The growing list of these mandates includes PCI-DSS for credit card data, MAS-TRM for financial organizations in Singapore, BASEL for the banking industry, SOX for publicly traded companies, and HIPAA for those in the U.S. healthcare industry. Operators in the European Union face a dramatic increase in fines that may be levied for data breaches since the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was adopted in April 2016. This replacement for the previous “directive” will become law in May 2018, and the financial impact on companies within this territory could be quite dramatic.
The Lesser of Two Evils: Choosing the Better IBM i Security Configuration
Carol describes scenarios where the configuration options aren’t optimal, but a choice must be made.
Written by Carol Woodbury
By the time you read this, the election in the United States will be over. Many in the States view this election as having to choose between the lesser of two evils. While I’m not going to discuss the way I voted, I thought I might discuss some similar situations—where I’ve been presented with two IBM i configurations to choose from, and neither is optimal.
