Glad to have you back for this week's IBM i news roundup! This week we are looking at some IBM i patches and some info on IBM's Watson. But First...
Profound Logic's own Liam Allan is recognized as part of the "Youth Movement" for the IBM i Champion community! Liam is a great contributor to our IBM i community and continues to provide a fresh perspective as a new IBM i Champion.
- "Credit IBM and Profound Logic for seeing past Allan’s age and recognizing his talents. While most 19-year-olds are working entry-level jobs or studying in college, Allan has embraced the life of a working programmer and dedicated himself to promoting an esoteric, obscure computer platform that nevertheless commands fierce loyalty by those who know it."
Source: https://www.itjungle.com/2017/03/01/youth-movement-ibm-champions/
RPG Enhancements
by Barbara Morris
IBM announced last week updates on 7.2 & 7.3 and this week we got a look at the upcoming enhancements of the RPG that are scheduled to be released along with the updates on 7.2 & 7.3. Here are the three key enhancements that will be coming:
- Nested data structures (in free-form declarations only)
- %MAX and %MIN built-in functions
- ALIGN(*FULL) to cause the size of a data structure to be a multiple of it's alignment.
Security Awareness: 8 More Patches for IBMi Vulns
by Alex Woodie
- Patches for four flaws in the OpenSSL implementation for IBM i
- Patches for four flaws in the IBM i implementation of OpenSSH
Source: https://www.itjungle.com/2017/02/27/security-awareness-eight-patches-ibm-vulns/
IBM i Community to Get Closer Look at Watson
by Dan Burger
- IBM is looking to enable their customers to see the possibilities of integration with Cognitive Systems like Watson.
- They are also focused on making their IBM i customers aware of the power that can come with a cognitive addition to their business.
- Highlighting Watson's adaptability and automated programming support is another key factor for IBM.
Our profound.js tool is already on the leading edge of helping IBM i users take full advantage of Watson via node.js. Alex Roytman and Liam Allan discussed the interaction our customers can have with Watson in their webinar they presented last October.
Source: https://www.itjungle.com/2017/02/27/ibm-community-get-closer-look-watson/?platform=hootsuite
Finally after discussing Watson, we thought some of you might not know a great deal about IBM's cognitive technology, so here is a great article that talks about Watson, API's and how they might help you in the future:
Tech Tip: Watson, API's, and You, Part 1
by David Shirey
One of our predictions for 2017 is the continued adoption of Node.js in IBM i shops. Click here to read our white paper on Why Node.js Is The Solution Your Company Needs.
And there, you're all caught up! Sounds like we have an interesting 2017 ahead of us! Let us know your predictions for the IBM i space in 2017 in the comments below.
