Among numerous upgrades, one of the most noteworthy enhancements is full database support of XML, while changes to RPG will permit sending data to a variety of pervasive devices.
Written by Chris Smith
IBM announced a significant new release of IBM i this week, the first major release to the operating system since 2008. While IBM i 7.1 touches on nearly every aspect of the operating system, making it easier to work with new technologies such as XML, the company took the opportunity also to announce enhancements to the RPG language that will make it easier for developers and ISVs to interface with mobile devices and Web services. The company also announced new BladeCenter hardware running the POWER7 chip as a continuation of the rollout of POWER7 servers that will occur throughout 2010. IBM announced the all new PS700, PS701, and PS 702 Express blades suitable for use as Web or SAP application servers as well as for distributed databases in a blade-based data center. The new BladeCenter PS702 Express, for example, delivers far better performance per blade than the Oracle Sun Blade T6340—by some 225 percent, according to IBM—and is more than one and a half times as fast as the HP Integrity BL860c Blade, the company says.
Ian Jarman, manager of Power Systems Software, briefed MC Press Online on the new operating system and RPG developments that were inspired by Power Systems users through organizations including the Large User Group, COMMON, and the ISV Advisory Council. While IBM announced IBM i 6.1.1 last fall with additional storage system options, enhanced virtualization (including redundant VIOS partitions), and further integration with solid state drives, it waited until this spring to announce IBM i 7.1, following the announcement of the first three POWER7 servers. GA for i 7.1 will be April 23, Jarman said.
"The strategy was to make sure we had the underlying microcode to support POWER7," Jarman said, adding that IBM i 7.1 will ship as the default i operating system on all Power System servers starting within three to six months. Meanwhile, support for IBM i 5.4 continues, and the company has not said yet when support will end. If current projections hold true, support for 5.4 will continue at least through the first part of 2012—and possibly longer—depending on "market conditions." The need for program conversion from 5.4 to 6.1 and various new government application certifications, largely in the financial and health industries, have slowed adoption of 6.1, but technology moves forward, and now customers have both a hardware and operating system imperative to move up to the next version.
Highlights of the enhancements to i 7.1 and RPG include the following:
- DB2 support for XML and column-level encryption
- PowerHA asynchronous Geographic Mirroring and LUN-level switching
- IBM i 6.1 virtualization for i 7.1 partitions
- Automatic movement of frequently accessed data to solid-state drives
- Open Access for RPG to allow extended application reach to mobile devices and Web services
- Enhancements to System Director and System Navigator
Rich XML Support
The highlight of the release may be that DB2 in i 7.1 now provides fully integrated support for XML, the industry standard for exchanging information between customers, suppliers, and partners. While DB2 had the ability to use XML extenders previously to convert between XML and DB2, users can fully integrate XML documents into the database, bringing DB2 for IBM i up to speed with other versions of the database. This means having an XML data type to store XML documents that support database operations. Users also can decompose XML documents into relational columns and generate XML documents from existing relational data.
Having this data type available allows users to do text searches of XML documents using IBM's OmniFind text search server, which is included at no additional cost. Users can use standard SQL statements to search XML documents, all handled through OmniFind. OmniFind text search was a feature of i 6.1.
Also included in 7.1 in the security arena is column-level encryption, which gives operators the ability to target an individual column for encryption without changing the underlying application or any code.
PowerHA System Mirror for i
With i 7.1 comes the second release of PowerHA, which features IBM's clustering technology and includes support for asynchronous Geographic Mirroring. While the prior release provided for short-distance mirroring within a data center or even a metropolitan area, the latest release provides for data mirroring over much longer distances. There was no reference in the announcement to exactly how far those distances can be, but presumably systems could be mirrored between cities, which allows for a greater protection in the event of a widespread disaster. Also in this release, PowerHA now has support for automatic failover, which makes it fast and easy to test the failover capabilities of the mirroring setup before it's needed for either a planned or unplanned outage. And PowerHA now supports independent auxiliary storage pools (IASPs) on integrated disk, storage area networks (SANs), and virtual disk.
For a local high availability solution, PowerHA also supports what is known as LUN-level switching, which means that if two servers are sharing the same SAN, you can easily switch from one server to another for scheduled maintenance while operating off the same disk or set of disks in the IASP.
Virtualization Enhancements
IBM offers a variety of virtualization technologies, and using them can reduce costs and improve IT infrastructure flexibility. For the first time, users can host storage for different releases of IBM i, Jarman said. With the latest virtualization enhancements, users can host both IBM i 7.1 and 6.1 partitions, as well as AIX and various flavors of Linux. VIOS, which is part of PowerVM, also can host both 6.1 and 7.1 partitions.
"The reason you would host storage in this way is so you don't have to dedicate storage to a partition," Jarman said. You can set up a partition quickly, use it, and delete it quickly. He used the example of someone who wanted to test IBM i 7.1 on an IBM i 6.1 server before upgrading. They could quickly create a partition, test their applications, and then delete the partition before doing the upgrade.
Storage Management Enhancements for SSD
Despite their increased cost, solid-state drives (SSD) are proving useful and practical for achieving record speed improvements in areas such as batch processing. By supplementing an array of rotating disks with SSDs, the computer can park the most frequently accessed data on the SSDs and utilize their faster speeds for operations that require frequent disk access.
"The idea is that you can target specific objects on the system that are read frequently, and the analyzer tool helps you determine if you have such objects," Jarman said. The disk analyzer tool was introduced with 6.1.1 last fall and helps users know whether or not installing an SSD is likely to improve system performance. "The big difference in 7.1 is that if you have SSD drives on the system, the operating system will automatically place the hot data that is frequently read onto those SSD drives so it optimizes workload on the system automatically," said Jarman.
He cites the example of an IBM banking customer that reduced 72 rotating drives to 60 while adding four SSD drives and improved its batch performance by 40 percent. "This is one of the workload optimizing features of Power, and it's particularly advantaged with IBM i because single-level store allows us to automatically move data around the system without the application knowing where it's going," Jarman said. "So we can optimize performance without any changes to the application." He noted that on other systems that don't have single-level store, the applications need to know where everything is stored, making such optimizations more difficult.
"It's a great example actually of where the original architecture of IBM i is incredibly valuable today," said Jarman. "Because it means that you can…take advantage of new technologies without having to change the application."
Open Access for RPG
ISVs and most RPG developers will be intrigued by the changes IBM is announcing to the RPG language. The new feature is called Rational Open Access: RPG Edition. In essence, RPG applications with Open Access will have the option of extending the reach of applications to pervasive devices such as mobile phones, XML, and Web services.
"In many respects, this is a dramatic change, given that since the 1970s, RPG has always had the development environment that [outputs a 5250 data stream]. Most people today don't use green-screens, and they certainly don't use terminals; they all have PCs, and most convert that 5250 data stream into a browser or some other device…. For the first time, we're separating the RPG runtime from the output device so you have the user interface completely separate from the business logic."
The solution doesn't change (read: "break") any existing applications but is instead an option for new applications or for rewriting older RPG applications, he said. The way the process works is that the data goes through what IBM is calling a "Handler" before being directed to the device or browser. We're just learning what these handlers are, and Jon Paris and Susan Gantner give a good overview in their MC Special Issue article, "V7's RPG Enhancements Include Open Access!" The enhancement to RPG will allow programmers to write handlers (IBM is apparently leaving this up to ISVs and developers), which are routines that are run when updates, deletes, etc. are done to the file. The handler is similar to today's SPECIAL file support except that it goes beyond what SPECIAL files offer. Open Access can be used with any RPG file type and reportedly will be available on V6.1 as well as 7.1.
Platform Management Enhancements
Within the new release are also enhancements to Systems Director Navigator for i. It now has the ability to manage a target IBM i 5.4, 6.1, or 7.1 system. The Navigator management server runs in a single location, but the operator can use a browser to manage multiple environments. The product also supports tape and journal management as well as backup and recovery services. Systems Director Navigator "is the IBM i operator tool and what all IBM i operators ought to be using now for managing their systems," says Jarman. "It also can access the broader product, IBM Systems Director," he says, which also has new functions for managing IBM i and manages both i 6.1 and 7.1 environments while having the ability to run on AIX, Linux, or Windows. Systems Director provides an integrated platform management solution for IBM i and heterogeneous solutions.
Other Enhancements
In addition to the major enhancements above, 7.1 includes the following upgrades:
- IBM Access for Windows 7.1—Support for the XML data type with the .NET, ODBC, and OLE DB providers
- Backup Recovery and Media Services (BRMS)—Improved functions for managing backups, media, backup history, and recoveries
- IBM Transform Services—Delivers Adobe output support to IBM i applications with new support to transform existing spool files to PDF
- Networking Java and Web—More secure communications using Telnet Client support between servers; Zend Server Community Edition replaces Zend Core, and Zend Server replaces Zend Platform; iSCSI Software Target replaces iSCSI adapter; Java 5 and 6 support for 32-bit and 64-bit JVMs, while Classic JVM no longer will ship with IBM i; support for latest Apache 2.2 release that is PCI-compliant; static WSDL support providing enhanced flexibility with support for programs in iASP.
There are many notable enhancements to IBM i 7.1, and as Jarman says, they touch almost every aspect of the operating system. Users on 5.4 will want to be making plans to migrate to 7.1 during the coming year to start taking advantage of these latest upgrades that also support the new POWER7 hardware.
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