Some thoughts on a few new features in V5R4

With the new release of IBM's integrated operating system, i5/OS V5R4, came a number of enhancements for integrated middleware, IT simplification and business resiliency & compliance. Here is my take on a few new features within i5/OS V5R4:

• Virtual Tape - Sound in theory, but if not managed properly could be more trouble than it's worth. On the positive side it does provide an opportunity to shrink your backup window by saving to disk, which of course is much faster. Plus, you can exceed the capacities of your tape drive. Small shops who do not have 24/7 staff can appreciate that - not having to worry about a "Load Next Tape" message popping up at 2 AM. On the negative side, it is saving to disk, so you had better be running at less than 50% utilization on your DASD to be safe. Also, in my early tests, OS/400 did not seem fond of my fixed naming for virtual tape volumes and generated a new one on its own. This made it much more difficult to automate the offload to tape. It's a start, though.
• Free Form SQL Precompiler Support in RPG - Hooray. It's about time. How much more streamlined our freeform RPG can be now, not having to toggle between fixed and free simply to embed SQL statements. Still wish IBM would roll precompiler support into the base WDS licensed product, but I suppose if there is money to be made in selling ST1 licenses, that's the way it will stay.
• CL Improvements - The pointer data type is interesting, as were the structured enhancements at V5R3, but a little late to the party. During the V5R1 and V5R2 years, CL had been so stagnant for so long, many programmers, including myself, cast it aside in favor of API calls from within RPG, as well as by replacing OPNQRYF with embedded SQL.
• Support for extending Network Server Storage Spaces via iSeries Navigator - this is huge and should help promote more server consolidation. One great knock on the Integrated xSeries Server in the past was that once you created a storage space, that's how big it was going to stay. Once it was full, your only recourse was to create a new larger space (assuming you had the DASD available) and copy the old one to it.
  

Please let me know your thought's and experiences with V5R4.

Thanks,

Christopher F. Burns, Sr., GEMKO Director of Client Systems Modernization.