What's new for IBM Navigator for i

Read about new functions that are now available within the IBM® Navigator for i application in IBM i 7.2.

• Usability and Performance Improvements

  Usability and performance improvements have been made to the following areas of the IBM Navigator for i application:

  • Dynamic content in the navigation area
  • New dojo based tables for displaying lists of resources
  • Caching of data across tabs within the web console

  Key improvements due to the use of dojo technology has greatly improved the navigation area, common list view, and handling of tabs within the workspace.

  Task categories can now be opened to display any resource “containers” in the navigation area, similar to the IBM i Navigator client application. This makes it easier and quicker to access desired tasks.

  Common list views now use new dojo tables that make it easier and quicker to filter lists, scroll through large lists, and select items in the list to perform actions.

  Once multiple tasks are selected, resulting in multiple tabs in the console workspace, data is no longer refreshed each time you click back to a previous tab.

• Target Systems and Groups

  A new interface now exists to specify the target system to manage, and to be able to group similar target systems into groups. A new navigation node "Target Systems and Groups" now appears in the navigation area. You can select to manage another IBM i 7.2 system, or, you can also manage IBM i 7.1 and IBM i 6.1 systems as well.

• Favorites

  A new Favorites node now appears in the navigation area. Expanding this node will show all of your personal favorites, saved by user profile and system. To save a particular list view as a favorite, simply select the Save as Favorite action from the actions dropdown in the table header while working with the list. Favorites can be organized by category as well.

• Monitors

  The ability to define, run, and respond to system and message monitors has been added to IBM Navigator for i for IBM i 7.2. This is an initial step in making Management Central functions from the System i® Navigator client application available on the web. Monitors allow you to set specific thresholds and the actions that should be taken when those thresholds are reached.

• Program Temporary Fixes (PTFs)

  The ability to display, load, apply, install, remove, and clean up PTFs is now available in IBM Navigator for i for IBM i 7.2. You can also work with PTF groups. The PTF tasks are available under the Configuration and Service node in the navigation area.

• OmniFind Text Search

  The ability to search text from IFS and spooled files has been added to IBM Navigator for i for V7R2. The search function is available underneath the "System" tasks category. Before you can use this function, the OmniFind product (5733-OMF) must be installed.

• File Systems

  New actions have been added to IBM Navigator for i to give users the ability to upload files to an IBM i directory, and download files from an IBM i directory. Also, a new action has been added to allow users to edit certain types of files.

  A new function, Goto Integrated File System Folder has been added to allow you to quickly go to a desired folder in the Integrated File System. Previous selections are saved by user profile and system.

• Printers and Printer Output

  Automatic and silent printing support is added for IBM i 7.2. This function allows a user to automatically and silently print spooled files in one output queue to client printers. It also allows an IBM i ISV moving their business application to a cloud environment to print output to any printer that a client may have attached to their PC. A new task category "Virtual Printers" is added to the tasks listed under the Printers task category in the navigation area, however, it only appears if currently managing a system for IBM i 7.1 or above IBM i 7.1.

  The functions of exporting spooled files as PDF using Infoprint server; to an output queue, to the integrated file system, or to an email; have been simplified for IBM i 7.2. They were implemented as wizards which is inappropriate for actions on a spooled file. Now the actions are implemented as a single panel with as many options set to defaults as possible.

• Database

  On Demand Performance Center:

  • A menu option has been added to SQL Plan Cache snapshots and SQL database performance monitors to view overview charts in Performance Data Investigator.
  • A menu option has been added to a selected statement in the SQL Plan Cache to see the job history for that statement.
  • Additional filters will be used when selecting to show the statements for a row from the index advisor and condensed index advice lists. This will provide a better match of statements that generated the advice in the SQL Plan Cache.
  • The index advisor list now includes a column with the times the index was advised when it was dependent on other index advice.
  • A filter has been added to the Show Statements panel filters, which specifies whether the other filters all need to match.

  Database Management:

  • Support for new database features; Row Permissions and Column Masks, and the ability to activate these row and column level security capabilities on tables, ability to define multiple event triggers, ability to define named parameters and default values for parameters in SQL stored procedures and functions.
  • Generate SQL now supports several new options; ability to obfuscate an SQL trigger, function or procedure, ability to specify whether to schema qualify objects, and the ability to add the OR REPLACE clause.
  • Support has been added to view the contents of a table.

  Database Maintenance: The status of a table reorganization will now show where the reorganize was started from, how many rows may have been deleted during the reorganization and the amount of storage returned because of deleting the rows.

• Journal Management

  The View Entries action was added for a journal. This action allows you to view the journal entries for a journal. You are given the ability to specify criteria to limit the journal entries that are returned.

• Integrated Server Administration
  • Resource allocation priority will be used to let user define the cost on the hosting IBM i resources when formatting the storage spaces linked to the client servers.
  • Disk units with 4K sectors will be supported when creating a virtual disk.
  • Disk unit type solid-state drive (SSD) can be selected as preference when creating network server storage space.
  • Selecting either restricted devices to restrict access or allowed device resources to allow access is being supported.
  • Storage pool size limit which has been increased to use 8 byte integer will be supported.
  • Add support for Windows Server 2012, including a new ReFS file system type for storage and shared disk linking.
  • Remove support for Windows Server 2003 in the Create Server wizard for IBM i 7.2 systems.
  • Remove the ability to create quorum disks for IBM i 7.2 systems.
  • Add support to the server cloning wizard to let the user select the storage pool where virtual storage should be created.
• Network

  Enterprise Identity Mapping (EIM) support has been enabled in IBM i 7.2. Enterprise Identity Mapping for the IBM i platform is the IBM i implementation of an IBM infrastructure that allows administrators and application developers to solve the problem of managing multiple user registries across their enterprise.

• Security

  Security wizard support has been enabled in IBM i 7.2. Security wizard allows users to create a set of security recommendations, create reports explaining the security recommendations, and apply the recommendations to your system (optional).

• Disk Management

  Concurrently removing disk units from ASP was enabled. Allow user to pause, resume or cancel the removing.

  "Solid State Drive" column was added to disk units list to indicate if the disk unit is SSD (Solid State Drive).

  Some of the user access restrictions on IBM Navigator for i were removed. Allow users to have a different user id and password for XPF and Service Tools.

  The start tracing, stop tracing, clear trace, start balance, and stop balance actions were added for disk pools. These actions allow users to trace the hot data on each disk unit in the specific disk pool and balance them in the disk pool by different balance types.

  The rebuild disk unit data action was added for disk units. This action allows users to rebuild data on a failed disk unit in parity set.

  The end allocation/resume allocation actions were added for disk units. These actions allow users to stop/resume allocating data on the specific disk units.

• Performance

  The Performance category in IBM Navigator for i includes Performance Data Investigator (PDI), Collection Manager, and web-based GUI interfaces for Collection Services, Job Watcher and Disk Watcher. New functions for Batch Model, System Monitor, and Performance Reports are described below.

  Batch Model: A new Batch Model set of commands is available under Sizing as part of the Performance task. The Batch Model tool models the system utilization and job run times of IBM i batch workloads. You can use the Batch Model commands to help analyze and predict batch job performance on the IBM i and help answer the question: "What can I do to my system in order to meet my overnight batch runtime requirements (also known as the batch window ) ? " A Batch Model collection is created based upon existing performance data collected using IBM i Collection Services. The batch model file based collections can be viewed and managed with other collections in the Collection Manager table.

  System Monitor: In conjunction with the new System Monitor task in Navigator for i, the Performance task has delivered a new System Monitor package to provide near realtime graphs for system monitor data collected. This new package provides lightweight, single metric views with refresh capability for realtime system monitoring data. The charts can be launched either from the system monitor function of IBM Navigator for i or from Performance Data Investigator (Investigate Data task) Perspectives List panel. The list of perspectives (charts) available will be the same list as the data categories collected from the System Monitor function. In addition, the Configure Collection Services GUI is enhanced to enable system monitoring configuration.

  Integration with Database: The Database package is enhanced.* This provides SQL plan cache data perspectives with new SQL collection services data, new detailed Database I/O views for both Physical and Logical I/O metrics, and new SQL Cursor and Native DB Opens. A Health Indicators perspective for Database Health is added to the Health Indicators package. Job Watcher package is enhanced with detailed Logical Database I/O perspectives.

  SQL Plan Cache and SQL Performance Monitor database performance files can be viewed with SQL Overview and SQL Attribute Mix perspectives*. From the Database task viewing any of these database performance files, you can launch into PDI to view the set of charts. From within PDI Perspective list panel, the SQL Plan Cache Snapshot, Event Monitor and SQL Performance Monitor database performance files can be seen in the Collection dropdown list for each library and selected to Display the selected valid perspective.

  Performance Reports: A Performance Data Report can be generated for a set of PDI perspectives. Using a predefined or customized Performance Data Report Definition under Reports in the Performance task allows you to generate a PDF or zip file for a specified collection. This allows efficient export for multiple charts or tables on a collection at one time.

  Display Holder information: In PDI you can display holder information when you have identified a thread or task that is holding others. On the Interval Details for One Thread or Task view, use the Show Holder button to display the holding job or task information.

  Drilldown information: When drilling down on charts in PDI, you will see specific drilldown information to indicate the selected metric or interval used to filter the data displayed.

  System Information panel: On PDI perspectives display panel, the Show System Information view option will provide more detailed information for the system that the displayed collection came from such as processor, memory and partition specifications.

  Option to show SQL error messages: The Show SQL error messages option on the Options panel in PDI provides specific error information on SQL errors when using the Modify SQL function.

  New Perspectives: In addition to the new perspectives described above for System Monitor, Batch Model and integration with Database, the following areas have new perspectives: Memory and Java™.

  Note: * Requires PT1 Option 1 installed on the system.