IBM i 7.3 TR2 and 7.2 TR6 announced

Steve Will, chief architect of IBM i, made the "spring" announcement of new Technical Refreshes for 7.3 and 7.2 in his You and i blog earlier today.

Included in the announcement:

• A new lower end PowerSystems server, S812.
• DB2 (SQL) enhancements
  • New
    • AUTHORIZATION_LIST_INFO - Returns a list of all objects secured by an authorization list.
    • AUTHORIZATION_LIST_USER_INFO - Returns list of all authorization lists and their authorities.
    • LICENSE_EXPIRATION_CHECK - Procedure sends a message to QSYSOPR message que for every license that has already expired or is due to expire with the specified number of days.
    • LSTAGG - Aggregates a set of string elements into one string by concatenation.
    • MESSAGE_QUEUE_INFO - Returns one row for each message in a message queue.
    • SET_PASE_SHELL_INFO - Provides ability to set the path to the PASE shell for the specified user.
  • Enhanced
    • LICENSE_INFO - View contains information about all products and features than contain license information.
    • LTRIM - Function to remove character from the beginning of an expression.
    • RESET_TABLE_INDEX_STATISTICS - Clears the usage statistics for indexed defined over tables.
    • RTRIM - Function to remove character from the end of an expression.
    • USER_INFO - View contains information about user profiles.
    • JSON query predicates.
    • SQL RPG precompiler will generate free format RPG code.
    • Three part names (system, library, file) in triggers.
• RPG enhancements
  • %MIN and %MAX built in fucntions.
  • Nested data structures.
  • ALIGN(*FULL) keyword when using C's regex_t data structure.
• Open source
  • curl
  • rsync
  • sqlite
  • wget

Steve admits his blog post is just an overview and that more information will be found on the developerWorks website, and in other blog posts IBM-ers will be publishing. As I find them I will add them to the list below.

• Steve Will You and i: Announcing IBM i 7.3 TR2 & 7.2 TR6
• IBM i 7.3 - TR2 Enhancements
• IBM i 7.2 - TR6 Enhancements
• S812 hardware announcement
• PTF update information
• Upcoming RPG enhancements timed with the 7.2 and 7.3 TRs for spring 2017

The release date for the new hardware is March 17 2017. The Technical Refreshes will become available on March 17 2017.