Navigator for i has had many enhancements over several years. IBM has not been the best at documenting the details of these enhancements; often the only place the details could be found would be in PTF cover letters. For example, if you review the PTF cover letter of the IBM Navigator for i service pack update SI47573, you will find the details of functions delivered in later 2012.
The announcement information covered the general usability and performance enhancements to the user interface – significant improvements have been made to the navigation with expandable sections in the left-hand navigation frame, which makes it more like System i Navigator. The usability and performance of tabs and tables have also been significantly improved. The Navigator for i page on the IBM support site has additional information.
One area that had major enhancements that was not included in the announcement information was the Performance Data Investigator. The blog last fall, Performance Data Investigator – Better than Ever, reviewed those changes.
If you read the PTF cover letter referenced above, you will discover that there are additional enhancements to IFS support, Disk Management support, OmniFind, DHCP and Database. Most of the enhancements are available for both the 6.1 and 7.1 releases and at the end of this article is a list of the PTFs you will need for each release.
I encourage you to install these PTFs if you have not yet done so and start using the latest features. You’ll be ready to explore the additional enhancements that I will write about in the upcoming weeks.
You need the following PTFs for full functionality. Note the PTF group levels listed below are the latest levels available as of the writing of this blog.
◦ Navigator for i PTFs page reviews all the PTFs that are required for various enhancements to the Navigator console.
◦ Database group PTF
Many enhancements were made to the database capabilities so you also need the latest Db2 PTFs on the partitions you are managing.
◦ Performance Tools group PTF
The Performance Data Investigator enhancements also have operating system enhancements that are required; you will need these PTFs on the partitions you are managing.
This blog post was edited to correct broken links on March 17, 2020.
This blog post was originally published on IBMSystemsMag.com and is reproduced here by permission of IBM Systems Media.