Top OS/400 Stories from Around the Web

(IT Jungle) The purpose of a roadmap is to help a person get from one place to another. In the product realm--let's take the IBM i as an example--a roadmap should help users get their businesses from today to the future. Have you seen IBM's roadmap for the i product line? It covers the Power7 processors due later this year that will be supported until 2016 and the boatload of software that has been ported to i 6.1. Commitment and investment in the i platform are promises IBM says it will keep. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) Tools and services pertaining to security and regulatory compliance have maintained their priority status in many organizations. Investments have not withered despite the cold blast economic winds of change. One of the vendors in this arena, SkyView Partners, looks to expand by bringing in a new CEO. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) The COMMON Annual Meeting is less than four months away, and in terms of educational sessions, the table has been set. IBM i is still the main course, but there are a number of new side dishes prepared with AIX and new technologies that demonstrate the transition of COMMON from single-platform oriented to a Power Systems multi-platform organization. READ MORE >

(System iNews) According to Forrester Research, the bread and water blue plate special that was all that was on the menu in 2009 will be getting a little more tasty in 2010. "All the pieces are in place for a 2010 tech spending rebound," says one of the analyst company's chief cooks and bottle washers. READ MORE >

(Harvard Business Review) Innovative design and engineering is how we'd all like to describe the fruits of our IT labors. Unfortunately that is most times easier said than done. But rather than giving up, try using these three tips, which sprouted from a visit to the Consumer Electronics Show, and apply them to what you plan to do in 2010. READ MORE >

Vendor Announcements, Promotions, and Deals

(IT Jungle) The simplicity of developing business applications for the System i platform in RPG can abruptly end when it comes to Web interfaces. The sticky stuff that can suck the boots right off an RPG programmer has to do with manual coding every GUI screen, which is time-consuming and another opportunity for a small mistake to cripple a program. A native GUI can solve that. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) Whether green-screen i OS applications have been Web-enabled or modernized, the convenience of a single point of access is why Web portals have become popular. Two concerns whenever the topic of portals is discussed are speedy application accessibility and (you thought of this one before I could even write it) security. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) Important system-performance alerts generated by the IBM i server are of no value if they don't get the attention of someone who can do something to prevent a threat from becoming downtime. A failed backup or a glitch in DASD needs priority status, which means a raised level of awareness. There's no excuse for being asleep at the wheel. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) Yes, there are RPG programming zombies locked in closets and mired in code maintenance mode. But over where the sun shines, there are RPG programmers scaling business-problem mountains. Who's doing the good work and where did they learn that anyway? READ MORE >

Redbooks, White Papers, and Other OS/400 Resources

(RPGNextGen) The cost for software development tools and the IDE has RPG developers asking whether there are open source alternatives that can free them from the pay-the-price arm twisting companies get from IBM. If you have yet to give open source a fair shake, it's time you checked out this site. READ MORE >

(Linoma Software) "Beyond FTP: Securing and Managing File Transfers" is a white paper that elaborates on increasing IT manageability, decreasing security exposures, and adhering to compliance and auditing requirements. READ MORE >

(Open Text) This case study takes a look at why a medical center decided migration to a new terminal emulation software package made sense. PC-to-host and Web-to-host terminal emulation were the basic requirements, and the three main factors in the decision-making process were affordability, ease of configuration, and an expanded list of features. READ MORE >

(RevSoft) Tracking applications for the purpose of regulatory compliance audits requires completion-status trail of items such as jobs, scripts, and dependencies. These job event definitions control ERP applications and update ERP data. This report examines that tracking process using job scheduling software to automate the auditing process. READ MORE >

Chats, Webinars, Seminars, Shows, and Other Happenings

See our full calendar of events at
http://www.itjungle.com/fhm/fhm-calendar.html

January 14 -- Kent, Washington - The Pacific Midrange Systems Association meeting features two presentations on PHP on IBM i: one for beginners and one for intermediate-level users. Guest speaker is Mike Pavlak of Zend. The meeting begins at 11:30 a.m. and will be held at the CenterPoint Corporate Park located at 20809 72nd Avenue South, Suite 120. LEARN MORE >

January 14 -- Milwaukee, Wisconsin - Writing good, reusable ILE code will be covered in two sessions by RPG expert Scott Klement at the monthly meeting of the Wisconsin Midrange Computer Professional Association. Included in the second session is putting a Web front-end on the service program that was created in session one. The first training session begins at 4:30. The second session begins at 7:30. In between is dinner and networking. The event will be held at Klemmer's Banquet Center located at 10401 West Oklahoma Avenue. LEARN MORE >

January 14 -- Maryland Heights, Missouri - Carol Woodbury, president of SkyView Partners and the i OS platform's former security architect while working at IBM, will discuss a step-by-step plan for object level security at the monthly meeting of the Gateway/400 Group, a System i user group serving the greater St. Louis area. The meeting begins with lunch at noon and the presentation following lunch. RSVP no later than Monday before the meeting date. Meetings are held at the Graphic Arts Communication Banquet Facility located at 105 Progress Parkway. LEARN MORE >

January 15 -- Sparks, Nevada - The Reno-Sparks Midrange User Group meeting features a presentation on business intelligence on the IBM i. Guest speaker is Diana Stater from New Generation Software. Stater's presentation includes a product demonstration of NGS-IQ. The meeting beings at 11:30 a.m. and is held at the Scolaris Company headquarters located at 255 South McCarran Boulevard. LEARN MORE >

January 17-21 -- Orlando, Florida - Lotusphere, the biggest Lotus event of each year, brings together developers, administrators, IT and business professionals looking for collaborative software and solutions. It includes presentations on the latest innovations, hands-on training, and networking discussions, as well as the latest word on Lotus products and strategy. LEARN MORE >

January 19 -- Nashville, Tennessee - This meeting of the Tennessee IBM Mid-Range User Group will feature a presentation on high availability by AS/400 veteran Todd Victor. The emphasis will be on set up and configuration, remote journaling, communications, software implementation, and performing a role swap. The meeting will be held at the Holiday Inn Vanderbilt located at 2613 West End Avenue. It begins at 5:30 p.m. LEARN MORE >

January 19 -- Costa Mesa, California - Three sessions are on the agenda for the OCEAN user group meeting this month. The topics are application design with EGL, building multi-tiered applications with RDi, and tips and techniques using SQL. The sessions begin at 3:30, 4:45, and 7 p.m. with dinner and networking at 6 p.m. Guest speaker is consultant Joe Pluta. The OCEAN User Group serves the greater Orange County, California, area and meets the third Tuesday of each month. Meetings are held at the IBM offices located at 600 Anton Boulevard. LEARN MORE >

January 19 -- Norwalk, Connecticut - The Fairfield AS/400 Users Group monthly meeting topic is the seven habits of highly secure organizations. This session examines common security vulnerabilities and the resources that can help develop a strong security policy. Guest speaker is Robin Tatam, director of security technologies at PowerTech, one of the leading vendors in the IBM i community. FASUG meetings are held at the Norwalk Inn, 99 East Avenue, and begin at 5:30 p.m. LEARN MORE >

January 19 -- Irving, Texas - Strategies for Web enabling RPG applications will be covered during this presentation during the monthly meeting of the Metro Midrange Systems Association, a user group for the Dallas and Fort Worth metro areas. A team of presenters will describe how they designed and implemented a Java-based centralized customer service Web application that uses RPG components for the core business logic. The event begins at 5:30 p.m. with dinner at 6 and the presentation at 6:45. MMSA meetings are held at the Dallas - IBM Innovation Center located at 13800 Diplomat Drive. LEARN MORE >

January 19 -- Bloomington, Minnesota - RPG expert Scott Klement is the guest speaker at the regularly scheduled QUSER local user group meeting. The meeting takes place at noon at the Comfort Inn located at 1321 East 78th Street. LEARN MORE >

January 20 -- Seekonk, Massachusetts - The Massachusetts data-breach law will be the featured topic at the monthly meeting of the New England Midrange Users Group. The law affects individuals, corporations, associations, and partnerships, and may require significant operational and technological changes for those entities having custody of personal information, including employer records and customer data. Employers have just over 90 days to comply with these regulations. Guest speaker is Lynda Slevoski, vice president of the AIM Employer's Resource Group. The meeting is held at the Ramada Inn and begins at 5:15 p.m. LEARN MORE >

January 20 -- Fort Washington, Pennsylvania - A one-day training session on RPG application modernization by author and subject matter expert Don Denoncourt explains development strategies used to produce modern applications. Topics will include maintainable and testable code, modular and component-based apps, rich user interfaces, use of the Model-View-Controller design pattern, and apps that are responsive to new business requirements. The sessions begin at 8:30 a.m. and continue to 5 p.m. and will be held at the Holiday Inn. The registration fee is $260 for user group members and $295 for all others. LEARN MORE >

January 21 -- Chattanooga, Tennessee - The Tennessee Valley Midrange User's Group will feature a presentation on DB2 Web Query. Guest speaker Paul Lambert will review of the purpose, benefits, and implementation strategies. A discussion of the architectural concepts surrounding DB2 Web Query will be the launch point for the presentation. Lambert is an instructor for IBM, and a consultant and lecturer in the IBM i world. His special interests include IBM i and AS/400 performance tuning and capacity planning, system operations, and system management. The meeting will be held at the Hilton Garden Inn - Hamilton Place located at 2343 Shallowford Village Drive. It gets under way at 5:30 p.m., with dinner at 6, and the presentation at 6:30. LEARN MORE >

January 21 -- Fairfield, New Jersey - Guest speaker Robin Tatam will discuss the seven habits of highly secure organizations at the regular monthly meeting of the North Eastern Systems Technology Users (NESTU) meeting. Topics included in this session will include common security vulnerabilities and the resources that can help develop a strong security policy. Tatam is the director of security technologies at PowerTech, one of the leading security vendors in the IBM i community. The event begins at 5:30 p.m. and will be held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. LEARN MORE >