Top OS/400 Stories from Around the Web

(IT Jungle) A roadmap that doesn't tell you where you are going is just an awkwardly folded oversized piece of paper. Vague directions are not what's needed and definitely not worth the effort to correctly refold the map. On the road from System i to Power Systems, the route seems pretty clear, but as we travel beyond that point on the roadmap, the destination becomes somewhat blurry. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) Every snowflake is different, but who cares when you're standing knee-deep in the stuff? Likewise, there are differences in i 6.1 and AIX and Linux, too, when it comes to Java Virtual Machine performance, but they are inconsequential when you are bracing for a blizzard of transaction processing. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) Should energy efficiency be one of your top concerns? Should a server designed for stateless computing be on your radar? Even if you're not thinking about such things, you can bet your last jelly donut that more than a couple of top software engineers at IBM are burning some midnight oil to design and build a server with features such as these as priorities. And it's beyond the drawing board. It's (raise the curtain, please) iDataPlex. READ MORE >

(Information Week) Sam Palmisano seldom (I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt here by not saying "never") talks publicly about how IBM can beat Microsoft with its Power Systems duo of AIX and i. But IBM's CEO is pretty pleased with the expanding partnership he's put together with Google and its potential for punching Microsoft where it really hurts. READ MORE >

(InfoWorld) IBM isn't the only company developing water-cooled servers, but what it has done with a pride (a pod? a parliament?) of Power6-based machines, a cabinet, and a little more than 7 gallons of purified water is something noteworthy. It's not a "direct on chip" water-cooled system, but that's on the horizon. For organizations with massive computing capacity requirements, the heat is on to find something cool. IBM is pushing to innovate. READ MORE >

(ZD Net) When IBM got into the business intelligence business in a much bigger way by purchasing Cognos, it was natural to wonder how this would or wouldn't affect the System i customers. According to Rob Ashe, general manager of IBM's business intelligence and performance management unit (and the former CEO of Cognos), IBM will take Cognos and layer its performance management software on top of its information server, data quality tools, storage and data warehousing applications. There's nothing specific about the System i or Power Systems customer, but a general direction is taking shape. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) Eitan Naor was hired as Magic Software's president and CEO in 2007 as part of a company reorganization and executive overhaul. Less than a year later, he was dismissed, and now he's in court fighting to reclaim his job. What's going on here? Ask Naor's lawyer, who describes the dismissal as "an unprecedented act of thuggery and trickery." READ MORE >

(System iNews) Bill Zeitler is old school. He's a former general manager of the AS/400 division who eventually climbed the corporate ladder to become the senior vice president and group executive of the IBM Systems and Technology Group. He will retire this summer. Commenting on the evolution of the AS/400 to the Power System i, he promises, "the i environment is well positioned for longevity and future innovation." READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) The effects of music on coding have never been studied beyond, perhaps, your own unpublished theories that indicate a symbiotic relationship between Pink Floyd and database triggers. In your mind, music may or may not be conducive to writing code better and faster, but don't discount the idea that music stimulates brain activity. The rest of this is debatable, so feel free to chime in. READ MORE >

Vendor Announcements, Promotions, and Deals

(IT Jungle) The days when no one except the IT pros ever ventured into the IT department are gone. Now it seems as if everyone in the organization wants a piece of the IT staff's time. Requests pelt them like rain pounding on a tin roof. How do projects stay within deadlines and under budget? Not with a tracking system consisting of an inbox and a spreadsheet. That's a far cry from application lifecycle management. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) On the subject of application lifecycle management, you'll find shops that early on learned the value of change management software for their programming environments. ALF takes that a step farther to the automation and management of tasks that flow into and out of IT departments. But at the heart of almost every lifecycle management initiative is programmer's best friend--change management software. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) Along with the list of benefits companies could count on when they ran their businesses on an OS/400-based server, they also suffered a few pains in the IT budget. One of them was the lock-in to expensive dedicated host printers. Some companies just block out the pain while biting the bullet. Others look for money-saving options. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) Midrange computers cohabitating with mainframes is not all that unusual. In some cases, you can barely tell them apart. So when it comes to testing 5250 applications and 3270 applications, it seems to make sense that one company should make testing tools for both systems. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) Big software vendors--and by big I mean gigantic--continue to pull out all the stops in their attempts to break into the SMB customer space. Last week, SAP announced bundling deals with both IBM and HP that combine ERP and server platforms and supposedly make deployment easier, faster, and therefore much more appealing for the small to mid size organizations. READ MORE >

Redbooks, White Papers, and Other OS/400 Resources

(IT Jungle) There's a new guru in town. Security expert Pat Botz, who many of you know from his years as the lead architect for IBM's OS/400 and i5/OS security team, has signed on to provide tips in the Four Hundred Guru e-mail newsletter. His first piece of advice relates to security and PHP application development. READ MORE >

(NGS) Business intelligence on the System i and the new Power Systems servers comes in a variety of options. IBM is very fond of its own software called DB2 Web Query. New Generation Software, in this white paper, compares DB2 Web Query with the NGS alternative called NGS-IQ. Among other things, this report examines the capabilities of these two products, the cost of implementation, licensing terms, and product support. READ MORE >

(Maximum Availability) Two case studies--one involving a hospital and the other a police department--provide testimonials for minimizing downtime due to regularly scheduled maintenance and system or disk upgrades, as well as providing a disaster recovery option for tape drive failures or other catastrophes. READ MORE >

(BCD) This white paper discusses PHP as a technology and as a productive method for transforming legacy applications to Web applications or creating new Web applications from square one. It explains the popularity of PHP, how it is different from other technologies, and uses the company's WebSmart PHP as the focal point for Web application development. READ MORE >

Chats, Webinars, Seminars, Shows, and Other Happenings

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

May 15 -- Nanticoke, Pennsylvania - An overview of the IBM announcements on V6R1 and the Power6 hardware will be presented by Brian Kelly at the Northeastern Pennsylvania Computer Users Group meeting. The event begins at 10:30 a.m. at the Luzerne County Community College located at 1333 South Prospect Street. LEARN MORE >

May 17-21 -- Barcelona, Spain - The COMMON Europe Congress annual conference agenda includes general topic areas such as System i security, database management/performance, i5/OS V6R1 (now called i 6.1) systems management, system modernization, PHP/MySQL, application development, and Linux. In addition to lecture-style presentations, there will be hands-on lab sessions, a Spanish language technical stream, and a product showcase. There will also be keynote addresses by IBM executives, and the COMMON Europe Top Concerns discussion session. A detailed agenda can be found online. LEARN MORE >

May 19 -- Mississauga, Ontario, Canada - RPG expert Scott Klement will present two sessions at the monthly meeting of the Toronto User Group. At 4 p.m. his session will cover the basics of opening, reading, and writing IFS files. His 7 p.m. session discusses how an RPG program can build and modify Excel spreadsheets by calling the POI Java classes. LEARN MORE >

May 20 & 21 -- Barcelona, Spain - The RPG & DB2 Summit, a development training event that has steady grown in popularity in the United States, will be held in conjunction with the COMMON Europe Congress annual conference. The Summit focuses on the latest tips and techniques related to RPG IV, ILE, SQL, PHP, XML and other application development technologies pertinent to IBM's i platform. The agenda also features sessions on V6R1 details, such as new RPG enhancements and how to prepare for the move to V6R1, including the process to follow for program object conversions. Registration can be separate for the COMMON Europe conference or the two events can be packaged as one. LEARN MORE >

May 20 -- Orlando, Florida - Guest speaker Jeff Elmore will be talking about the new generation of Power Systems at the Central Florida Midrange Users Group meeting. The presentation will cover energy efficiency, ease of deployment, Express servers, blade servers, and the new operating system i 6.1. Fiserv at Lake Mary located at 600 Colonial Center Parkway is the event site, and it begins at 6:15 p.m. RSVP is required. LEARN MORE >

May 20 -- Beaverton, Oregon - A presentation on the IBM Rational Developer for System i will be the highlight of a meeting co-hosted by the Cascade iSeries User Group and the Pacific Midrange local user group. Guest speaker IBM's Nazmin Haji will explain the components of IBM Rational Developer for System i (RDi), IBM Rational Developer for System i for SOA Construction (RDi SOA) and Host Access Transformation Services (HATS). The session also includes an introduction of Enterprise Generation Language (EGL). This is an all-day session from 8:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. The meeting will be held at the IBM offices, 15400 S.W. Koll Parkway. LEARN MORE >

May 20 -- Atlanta, Georgia - The IBM Power Equation Road Show examines the Power architecture technology with an emphasis on how higher levels of performance, capacity, and resilience can bring benefits to i5/OS, UNIX, and Linux systems. Topics of discussion include: virtualization, scalability with a choice of database servers, shared IT infrastructure, reducing energy and administration costs through consolidated workloads, increased application availability, and business resiliency. This event begins at 8:30 a.m. at the IBM offices located at 4111 Northside Parkway. LEARN MORE >

May 20 -- Lombard, Illinois - The featured topic at the monthly meeting of the OMNI User Group will be CL Programming for the 21st Century. This session will describe updates to the Control Language compiler in V5R3, V5R4, and V6R1 (now known as i 6.1). Guest speaker is Mike Pavlak, a customer sales engineer for Zend Technologies and the former IT director for Trippe Manufacturing. The meeting begins at 5 p.m. LEARN MORE >

May 20 -- Costa Mesa, California - A presentation on PHP topics is the highlight of the regular monthly meeting of the OCEAN User Group. Guest speaker is Sharon Hoffman. Her session covers how PHP fits in with other technologies, as well as basic PHP syntax, and an introduction to the Zend Studio development environment. 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 and begin at 3:30 p.m. LEARN MORE >

May 20 -- Irving, Texas - Robert Arce, an IBM certified specialist, will make a presentation on the IBM developer tools known as WDSc and RSE at the monthly meeting of the Metro Midrange Systems Association, a user group for the Dallas and Fort Worth metro areas. His session will include topics such as navigating the IDE, editing RPG programs, converting RPG programs to free form, and debugging RPG-ILE programs. The event begins at 5:30 p.m. with dinner at 6 and Arce's presentation at 6:45. MMSA meetings are held at the Radisson Hotel DFW South. LEARN MORE >

May 20 -- Norwalk, Connecticut - The Fairfield AS/400 Users Group monthly meeting topic is backup and recovery with an emphasis on virtual tape and encryption presented by IBM's System i backup and recovery expert Debbie Saugen. Her session will include topics such as backup strategies and the latest capabilities built in to i 6.1 OS. FASUG meetings are held at the Norwalk Inn and begin at 5:30 p.m. LEARN MORE >

May 21 -- Woodbury, New York - The Long Island Systems Users Group is presenting its annual Education Day event featuring seven sessions and a vendor expo. Session topics include SQL, backup and recovery, and SharePoint and the System i. Keynote speaker is Barbara Viola, President of the Association of Information Technology Professionals (AITP), Long Island Chapter. Session presenters include SQL expert Skip Marchesani and IBM's i5/OS backup and recovery expert Debbie Saugen. The event is scheduled from 1 p.m. until 9:30 p.m. It will be held at the Fox Hollow Inn. LEARN MORE >

May 21 -- Webinar - Seven things you should know about DB2 Web Query for System i will be discussed during this session presented by DB2 experts Mark Holm of Centerfield Technology and Gene Cobb of IBM. Installation, licensing, metadata definition, and Query/400 import versus using SQL will be covered, as well as Web Query add-on features. This event begins at 10 a.m. CDT. LEARN MORE >

May 21 -- Webinar - Automated software testing that's integrated into the application development process is the topic of this one-hour session presented by Ray Bernardi, solutions architect at ARCAD Software. Software testing implemented in a realistic timeframe will be a focal point, and topics of discussion will include how integrated analysis, change management, and testing tools can improve efficiency and meet the requirements of compliance auditors. The session begins at 1 p.m. EDT. LEARN MORE >

May 21 -- Cambridge, Massachusetts - The Fifth Annual MIT Sloan CIO Symposium features cutting-edge sessions addressing the changing roles of CIOs, CTOs, and senior IT executives. It combines academic insights on IT trends with CIO best practice recommendations. Keynote speaker is Ronald A. Williams, Chief Executive Officer of Aetna. Session speakers will include nearly 50 senior executives and professors from organizations such as Rolls Royce, Alcatel-Lucent, Marriott International, Massachusetts General Hospital, Bank of America, Forbes.com, IDC, Adobe, Special Olympics International, MIT, and Harvard Business School. The program will also feature CIO and Academic Keynote Panels. In addition, there will be a luncheon to honor winners of the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium 2008 Award for IT Innovation. LEARN MORE >

May 21 -- Seekonk, Massachusetts - WebFacing and HATS will be the featured topic at the monthly meeting of the New England Midrange Users Group. Guest speaker is Jim Mason a software engineering specialist and a System i Web expert. Among the topics he will discuss are WebFacing 5250 applications, using the WDSc WebFacing tool, and deploying applications to WebSphere or Tomcat. The meeting is held at the Ramada Inn and begins at 5:15 p.m. LEARN MORE >

May 22 -- Fairfield, New Jersey - Guest speaker Debbie Saugen will discuss backup and recovery at the regular monthly meeting of the North Eastern Systems Technology Users (NESTU) meeting. Topics will include backup strategies and the latest capabilities built in to i 6.1 OS. The event begins at 5:30 p.m. and will be held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. LEARN MORE >

May 22 -- Webinar - Automating data transfers and securing data using multiple encryption methods will be the topic of this online session presented by Bob Luebbe, chief architect at Linoma Software. Luebbe will discuss consolidating data transmission and processing from a single point of control and administration, securely moving data, and the advantages of a browser-based user interface, built-in scheduler, and comprehensive logging features. Linoma's GoAnywhere product that installs on System i, Windows, Linux, and Unix servers will be spotlighted. LEARN MORE >

May 22 -- Kent, Washington - A presentation on the IBM Rational Developer for System i will be the highlight of a meeting co-hosted by the Pacific Midrange local user group and Cascade iSeries User Group. Guest speaker IBM's Nazmin Haji will explain the components of IBM Rational Developer for System i (RDi), IBM Rational Developer for System i for SOA Construction (RDi SOA) and Host Access Transformation Services (HATS). The session also includes an introduction of Enterprise Generation Language (EGL). This is an all-day session from 8:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. The meeting will be held at the CenterPoint Corporate Park, 20809 72nd Avenue South, Suite 120. LEARN MORE >

May 28 -- Webinar - This online demonstration of the MKS Implementor 2008 application lifecycle software focuses on the developer experience when using Remote System Explorer, WDSc, and RDi. Particular emphasis is placed on reviewing work assignments; the check out, edit, compile, and check in process; release and deploy; and updating project information such as status and time entry. The one-hour session begins at 2 p.m. EDT. LEARN MORE >

June 1 & 2 -- Nashville, Tennessee - The Information Builders 2008 Summit has a two-day track specifically for System i end users and ISVs interested in DB2 Web Query and its business intelligence capabilities. The session topics include creating and executing reports from DB2, step-by-step processes for embedding Web Query reports and graphs into Web sites, portals, and other Web-based applications. For registration and additional information, contact at Kathy_Drago@informationbuilders.com or by calling 800-969-4636. The entire conference stretches over five days and includes in-depth information and training for Information Builders products such as WebFOCUS, FOCUS, and iWay Software. LEARN MORE >