Top OS/400 Stories from Around the Web

(IT Jungle) Like the often used warning not to judge a book by its cover, it is best not to predict system performance based on processor core performance statistics. System i buyers should keep this in mind when doing capacity planning and the budgeting for acquiring that capacity. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) Back when gasoline prices were less than a dollar per gallon, there was little conversation in data centers about topics such as thermal design points, heat dissipation, and electricity consumption. Well it's a different world today. Data center managers are worried about power consumption and equipment stressed to the point of overheating. Performance per watt has become an important measuring stick and Power6 measures up nicely. A sales point? You bet. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) When i5/OS V6R1 becomes available early in 2008, it will be one of those monumental upgrades that requires extra planning on the part of customers. Applications have to be tweaked to run on the new operating system regardless of whether it will be running on Power5, Power5+, or Power6 processors. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) Web application development using PHP makes sense for a lot of programmers looking for easy access and manipulation of i5/OS resources, including DB2, data areas, data queues, and so forth. Duncan Kenzie has a lot of experience with PHP and in this interview he shares his insights and experiences. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) Green-screen interfaces are the monkeys on the backs of many iSeries applications. New users hate the green screen. Not just for the way it looks, but for the way it performs in many circumstances. Software vendors hear this from their customers and feel the pain when software sales suffer. How do they go from green screen to GUI without throwing their RPG skill sets out the window? Here's one way. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) Sun Microsystems and IBM make strange bedfellows. But last week the two competitors got cozy by announcing Sun's Solaris, an open source Unix operating system, will be supported on IBM's System x, BladeCenter, and mainframes. Unannounced and completely unmentioned was the possibility of Solaris possibly running on System i and System p servers someday. As strange as that may seem given the history of competition, it would not be all that shocking. READ MORE >

(MCPress) We're coming into the season when those budgets must be planned. Just a short while back, the stock market was flying high and the predictions for IT spending were optimistic. Then came the fall and based on the current less-than-cheery economic forecasts for 2008, it would be safe to conclude that IT budgets will decrease accordingly. READ MORE >

(MCPress) It's unlikely that the System i and its independent software vendor community will regain the momentum achieved in the early days of the AS/400, however, it appears IBM has regained its ability to provide innovative and unique programs to address the needs of small- to mid-size customers. That is, of course, dependent on how you define the SMB. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) IBM Lotus has packaged Web 2.0-style collaboration with composite application capabilities and lets it all ride on an open source Eclipse-based environment inside Notes 8, which was released this week. It's a giant leap forward from the Notes that most people think of as kludgey and stale. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) The reason organizations use change management software is to replace chaos with order. Of course, you have to rely on your HR department to do some of this, but change management software is a huge help to the application development environment where it synchronizes code changes and provides audit trails of all developer activity. The System i ISV community has several companies in this market. This one is probably the least known and that may surprise you. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) Application modernization depends on understanding the business logic written in RPG and other languages. That business logic has to be isolated from the presentation layer, and that's where the understanding part becomes important. Do you understand how it interacts with the other parts of the application? READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) Backup and recovery operations vary greatly depending on an organization's size and budget. But neither size nor budget eliminates the efficiencies provided by increased performance and the security provided by encryption. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) Pricing on IBM hardware and software will usually change this time of year, especially when technology upgrades are on the horizon. Some good deals can be found, but don't count on prices to drop across the board. Buyers still need to do some homework, and if you aren't buying you still need to keep an eye on products that have been withdrawn from marketing. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) PHP applications running on OS/400 and i5/OS platforms gained a bit of DB2/400 performance because of new database extensions. Also on tap will be PHP support for Linux partitions on the System i and Linux-based blade servers inside a BladeCenter chassis or external System x servers running Linux that connect to System i servers through iSCSI links and use the System i as a storage server. READ MORE >

Redbooks, White Papers, and Other OS/400 Resources

(IBM) All programs that use the i5/OS Machine Interface will need a degree of conversion to run on V6R1, which is scheduled for release in February 2008. In order for a program to be converted, its creation data (sometimes referred to as observability) must be available. Programs created for V5R1 or later have their creation data automatically saved during program creation. Clients and ISVs with programs created for OS/400 V4R5 and earlier need to ensure that the creation data is available for the conversion process. This technical paper provides a focus on what you should expect in terms of conversion processes. READ MORE >

(IBM) To start learning the ins and outs of DB2 Web Query for System i, check out this FAQ document produced by IBM. It provides an overview of the product's features and capabilities, a comparison with Query/400, and other useful background information. READ MORE >

(MySQL) Interest in MySQL is growing along with the interest in PHP among the System i developer crowd. Find out what MySQL database users are doing based on a variety of survey responses posted on this site. Two examples: What database connectors/APIs are use or are you planning to use with MySQL? And, how do you backup your production MySQL databases? Many more insights to be found. READ MORE >

(MKS) This white paper explores the management issues surrounding application modernization and offers ways to minimize the impact on the organization and its IT infrastructure through better management and process controls. The report examines organizations accustomed to a single platform and the tools needed to help them coordinate a variety of development activities. READ MORE >

Chats, Webinars, Seminars, Shows, and Other Happenings

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

August 28 -- Webinar - A session on business and financial performance management for the transportation industry is being presented by New Generation Software. Content focuses on the IBM System i server and how to obtain business analytics and reporting solutions to better manage operations and lower costs. Topics of discussion will include how the NGS-IQ business intelligence solution addresses the needs of a CIO in maintaining data integrity and performance; a CFO with timely access to financial data viewable through dynamic Web dashboards; and a CEO with quick deployment, affordable cost, and minimal upkeep. Examples of NGS-IQ performance and financial dashboards and OLAP models, Microsoft Excel-based reports, and other functions of the product line are included in the presentation. LEARN MORE >

September 11 -- Orlando, Florida - Guest speaker Susan Yoskin will discuss DB2 Web Query for System i at the Central Florida Midrange Users Group meeting. The presentation will cover the new Web-based query and report-writing tool and include demonstrations of the report and graph modules as well as modules relating to On Line Analytical Processing and dashboard building. The event will take place on the campus of DeVry University and begins at 6:15 p.m. LEARN MORE >

September 12 -- Maryland Heights, Missouri - IBM's Jacqueline Jansen will discuss the DB2 Web Query for System i product at the monthly meeting of the Gateway/400 Group, an iSeries user group serving the greater St. Louis area. LEARN MORE >

September 12 -- Webcast - This session titled "Practical Application Modernization," intends to highlight how the word modernization causes confusion in the System i industry. Midrange expert and award-winning speaker Trevor Perry will outline an approach to modernization that aims to reduce confusion and illuminate modernization goals using an example relevant to companies with applications implemented over many years on System i. Managing change as applications are modernized means using new tools, and bringing cross-platform development teams together. Ray Bernardi, Solutions Architect at ARCAD Software, will demonstrate ways to organize development and ensure application integrity -- whether you are working with RPG, RPGLE, SQL, Java, .NET or other Web technologies. LEARN MORE >

September 13 -- Milwaukee, Wisconsin - Making modifications to third-party applications and then dealing with product updates is the topic of the day at the monthly meeting of the Wisconsin Midrange Computer Professional Association. Guest speaker is Christopher Burns, director of client system modernization at the GEMKO Information Group. Burns is well versed in the areas of custom programming, modernization, networking, database, web development, the IFS and Windows integration. This session will focus on "Externalization," which he describes as "getting ample equivalent custom function without altering the vendor's source code." Two sessions are on the agenda. The first begins at 4:30 p.m. The second begins at 7:30. In between is dinner and networking with the members. LEARN MORE >

September 18 -- Norwalk, Connecticut - The Fairfield AS/400 Users Group monthly meeting topic is an introduction to DB2 Web Query, the new IBM alternative for Query/400. Guest speaker is Jackie Jansen, a senior consulting IT specialist with 30 years at IBM. The presentation will include demonstrations of creating reports, graphs and dashboards that can be used effectively for operational or data warehouse reporting purposes. FASUG meetings are held at the Norwalk Inn and begin at 5:30 p.m. LEARN MORE >