Apria Healthcare Takes GROUP Approach to Treating Spam Problem
by Alex Woodie

Things are growing quickly at Apria Healthcare these days. The company's revenues, the size of its iSeries servers, and the number of e-mail users have all increased substantially in the last year. Unfortunately, Apria's daily dose of spam e-mail has also shot up, requiring its IBM Lotus Notes users to manually delete thousands of unwanted--and sometimes obscenely objectionable--electronic messages every day. Apria began its search for a spam filter a year ago, with hopes of keeping the filter on its iSeries. READ MORE >

New ARCTOOLS Release Focuses on Speed and Manageability
by Alex Woodie

Companies buying new iSeries Model 8XX hardware won't be worrying much about the performance of their interactive 5250 applications. For the rest of us, making the most of existing resources on older AS/400 and iSeries servers is important. DCSoftware recently started shipping a new version of its suite of purge and archive utilities, ARCTOOLS/400, which helps companies make the most of their expensive CPWs and disk. The company also released a special add-on module for ARCTOOLS/400 designed specifically for J.D. Edwards applications. READ MORE >

Bytware Bolsters Security of Peek-Plus Help Desk Software
by Alex Woodie

Bytware recently started shipping a new release of PeekPlus, an application that allows help desk personnel to assist in training and diagnosing problems by seeing exactly what's occurring on users' OS/400 screens, including their keystrokes. New features in PeekPlus Version 3.4 include compatibility with OS/400 V5R2, support for OS/400 security levels 40 and 50, and enhancements that reduce or eliminate risk of security exposure while using the software. READ MORE >

Inventive Designers Readies Scriptura for the Enterprise
by Alex Woodie

Inventive Designers has issued a new release of Scriptura, its XML-based, multiplatform document design and output management tool. With Scriptura 1.1, the company has enhanced the Scriptura Designer with new features such as print preview and improved text control. The Scriptura engine has undergone an overhaul as well, as Inventive Designer has released a new Enterprise Edition of the engine designed for high-volume printing, with new features such as intelligent data caching and support for the PCL5 print data stream. READ MORE >

CCSS to Keep a Closer Eye on LPAR Performance
by Alex Woodie

CCSS is working to enhance its iSeries performance monitor with additional logical partitioning (LPAR) capabilities that will give administrators more insight into the state of their LPAR-enabled OS/400 server. The British OS/400 systems management software developer announced last week that these new LPAR capabilities will be delivered with the Version 11 release of its flagship product, QSystem Monitor, later this year. READ MORE >

News Briefs and Product Shorts

SEAGULL Brings JMS to Transidiom, Which Is Up for an Award . . . CYBRA Gets OK to Print 2-D Barcode Label for UPS . . . Magic Software Joins Web Services Interoperability Organization . . . Information Builders Launches WebFOCUS 5.0 . . . IBM Ships First Xperanto Data Tools . . . Screensaver Targets Smallpox, Much Like SETI@home . . . READ MORE >

ASNApalooza Contest Winner Announced!

OS/400 programmer Richard Brown is about to find out what it's like to program in the Microsoft .NET environment. Next month, in San Antonio, Brown will attend ASNApalooza, the best place for OS/400 programmers to learn about Microsoft's .NET, Visual Studio environment, and database connectivity.
During the month of January, Guild Companies and ASNA cosponsored the educational gateway leading up to the conference, scheduled for March 5 through 7. Brown, of Reno, Nevada, was randomly chosen from a list of Guild Companies newsletter subscribers who expressed an interest in the free educational opportunity. He has attended ASNA's annual users conference in the past but had not planned to attend this year because of budgetary cutbacks.
Much of the 2003 ASNApalooza will focus on the underpinnings of .NET, and what it offers OS/400 programmers, through using ASNA Visual RPG. ASNA Visual RPG for .NET is an RPG development environment for the .NET platform. ASNApalooza session topics include XML, DLL, SQL, .NET coding exercises for Windows and the Web, and browser-based user interfaces. Click here for more information on ASNApalooza.

Reader Feedback and Insights

Readers respond to "IBM Repositions WebFacing to Convert Interactive Apps to Batch" and "DCSoftware's Wizard Throttles Back on Hungry File Reorgs" . . . READ MORE >

Corrections

The article "IBM Repositions WebFacing to Convert Interactive Apps to Batch" has been edited to correct several errors. The number of ISVs that use SEAGULL's JWalk technology is 450. The sentence "Companies that have used SEAGULL's JWalk to develop GUI front ends for RPG applications can plug the output of J Walk into X-Caliber for a relatively easy upgrade to batch and XML capabilities" now reads: "Companies that have used SEAGULL's JWalk to develop GUI front ends for RPG applications can plug the output of X-Caliber into J Walk for a relatively easy upgrade to batch and XML capabilities." The article "Bytware Clamping Down on OS/400 Security Exposures" has also been edited.

The article "Bytware Clamping Down on OS/400 Security Exposures" has also been edited. StandGuardAudit is completely free, not just for the first 30 days. StandGuard is being offered as a free 30-day trial download.

Guild Companies regrets the errors. [Corrections made 1/30/03.]