News Briefs and Product Shorts

• Thanks to collaboration between LXI and EMC, OS/400 shops can now use LXI's Media Management System to automate the backup process using EMC's Symmetrix disk arrays. LXI, which develops backup and recovery software and tape and vault management software for OS/400 and Unix platforms, developed the interface to the Symmetrix arrays through the EMC Developers Program. Specifically, LXI adapted Media Management System to work with CopyPoint, an EMC application for reducing OS/400 server backup windows by offloading backup workloads to a secondary OS/400 server or OS/400 partition. Media Management System is a family of storage management applications for automating and performing backups.

• The Pechanga Resort and Casino, one of the largest Indian casinos recently built in Southern California, has chosen the iSeries to serve as the mainstay of its hotel operations. The $262 million complex, which opened in Temecula, California, last June, has 2,000 slot machines, 522 hotel rooms, 86 table games, seven restaurants, and 40,000 square feet of meeting area. The casino selected a range of OS/400-based applications to power its business, including Inter-American Data's Lodging Management System, the Infinium financial software from SSA Global Technologies, and the Materials Management System (MMS400) procurement and inventory software developed by Stratton Warren Software, now a subsidiary of Inter-American Data. These applications run on a primary iSeries server, while a second iSeries provides real-time backup in case the first one goes down. Pechanga is using Vision Solutions high availability software, called the Vision Suite, to mirror data from the primary iSeries server to the backup iSeries.
  
  
• OS/400 EDI software developer IPNet Solutions is offering incentives on software to encourage manufacturers and distributors to register their products in the UCCnet Global Registry, an open database of specifications for consumer products, created to reduce inefficiency due to the wide assortment of product data types. The Newport Beach, California, company recently announced it will be offering free licenses for its MapPack for UCCnet Starter Kit to companies that purchase a five-trading-partners license of BizManager BizConnect by June 30. The kit includes four UCCnet item synchronization processes, including item add, item linkage, item publication, and delete unlisted item, and is designed so that companies can automate UCCnet item synchronization without having to replace or upgrade their current EDI translator. BizManager BizConnect is a PC-based data-exchange solution for companies that need to communicate with trading partners using other IPNet EDI applications, including BizManager400. IPNet Solutions also offers its MapPack for UCCnet Supply Side Kit.
  
  
• The Wood Company, a $600 million provider of food-service management for businesses, schools, hospitals, and retirement communities, has chosen DigiTerra to integrate its OS/400-based Lawson Software financial application with its 401k system. The Indianapolis-based systems integrator has signed a contract with the Allenstown, Pennsylvania, food-service provider to build an interface that allows 401k-related information, including enrollment and eligibility date loan repayments, to be submitted through the Lawson software to the 401k provider. DigiTerra made the announcement last week at the annual Lawson conference and user exchange in Orlando, Florida. DigiTerra announced that it also has formed contracts with 16 other Lawson customers in the retail industry, including Friendly Ice Cream Corp., Aaron Rents, and RARE Hospitality International.
  
  
• Two OS/400 utilities from ProData Computer Services have been awarded the ServerProven certification from IBM, the Omaha, Nebraska, tools vendor announced last week. The first utility to gain the IBM certification is ProData's flagship product, Database Utility, or DBU, which has 10,000 installs in 31 countries, according to the company. DBU helps users search and update files without running queries or other IBM commands. The other utility to gain certification, SQL/PRO, is a complementary product to DBU that gives users the option to query, print, and manipulate data. Both products can be used as replacements for native OS/400 operations. IBM gives the ServerProven certifications to products that it has tested successfully in an iSeries production environment. iSeries users can also gain discounts by buying certified software.
  
  
• The possibility and likelihood of somebody wanting to run Oracle database applications on iSeries hardware have increased as a result of the iSeries' new Linux capabilities, as well as the AIX capabilities that IBM is working to bring to the box. But what about running Oracle workloads in DB2/400 natively? IBM recently announced the availability of Oracle to DB2 UDB for iSeries Migration Toolkit Version 1.2, a group of tools that help programmers migrate applications built on Oracle Release 7 or Oracle Release 8, such as business intelligence, ERP, online transaction processing, high availability, and mobile applications, to a native OS/400 V5R1 environment. IBM has also published a white paper on the topic: "DB2 UDB for iSeries Porting Guide."
  
  

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