Alex Woodie
Alex Woodie is Senior Editor at IT Jungle. He was previously editor of two of IT Jungle's main newsletters, Four Hundred Stuff and The Windows Observer. Prior to joining Midrange Server (as Guild Companies was formerly called) in October 2001, Alex was a products editor at now defunct publisher Midrange Computing, where he was first introduced to the AS/400 and covered hardware, software, and services for Midrange Technology SHOWCASE magazine. Before joining Midrange Computing, Alex was a staff writer for The Insurance Journal and a reporter and columnist with The Paradise Post newspaper. Woodie obtained his Bachelors of Arts degree in journalism from Humboldt State University in 1997. Upon graduation, Alex intended to make his way onto a major daily newspaper, but in 1999 he found himself drawn to the high-technology industry, where his background in science and engineering has suited him well. He lives in Northern San Diego County. When he is not writing next week's newsletters, Alex can be found in his favorite chair reading the day's paper, in the kitchen, or at the beach.
-
IBM Delivers Node.js Runtime to IBM i 7.1 and 7.2
October 14, 2014 Alex Woodie
Among the many announcements made by IBM last week was the revelation that it has built a Node.js runtime for the IBM i operating system. The move to adopt the cross-platform JavaScript framework is another indication that IBM is working to keep the platform current with the latest Web technologies.
Node.js is essentially a framework designed to take some of the complexity out of building and running scalable, data-intensive Web applications. The framework was created in 2009 by Ryan Dahl, who was tired of the “request-response” paradigm that has characterized the Web and wanted Web apps with “push” capability, like
-
Dropbox and IBM i: Love It Or Leave It?
October 14, 2014 Alex Woodie
There’s no doubt that Dropbox has become a pervasive tool of American consumers. But is it up to snuff when it comes to business data? Many IBM i software vendors say Dropbox represents a major security and compliance risk. But one vendor, Arpeggio Software, says Dropbox is no more dangerous than other cloud offerings and can safely be used.
“I am amazed and frankly shocked at the number of IBM i software vendors who come out with anti-Dropbox positions instead of accepting the reality . . . Dropbox is here and it is pervasive,” Rich Brown, the CEO and
-
Options Abound for IBM i Data Replication
October 14, 2014 Alex Woodie
As an IBM i system administrator, it’s your job to ensure that data in DB2 for i is available where it’s needed. No server is an island these days, not even the IBM i-based Power Systems servers, and so that means replicating data to external databases is a requirement. But what’s the best way to power data integration? Should you build it yourself or buy off the shelf? We’ll try to provide you some answers.
At many organizations, the IBM i server might house the core ERP application and be the system of record, but there are plenty of other
-
IBM Gives RDi 9.1.1 ‘Push to Client’ Feature
October 14, 2014 Alex Woodie
It will be easier for IBM i developers to share tool preferences with other members of their teams thanks to the new “push to client” feature that IBM announced last week with Rational Developer for i version 9.1.1. The new release of RDi becomes available in December.
The new push to client capability in RDi 9.1.1 will allow a team of developers to share a set of standard preference and connection settings for the Eclipse-based development tool. According to IBM, a template that’s maintained on the server will enable developers to share a common set of preferences, connections, filters, and
-
BRMS Learns New Tricks
October 14, 2014 Alex Woodie
IBM is adding new capabilities to several existing commands in Backup, Recovery and Media Services (BRMS), the native backup facility included with IBM i.
IBM made four enhancements to BRMS with last week’s announcement of IBM i 7.1 Technology Refresh 9 (TR9) and IBM i 7.2 TR1. According to IBM’s announcement letters, the enhancements include:
- During backup of integrated file system (IFS) objects, the Start Backup Using BRM (STRBKUBRM) command has been enhanced to automatically remount file systems after a backup is run for a control group
- The Print Report using BRM (PRTRPTBRM) command has been enhanced to support multiple
-
City Touts PowerHA Install
October 14, 2014 Alex Woodie
The folks who work for the city of St. Charles, Illinois, asked themselves some tough questions recently. What would happen if the city were hit by a tornado or succumbed to some other disaster? The answers were not pretty, and led the city to adopt high availability software from IBM and a local business partner, IT Solutions Group.
Like many municipalities around the country, St. Charles relies on an IBM i server to manage the business aspects of running a principality. The city’s electric, water, and sewer services are managed on an IBM i server.
If the city was
-
Golden Nugget Taps Agilysys to Supply Software for New Casino
October 14, 2014 Alex Woodie
A new Golden Nugget casino slated to open in December will be outfitted with more than 700 rooms, 1,600 slot machines, and an 18-hole golf course. It will also be served by at least one IBM i server running enterprise software from Agilysys.
Situated about two hours east of Houston on the shore of Lake Charles, Louisiana, the new Golden Nugget Lake Charles is slated to be one of the country’s most luxurious casino resorts outside of the Las Vegas strip. The 242-acre complex will be the fifth Golden Nugget property, and represents a $600 million investment by the
-
IntelliChief Delivers Deeper ERP Integration
October 14, 2014 Alex Woodie
Hooking ERP systems up to IntelliChief‘s document and content management system should be easier with the recently released Integration Link offering.
IntelliChief is a suite of Windows products designed to help organizations transition to using electronic documents and workflows with their business processes. The suite includes functionality for handling the input of paper or electronic documents, the output of electronic documents, and the flow of work in between.
With the new Integration Link module, IntelliChief customers will be able to retrieve electronic documents stored in the IntelliChief repository directly from within an ERP application. This approach eliminates the need
-
IBM i Performance Concerns? Supermon to the Rescue!
October 14, 2014 Alex Woodie
A new release of the Supermon performance monitoring tool from SoftLanding Systems should make it easier for organizations to ensure production IBM i workloads run without disruption.
Supermon for iSeries is a real-time performance monitoring tool that UNICOM Global acquired with its 2009 acquisition of Macro 4. The software enables customers to monitor real-time conditions, and compare them against historical averages.
The new release of Supermon for iSeries brings several new features that should help users. For starters, the product can now store historical data on external databases instead of just DB2 for i.
“This is a significant benefit
-
Tyan Preps $2,753 OpenPower Reference Server
October 13, 2014 Alex Woodie
Ever since IBM founded the OpenPower Foundation and announced it was opening up its Power processing architecture to the world, we’ve been waiting for the first non-IBM Power-based server to become available. That day will arrive soon thanks to Taiwanese motherboard and system maker Tyan.
Last week Tyan announced that, at the end of the month, it will begin delivery of the GN70-BP010. Codenamed “Palmetto,” it’s the first OpenPower customer reference system to become available to the general public.
GN70-BP010 is a 2U system that contains a single chip module (SCM) Power8 processor, codenamed “Turismo,” running on a single-socket,