Dan Burger
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A BI On IBM i Partnership Blooms
December 3, 2012 Dan Burger
… Read moreExecutives love the idea of business intelligence. The promise is that it can quickly provide dividends, but that rarely happens. Why is that? In IBM midrange shops, the situation is no different than anywhere else. IT departments are understaffed and overworked. It doesn’t take a genius to see that when new projects are added someone has to have the time to implement them. The path to completed projects is often paved by service companies. The recent partnership between Coglin Mill and GEMKO is a good example.
Coglin Mill is has an extract, transform, and load (ETL) tool called RODIN for
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Where In The World Is Web Query?
November 12, 2012 Dan Burger
… Read moreWeb Query may be the most underused business intelligence software available. Although it is thought to be owned–complete with licenses and maintenance contracts–by tens of thousands of IBM i customers, it sits on the shelf, like good whiskey waiting for the right occasion. For those who don’t know a good thing when they don’t see it, Web Query was introduced by IBM in 2007 as a Web-based query and report product to replace the aged but beloved Query/400.
In its version 1 release, it was highly promoted by IBM as one of the many modern features being added to what
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Managed File Transfers More Than Meets The Eye
November 12, 2012 Dan Burger
… Read moreManaged file transfer (MFT) products are designed to manage, secure, centralize, and automate the transfer of files inside and outside of an organization. In IBM midrange shops running the modern operating system known as IBM i, or its earlier versions known as i5OS or OS/400, there is almost always a reason to share data with other platforms running Windows, Linux, Unix, or Mac OS. System integration and data sharing capabilities are expanding with each tick of the clock. Coincidentally, data security issues are expanding at the same time.
With increased risk comes increased regulatory compliance for a lot of companies.
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Avoiding Mistakes With PHP On IBM i Platforms
November 12, 2012 Dan Burger
… Read moreWe all make mistakes. And for those who don’t, I make up for your perfection. There’s value in mistakes. Learning about mistakes is a good way to avoid mistakes. It’s as true with PHP as it is with skydiving. Because a lot of people in the IBM midrange community use PHP, and presumably many more will be learning about it soon, I hope this helps them.
This is not to say people using PHP for Web application development are more likely to make mistakes or that it is easier to make mistakes in this environment. Please don’t jump to that
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Michigan LUG Members Face Reality-Based Web Query Training
November 5, 2012 Dan Burger
… Read moreThere may be no better example of what a local user group should be than the educational programs run out of the Southeast Michigan iSeries Users Group. Last week, SMiUG and the Western Michigan IBM i User Group rolled up their sleeves and got to work on a project that is bringing together 37 members for a hands-on, learn-by-doing IBM Web Query experience. It will be a month-long, problem-solving exercise with the goal of completing two real-world projects for a pair of companies looking for modern query capabilities that include dashboards, drill-downs, and mobile components including iPhones and iPads.
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Agilysys Makes Dough From Hospitality And Services
November 5, 2012 Dan Burger
… Read moreLed by an economic exclamation point in its hospitality business dominated by hotels and casinos, Agilysys found a way to make some revenue gains during the second quarter of its fiscal 2013 year ended in September. Agilysys reported a 9 percent year-over-year gain in its hospitality segment, which allowed the company to post a net revenue gain of 3 percent. A retail segment that was off 1 percent from the same quarter one year ago was a bit of drag total revenue, which inched ahead to $54.2 million.
A summary of the first six months of 2013 shows the hospitality
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Gartner Says Big Data Getting Bigger, Skills Lag
October 29, 2012 Dan Burger
… Read moreIt’s a mighty big shadow that Big Data casts. As is the nature of shadows, their size has a lot to do with the source of the light. Last week Gartner was the source, and reports were published from one end of the media galaxy to the other concerning the firm’s predictions for the future of IT. Big Data loomed large and predictions were appropriately big with forecasts for increasing bigness. The question this begs is: Who’s prepared for this?
Anyone who has not already been handling Big Data (the capitalization makes it even bigger, don’t you think?) can take
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IBM i Innovators Rise And Shine
October 29, 2012 Dan Burger
… Read moreIs the IBM i a modern system or not? There certainly are progressive companies and talented people accomplishing extremely innovative business solutions using this frequently maligned platform. The key word here is “innovative.” Each year at the COMMON Annual Meeting and Exposition there are awards presented to organizations that are proving this platform is as modern as systems perceived to be more modern. There has always been prestige associated with companies that are technologically advanced and that has never been more true than it is today. An innovation award doesn’t just sit on the president’s credenza. It’s worth its weight
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Single Sign-On Service Cuts Costs, Complexity
October 23, 2012 Dan Burger
… Read moreThe realization of how costly it is to manage user IDs, passwords, and authentication policies can be a shocking experience. If you actually look into this, hanging a “Danger! High Voltage!” sign outside the IT department may be a good idea. Many companies are looking for places where costs can be cut with IT efficiencies, and an examination in this area might earn you some extra credit. It begins with a technology you may have heard of before: single sign-on.
You may not know it, but you already own the technology that enables single sign-on. It’s built into your IBM
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Single Sign-On: Then and Now
October 22, 2012 Dan Burger
… Read moreWhen single sign-on was integrated into the IBM OS/400 operating system in 2002, it was one of the highlighted technologies in the V5R2 release. In the right hands, it allowed system administrators in IBM midrange shops to set up user authentication beyond the boundaries of the i5 system to include multiple servers and applications–Microsoft Windows, Unix, Linux, and others–but primarily the target was Windows, where PC5250 emulators were the bull’s eye. There was widespread use of green-screen applications with emulators running those applications from a menu.
Ten years later, why is single sign-on so rarely used? The benefit of