Dan Burger
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Supply Chain Gets Item-Level Tagging Standards
June 11, 2012 Dan Burger
… Read moreTracing individual products as they move through the global supply chain is on the verge of becoming as easy as tracing a truckload of vegetables on its path from Fresno to Philadelphia. We’re not there yet, but the wheels are in motion. For IT Jungle readers and IBM midrange systems users in the apparel or food and beverage industries particularly, the evolution of electronic product codes (EPCs) to item-level tracking is a sooner rather than later proposition.
Most supply chain-driven companies have systems in place that are error prone, inefficient, and sometimes in the food and beverage business run afoul
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i-Centric Teaching Paid by SoCal Vendors
June 5, 2012 Dan Burger
… Read moreThree IBM i software vendors are combining efforts to sponsor a free one-day education opportunity in Southern California. The event is being called iNSPIRE 2012 and it’s scheduled for Friday, June 22, at the IBM Center in Costa Mesa.
The session lineup–which is focused on technologies such as application modernization, document management, and high availability–is anchored by two of the top educators in the IBM midrange: Susan Gantner and Jon Paris of Partner400.
Also on the agenda are IBM’s Isabelle Sato, Profound Logic‘s Alex Roytman, inFORM Decisions‘ Alex Rodriguez, and Vision Solutions‘ Steve Romweber. Profound, inFORM,
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DB2 For i? This Is SQL Server Calling
June 4, 2012 Dan Burger
… Read moreSeparate from the issue of RPG programmers doing Web development, application modernization, and DB2 for i modernization is the fact that many IBM midrange shops have Windows application development taking place, too. Often, the Microsoft platform has taken the lead in Web development. When that happens, eventually the business managers decide information residing in DB2 for i is going to be needed for .NET applications. And this can make you wonder whether the i in IBM i really stands for integration.
Two words that come to mind in any discussion about cross-platform database development are complexity and performance. Ideally, we
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BCD Adds New Partners In The United Kingdom and Ireland
June 4, 2012 Dan Burger
… Read moreBusiness Computer Design, Intl., creator of popular IBM i application modernization tools, is expanding its business partner network in the United Kingdom and Ireland by teaming with IT services and solutions provider Proximity Resourcing and systems integrator CSI. The two companies operate separately but share a single business management team. Each has been a BCD customer for years and both have done development and application modernization projects using BCD WebSmart and Presto tools.
The partnership is intended to improve the availability of BCD’s solutions in the U.K. and Ireland and broaden the portfolios of Proximity and CSI with
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NGS Unveils BI Development Kit for Under $500
May 22, 2012 Dan Burger
… Read moreBusiness intelligence on IBM i goes beyond DB2 Web Query or Cognos and it goes well beyond the most commonly used reporting tool, the old Query/400. If that’s all you know about BI on i, then you need to know about New Generation Software (NGS), which used the recent COMMON conference as a springboard to announce a new BI software development tool that costs less than $500.
NGS has marketed its products as the more affordable option to IBM software and is eager to demonstrate a better return on investment, which the company suspects will jump start business intelligence deployments.
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Tributary Brings Storage Director to IBM i 6.1, 7.1 Environments
May 22, 2012 Dan Burger
… Read moreTributary Systems has introduced its latest version of Storage Director, its software offering that provides backup storage virtualization. Storage Director version 3.04 introduces support for IBM i 6.1, 7.1 and VIOS, as well as enhancements to its remote data replication function that should reduce network latency.
Storage Director was designed for fault-tolerant, high availability computing environments like IBM i, but its capabilities to work in heterogeneous datacenters make it particularly useful. In addition to IBM i, it works in Windows, Unix, Linux, z/OS, NonStop, and OpenVMS environments.
Among the benefits of Storage Director touted by Tributary are automated backup and
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IBM i 7.1 TR4 Database Enhancements: What’s Going On?
May 21, 2012 Dan Burger
… Read moreEven if you are not onboard with database modernization, IBM is moving forward and expecting that sooner or later the majority of the IBM i customer base will fathom the SQL/DDL emphasis that goes into DB2 for i. With the Technology Refresh 4 update that has just come warm out of the oven, the database enhancements that baked into TR4 include a little bit for everyone. That is, everyone who no longer hangs on to the traditional DB2/400 way of doing things.
Traditions are nice for holidays and family reunions. And they can sometimes serve you well in the IT
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Three IBM i Advocates Elevated to Champion Status
May 21, 2012 Dan Burger
… Read moreJim Buck, Aaron Bartell, and Scott Klement have been added to the IBM Champions for Power System club in recognition of their efforts to help build awareness of the IBM i platform and RPG. The selections were made by IBM and were based on contributions to and impact on the Power Systems community.
Buck, Bartell, and Klement are standout performers in the IBM i community. They are well-known advocates for the IBM i platform and they are joining the seven who were named champions last fall–Trevor Perry, Jon Paris, Susan Gantner, Pete Massiello, David Gibbs, Roxanne Reynolds-Lair, and Brian May.
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COMMON Adds Youthfulness To Board Of Directors
May 21, 2012 Dan Burger
… Read moreLike the flocking of birds and the schooling of fish, the COMMON user group continues to illustrate the rule of thumb that there is safety in numbers. Being part of a community, whether it revolves around IBM i or Power Systems or beer drinking and the telling of preposterous tales is social education, entertainment, and an important link to others who belong to your same tribe. Most people enjoy being with like-thinkers, even though there are often times when it seems we are less alike than previously thought.
Over the years, COMMON has been the community center where group activities,
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LANSA Moves into Native Mobile App Development
May 15, 2012 Dan Burger
… Read moreMobile application development isn’t always what you think it is. Real IBM i business applications that render on the most popular tablets and smartphones, for instance, do not require RPG programmers to learn HTML5, CSS3, PHP, JavaScript, Java, or Objective-C. Last week, LANSA released a tool for creating apps using RPG/CL with DDS. Those apps will run natively on iPhone and iPad devices now and Android compatibility will be added within a couple of months.
LANSA calls this new product LongRange, which is not to be confused with LongReach, the free iOS file-sharing client that LANSA launched late last year