Timothy Prickett Morgan
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Running Totals in an SQL Query
March 2, 2011 Skip Marchesani
… Read moreThere are situations when running an SQL query for data analysis where I like to generate a running total based on a column in the table that is the target of the query, to assist with the data analysis.
“What’s a running total?” you ask. Wikipedia and I define it as the summation of a sequence of numbers that is updated each time a new number is added to the sequence, simply by adding the value of the new number to the running total.
To explain how to generate a running total, I use an example based on a department
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Business Intelligence Biz to Grow But Cool Off a Bit
February 28, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreAfter a wave of acquisitions and consolidations in the wake of the Great Recession, the business intelligence (BI) software market is looking to settle down and grow a little more predictably, but perhaps a little less enthusiastically, in the next five years, according to prognostications coming out of Gartner.
Which were no doubt done on some whirlygig-driven BI piece of software.
Gartner believes that sales of BI software will rise by 9.7 percent, to $10.8 billion, in 2011, with growth tapering off through 2014 but slowing. Gartner’s projections show growth will still be in the “high single digits” at
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IBM, Nuance, and Universities to Commercialize Watson for Medicine
February 28, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIn the wake of IBM‘s impressive win with the Watson question-answer machine on the Jeopardy! game show two weeks ago, the company got down to business with some partners to try to commercialize the contraption.
Healthcare, as you might expect, is the first place where IBM is looking to turn Watson on its head and have it answer questions instead of providing them. Medicine is particularly slippery, given the complexity of human chemistry and physiology and the fact that we are all just a little bit different thanks to differences in genetics, environments, and habits. When I talked to
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Oracle, SAP Still Going At It Over TomorrowNow
February 28, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreWill this lawsuit between Oracle and SAP concerning the long-defunct TomorrowNow third-party software support business ever end? It sure doesn’t look like it.
Last week, after mulling over Oracle’s $1.3 billion jury award from last November for a few months, SAP’s lawyers came back and filed motions with the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in Oakland suggesting to Judge Phyllis Hamilton that the jury award was way out of whack with the reality of the damage caused by TomorrowNow.
Back in March 2007, you will recall, after SAP had acquired TomorrowNow to offer third-party support
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MKS Profits Bolstered by Increasing ALM Software Sales
February 28, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreChange management software maker MKS has turned in a stellar quarter, dealing with the Great Recession deftly and continuing to grow revenues and boost profits through the downturn.
While the Waterloo, Ontario, company has, like other Canadian firms, benefitted from the fact that the Canadian economy did not take a financial hit, MKS sells a lot of its software in the United States and Europe so the fact that it was able to power through shows there is plenty of demand for application lifecycle management tools.
In the third quarter of fiscal 2011 ended January 31, MKS reported total revenues
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IT Spending Better Than Expected Last Year, And 2011 Looking Up
February 28, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreThe IT sector turned in its best growth since 2007, according to the analysts at IDC. That’s good news, and the news kept getting better as 2010 went on. Maybe 2011 won’t be so bad if the world settles down a little politically.
IDC said in its latest Worldwide Black Book that IT spending worldwide rose by 8 percent, to more than $1.5 trillion as measured in constant currency. I am a bit mystified here as to how IDC can say it is in constant currency but use U.S. dollars. I believe that must mean it locked in an
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Mainframes Put IBM Back on Top for Servers in Q4
February 28, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreThe Others category was the big winner for IBM in the fourth quarter of 2010 for server sales, according to the latest statistics from Gartner. Pent-up demand for mainframes helped Big Blue rake in the bucks for its new System zEnterprise 196. And, I think but I cannot prove, the Power Systems-IBM i combo did its part in the quarter to help raise Big Blue’s revenues in the system racket.
Gartner believes that in the final quarter of last year, server makers shipped 2.38 million servers, representing $14.7 billion in revenues. That represented only 6.5 percent growth in shipments
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LUG Issues Call to iASP Arms for ISVs
February 28, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreThe computer business is cryptic, and you have to be playing inside baseball to understand that headline. The LUG is, of course, the Large AS/400 User Group, a non-profit comprised of the largest IBM i shops in the world. ISVs are, of course, independent software vendors who peddle products for the OS/400 and i platform. And iASP is not the International Association for the Study of Pain or the Indiana Association of School Principals, but rather the independent auxiliary storage pool feature of the OS/400, i5/OS, and IBM i operating system family.
I have seen a lot of
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Image Catalogs: Another Timesaving Method for Upgrade or Installs
February 23, 2011 Hey, Joe
… Read moreGreat article on six tips for preventing Power i upgrades from slowing down. One tip that you missed is using Image Catalogs for your upgrades. They really help with installing software and PTFs. Also PTFs should be downloaded via FTP using IBM procedures from their Web site. CDs and DVDs are nice, but image catalogs are significantly better!
–Rich
Rich wasn’t the only reader who pointed out the advantages of using Image Catalogs in lieu of CDs or DVDs for i/OS PTF application and upgrades. While I neglected to mention them in my recent article, image catalogs can be
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Secure DB2 for i Database Server Access by IP Address
February 23, 2011 Hey, Mike
… Read moreNote: The code accompanying this article is available for download here.
I am trying to secure external access to our iSeries DB (ODBC, JDBC, et al). From a security point of view, I want to allow database access if it comes from specific IPs or servers. But I cannot find a way to identify the source (i.e., remote IP address) from the QIBM_QZDA_SQL2 exit point. I only find the user ID. Is there a way to obtain the source of the remote client attempting to connect to DB2?
–Mike, Four Hundred Guru Reader
Hi, Mike:
You are correct. The