Timothy Prickett Morgan
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Admin Alert: Risk and the Power i Hardware Upgrade
November 3, 2010 Joe Hertvik
… Read moreWhile upgrading Power i hardware is a hassle, the benefits in alleviating processing bottlenecks, providing new capabilities, and solving performance issues far outweigh the risks. Before an upgrade, however, management will want to consider any possible upgrade risks and how they can reduce your organization’s exposure to those risks. This issue, I’ll examine some common i/OS hardware upgrade risks and what you can do about them.
Getting the Vocabulary Right
In discussing risks, organizational requirements may require you to specify the following items when requesting monies for a new Power i hardware upgrade.
- Can you identify your upgrade risks and
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How To Print a Pointer Value
November 3, 2010 Ted Holt
… Read moreOver the past few months I’ve been working on more articles dealing with the use of pointers in RPG programs. While I was working on my demo programs, I ran into a little snag while verifying that everything was working correctly. Let me tell you what I ran into and how I got around it.
I wanted to double-check the value of all the pointer variables. In the interactive green-screen debugger, which I was using, seeing the value of a pointer is no problem. Place the cursor on the pointer variable name and press F11, or use the EVAL command.
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An Introduction to Python on IBM i, Part 2
November 3, 2010 Garry Taylor
… Read moreNote: All of the files needed for this article are available for in one download here.
Welcome back to this introduction to Python on our beloved iSeries. In this second part of the series, you’ll learn how to use Python in something resembling a real world context. You’re going to integrate Python with perhaps the most quintessentially “i” part of IBM i, DB2.
As with Part 1, all the Python scripts featured in this article are available for download here. Unless otherwise stated, all the Python scripts can be run like so:
PYTHON25/PYTHON PROGRAM('/path/to/the/python/script.py')DB2 is a
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Vendors Gang Up to Create Solid State Drive Standards
November 1, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIn an effort to bring some order to the market for flash-based solid state drives (SSDs), which are increasingly being sprinkled into servers and PCs to boost performance and decrease energy consumption for I/O bandwidth, a slew of interested vendors in the storage and server rackets ganged up last week to create the SSD Form Factor Working Group.
I know, that sounds pretty boring, but it is important, and Intel, Dell, EMC, Fujitsu, and IBM are to be commended for sitting down at the table and hammering out SSD interface and form factor specifications to
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JDA Boosts Earnings on Rocketing Sales in Q3
November 1, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreSupply chain and retail software specialist JDA Software has turned in a very good third quarter, with revenues up 65 percent, to $158.4 million, and net income rising 32 percent, to $8.3 million.
In the quarter ended September 30, software license sales fell by a half point to $16.3 million, but subscription and other recurring revenues rose by a factor of 6.4 to $5.8 million. Maintenance service revenues for JDA rose by 42.6 percent, to $64.2 million, and consulting services sales in the quarter more than doubled to $65.9 million. Reimbursed expenses were more than double as well, hitting $6.3
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The Oracle vs. TomorrowNow/SAP Courtroom Drama Goes on as Scheduled
November 1, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreThe fight continues between the lawyers handling rivals Oracle and SAP in the TomorrowNow lawsuit as well as the PR people at these two companies and Hewlett-Packard, which has hired former SAP CEO Leo Apotheker to be its new CEO.
The TomorrowNow trial, the result of a lawsuit filed in March 2007 by Oracle in the wake of SAP’s acquisition of the provider of third party maintenance on PeopleSoft, Siebel, and JDE software suites, was almost delayed last week, but the judge handling the case in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco
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Reader Feedback on The Hundred Thousand Plus on the Four Hundred
November 1, 2010 Hi, Tim
… Read moreYou have finally hit upon the future of IBM and Apple, and perhaps the belated possible salvation for IBM customers worldwide on all IBM platforms:
“For years, I have been joking–well, half joking–that IBM should buy Apple. Wouldn’t it be funny if Apple, with its $51 billion cash hoard and maybe another $37 billion in its stock, took a controlling stake in IBM? Imagine the user interface and integrated database and programming tools Apple could buff up for IBM i . . . .”
With the System i platform losing 25,000 customers per year and only 100,000 customers left,
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Infor Taps Ex-Oracle Prez Phillips as its New CEO
November 1, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreThere’s a new sheriff at midrange application software giant Infor, and his name is Charles Phillips. Yes, that Charles Phillips, the ex-marine and former Morgan Stanley software analyst who had been taking orders from Oracle co-founder and chief executive officer, Larry Ellison, until early September. Now, Phillips will be the one giving the orders, and at a company that will be increasingly competing with Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, and others in the enterprise software racket.
Infor, of course, is the midrange ERP, CRM, and SCM software maker that is an amalgam of myriad software companies that created products
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Windows Loses to Power 720-IBM i Combo, But Whips Power 750s
November 1, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIt’s probably a good thing that most of you out there in AS/400 Land are looking to acquire a Power 720 server, and one with not too many processor cores activated running the IBM i operating system. For you, whether you are comparing the Power 720-IBM i tag team to Power-based servers running AIX and Oracle databases, the Power 720 is an absolutely competitive platform, user for user, dollar for dollar.
This would seem to indicate someone at IBM is listening. Which is good news. However, the Power 750, the next stop up for most IBM i shops, has IBM
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Printing Multiple PC5250 Screens at the Same Time
October 27, 2010 Hey, Joe
… Read moreI print a lot of PC5250 screens but since they only print one page at a time, I have a problem tracking the printouts. The screens are sent to a copier 50 feet away, and they sometimes get collected with other people’s output. How can I print and retrieve all my print screens at the same time?
–Bill
Check out a cool little PC5250 feature called Print Screen Collection, which should do most of what you’re looking for. Print Screen Collection allows you to capture a number of screens to memory and then print them out as a stack of