LANSA last week announced LongRange University, a series of free online videos aimed at helping customers learn how to make the most effective use of LongRange, the IBM i-based mobile application development tool that it launched earlier this year.

LongRange enables IBM i developers to use their RPG, COBOL, and CL skills to develop mobile applications that run natively on iOS and Android. The software–which consists of a server component for IBM i, a development studio that lives in Windows, and a mobile client device–works by transforming DDS display files residing in IBM i programs into graphical displays that are

ASNA last week announced Mobile RPG, a new tool that will enable RPG programmers to develop new mobile applications in the language they know best: RPG. By combining traditional DDS display file technology with an Open Access handler, Mobile RPG lets programmers use traditional green screen development techniques to create new HTML mobile apps that run in the Web browsers of iOS, Android, and Windows Phone devices. It’s slated to ship early next year.

Mobile RPG is designed to create small apps with basic user interfaces that are targeted at simple tasks, such as an employee clocking out or changing

HiT Software and Attunity, two vendors that compete in the market for database replication and change data capture (CDC) software, recently unveiled new connectors that feed data from IBM i servers and other sources into Vectorwise, the relational database from Actian (formerly Ingres) that is gaining traction in the market for “big data” analytical tools.

Vectorwise is a 64-bit relational database management system for Windows and Linux that was designed specifically to process analytical workloads. The product, which grew out of the MonetDB/X100 research project by the Dutch National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science, gains speed benefits

Keeping a close eye on your IBM i server, including its configuration files, database files, and user activities, isn’t just a good idea. In some cases, it may be the law. Depending on which industry you work in and whether you work for a public company, file integrity monitoring, or FIM, may be in your future. Here are two tools that may fit the bill for your newfound FIM needs.

Townsend Security unveiled FIM functionality earlier this year in Alliance LogAgent, an IBM i tool that monitors various journals and logs for evidence of unauthorized changes, and then translates those

Developers will be able to generate completed .NET, Web, and mobile interfaces to IBM i apps more quickly using the latest release of Surround Technologies‘ Accelerator for .NET solution. In addition to cutting down on the number of configuration steps in the product’s wizard, Surround Tech has revamped and streamlined the code generation component, leading to a two-pronged productivity boost in Accelerator for .NET version 3.7, which was unveiled last week.

Accelerator for .NET helps developers to create modern Windows, Web, and mobile interfaces for new or existing applications running on IBM i, Windows, or Microsoft‘s Azure cloud.

The looming end-of-life for critical payroll tax functionality in older releases of JD Edwards World has been addressed with a new software product from Spinnaker Support.

Last week, the Denver, Colorado-based company officially launched Q Series Integrator, a piece of software that acts as a bridge between the Payroll module of JDE World version A7.3 through A9.2 and the Vertex, Payroll Tax Q Series (PTQ), a tax calculation and reporting solution. Vertex has an agreement with Oracle to provide tax functionality for several ERP systems, including JD Edwards World and EnterpriseOne and E-Business Suite.

The issue is that

International Business Systems last week announced that it is taking its Dynaman warehouse management system (WMS) global. The Windows-based WMS has been in use in Northern Europe for the last 20 years, and now IBS is selling and supporting the software to wholesale distribution operations in other parts of the world, including its IBM i ERP customer base.

IBS Dynaman is a supply chain execution application designed to automate common distribution center (DC) and third party logistics (3PL) activities. The software supports functions like receiving and put-away; inventory management and replenishment; work order scheduling and light manufacturing; picking, packing, and

Progress Software last week unveiled DataDirect Cloud, a new data integration service designed to access cloud-based databases, such as those running on Salesforce.com, Amazon Relational Data Service, and Microsoft SQL Azure, from on-premise tools and business intelligence software. The software is entering beta tests and is expected to be available next year.

DataDirect Cloud uses standard ODBC and JDBC drivers to access cloud-based data sources, just as Progress subsidiary DataDirect‘s on-premise integration tools are used to access on-premise databases, such as Oracle 11g, SQL Server, DB2/400, and other data sources. The new offering eliminates the need to learn

We’re 13 days into November, and the hungry software conglomerate Constellation Software has already gobbled up two more software firms, including a German developer of Windows-based ERP systems for window companies, and a UK developer of payment collection software. The Canadian software company also announced financial results for its third quarter.

Constellation announced yesterday that it signed a definitive agreement to buy the Albat+Wirsam Software GmbH (A+W) business from Glaston, a global manufacturer of glass processing technology that’s based in Finland. The deal currently carries a price tag of €18 million (about $23 million), but the price is contingent.

Infinite Corporation last week announced that it helped an unnamed financial services firm migrate a multi-million line COBOL application from IBM i to X86 Linux without a lick of rewriting.

“The Infinite Project Management team used Infinite’s Infinite i toolset to recompile and deploy the COBOL applications under Linux without having to rewrite a single line of code,” says Infinite’s Raquela Kaplan in a press release.

Instead of running under IBM i servers, the application is now running on X86-based Linux servers and the Oracle database. Kaplan says that the company is able to utilize data from the migrated COBOL