Good developers are always on the hunt for new tools that allow them to accomplish their everyday tasks faster, cheaper, or better. For IBM i developers who like to stay within the comfy confines of Eclipse, there’s a little-known database management utility called IBM Data Studio that could become a go-to tool, particularly when it comes to graphically debugging SQL and Java stored procedures on the IBM i server.

IBM Data Studio is a free graphical development tool based on Eclipse that previously went by a couple of names, including IBM DB2 Developers Workbench and IBM DB2 Development Center. The

MIMIX DR is ready to start protecting IBM i customers from the cloud. That’s the message coming from Vision Solutions, which is ramping up its marketing machine in the hopes of sparking cloud sales of the remote journaling-based disaster recovery (DR) solution for itself, and its managed service provider (MSP) partners, too.

MIMIX DR is a new piece of DR software that Vision unveiled in May. The software is nearly identical to the full MIMIX product that has been synonymous with high availability since the days of the AS/400, except for the lack of an automated failover process

IBM i and z/OS shops that use IBM‘s Rational Team Concert (RTC) software to manage their development processes will get a new “simulation mode” that allows time-saving dependency builds to run on any platform, including Windows. The new feature is included in the latest release of RTC, version 4.0.4, which shipped in late August.

The new functionality will allow users to run a simulated dependency build for IBM i and z/OS applications on any platform, including Windows, IBM says. “This makes it possible to create all the dependency metadata [build maps and so on] of a build without running

Organizations that have no tolerance for downtime with their file transfer activities may want to take a look at the latest release of Linoma Software‘s GoAnywhere Director software, which gains support for clustering. The company also issued a new release of its GoAnywhere Services software that allows administrators to limit how much storage and network bandwidth users of the product can consume.

Support for “active-active” clustering in version 4.5 puts another feather in the cap of GoAnyhere Director, the most feature-rich member of Linoma’s MFT suite. With this capability, multiple installations of GoAnywhere Director can work together to execute

The CEO of BlueWare, a developer of IBM i-based healthcare management applications, was arrested in Florida last month for her alleged role in a kickback scheme with an elected official and a lobbyist, who were also arrested. The CEO, Rose Harr, posted bail and denies all the charges.

Harr is accused of funneling money into the 2012 re-election campaign of Mitch Needelman, who was then the Brevard County Clerk of Court, in exchange for Needelman’s assistance in arranging for BlueWare to receive an $8.5 million contract from the county to scan a gymnasium full of paper documents into digital records.

IBM has issued a new release of SmartCloud for Social Business (SC4SB), a collection of cloud-based utilities that allow users to collaborate online via email, instant messaging, file sharing, and more.

SC4SB is an IBM-hosted offering that provides users with email, calendar, instant messaging file sharing, forums, and Web meeting functionality from the comfort of a Web browser or an IBM Notes client. IBM rolled out the SC4SB offerings (which previously went by the name LotusLive) in January 2012.

IBM sells various bundles and stand-alone services as part of the SC4SB suite. These bundles include: the entry-level SmartCloud Connections

Qualcomm last month sold Omnitracs, its division that develops truck- and trailer-tracking technology that was often integrated with carriers’ dispatching applications running on IBM i servers, to a private equity group for $800 million.

Long before CDMA or the Snapdragon processors were a gleam in Irwin Jacobs’ eye, Qualcomm was–if you can believe it–a mainstay in the rough and tumble world of interstate trucking.

The tale starts in the glorious year of 1988, when the San Diego, California, company started developing the Omnitracs systems that would combine cellular, satellite, and IBM midrange technology to track and monitor trucks and trailers

Infor customers can now feed data from multiple, disparate ERP systems or even multiple divisions of the company into their Salesforce.com implementation using its latest Inforce connector, the company announced in August.

Inforce is a collection of software as a service (SaaS) offerings that automatically populate data from Infor’s back-end ERP and financial systems into the front-end Salesforce.com CRM offering. The first Inforce offering for sales professional debuted in early 2012, and was followed up with two more, for marketing and customer service disciplines.

Inforce’s new multi-ERP and multi-company capabilities will enable larger organizations to take advantage of the solution.

Earlier this year, mrc announced a feature of its m-Power development environment called user defined dashboards that puts more power in the hands of users. The product, it turns out, wasn’t quite fully baked. But now, we’re told, it’s ready to roll.

User defined dashboards are designed to enable users to pick and choose what graphical elements (such as charts, graphs, and tables) they will see on their dashboards and also where they are placed on the screen. After selecting the screen elements required for, say, a sales dashboard, the users save their work. The users can then access the

It’s already been five years since the last major name change of the platform formerly known as AS/400. Just the same, there are still a lot of products out there that have some variation of ‘400 in the name (including, ahem, some IT Jungle products). One product vendor that’s been working to clean its lineup of the ‘400 name is Kisco Information Systems, which recently unveiled iFileUtility.

iFileUtility is a native green-screen tool used to browse and maintain IBM i databases. The product enables users to view and update single records, or view and update groups of records simultaneously.