PFSWeb launched a new middleware product last week, called the iS Connector Toolkit, which exposes iSeries transactions, in real time, as XML. The company had sold the technology as part of an e-commerce software suite that it introduced this spring. But PFSweb, a publicly traded company whose day job is providing fulfillment services to Fortune 1000 manufacturers, discovered that iSeries shops were actually more interested in the XML connector.

PFSweb, which stands for Priority Fulfillment Services, has been an OS/400 shop from day one, since 1988. Today, the $280 million, Plano, Texas, company uses an iSeries server to run a

To combat the security risk posed by allowing patched programs to run on OS/400 servers, IBM and Bytware have collaborated to include the capability to detect patched programs through a new release of Bytware’s StandGuard Anti-Virus software. While most patched programs are not dangerous, they can be written to wreak havoc, and the fact that OS/400 shops unknowingly run patched programs provided by ISVs presents a serious breach of good security practices, IBM’s OS/400 security architect says.

When Bytware announced StandGuard Anti-Virus, in June of 2003, it was a public admission by IBM that the iSeries has a serious problem

When BCD Int’l starts shipping ProGen WebSmart Version 5 next year, it will include a new RPG code converter designed to jumpstart iSeries shops’ Web development projects using the WebSmart development environment. The code converter in WebSmart 5 is just one of the announcements BCD made at the COMMON conference last week, including an upcoming release of its Spool-Explorer/400 product and new features in its Nexus Web portal.

If one were to draw a triangle with WebSmart, Nexus, and the combination of Catapult and Spool-Explorer/400 at each point, the center of that triangle would represent the thrust of BCD’s development

OfficeVision/400 stragglers take note: BOSaNOVA introduced a tool at the COMMON conference last week that automatically merges iSeries data with Microsoft Office programs and documents. There are many other iSeries-to-Windows integration capabilities of OLE-based Launcher/400 Office, for which BOSaNOVA gained exclusive distribution rights in North America from its French developer. BOSaNOVA also used the show to flesh out its thin client lineup with two Windows-based, touch-screen, wireless tablets and a low-end, bargain-basement Linux device.

Launcher/400 uses OLE to allow OS/400 servers to control and place data in Microsoft Windows and Office applications, as well as any other OLE-compliant program, such