Today is Earth Day, and that means you’re supposed to think about ways to save the environment from the world’s most destructive force: man. One relatively painless method is eliminating the use of paper in favor of electronic documents, and to do that, you need an electronic document management software solution. One company developing native System i (i, i5/OS, OS/400) document management software, inFORM Decisions, recently updated its suite of products to in hopes of helping customers stay in the green.

Based in the Southern California burg of Rancho Santa Margarita, inFORM Decisions is a small company that has

Industrial Strength Software, a provider of programmer utilities and change management tools based in Illinois, recently introduced two tools designed to help System i shops get the most performance out of DB2/400. The new tools, called the DBAnalyzer (DBA) and DBOptimizer (DBO), work together to identify inefficient database structures and to automatically optimize them for peak performance, thereby reclaiming disk space and processor turns.

DB2/400–officially known as DB2 for i5/OS (IBM hasn’t gotten around to renaming it yet)–is a very robust database, and is the core engine powering many i5/OS (i) applications. While it can be very powerful

As the spectre of recession begins its inevitable and indiscriminate creep into boardrooms across the world, the attentions of CEOs begin to scan the body of the organization, looking for areas in which to trim the fat that might sustain them through the tough times. So how do IT managers justify and protect their existing budgets and prove their System i environment can punch above its weight? Simple–they turn their System i into a time machine.

Within the heart of any logistics organization beats a ticking clock–to say it was a time sensitive industry would be an understatement. Nippon Express

“Protecting Data for the SMB” could be the title of a book written by Jim Kandrac, president of UnitedComputer Group. The Brecksville, Ohio, company is doing quite well. According to Kandrac, its revenue for the first quarter of 2008 was up 198 percent compared to the same quarter in 2007. That’s pretty explosive stuff. When most companies are happy with status quo or small gains, where do numbers like 198 percent growth come from?

The key to this, Kandrac says, was the launch of Vault400 in September of 2006. Vault400 is an online backup and disaster recovery managed service.

The transformation of the MySQL database from open source curiosity to production-level workhorse continued this month with version 5.1, which adds several enterprise-level features. While MySQL 5.1–which is expected to ship before the end of June–has seen good reviews, the open source database’s owner, Sun Microsystems, has created controversy over its decision to make a new online backup feature available only to customers who pay for the enterprise version of the software.

With more than 200 million downloads, MySQL is the most popular open source database on the market. The company, which was acquired by Sun in January for

Buoyed by the success of AS2 and the need to streamline business document exchange via Web services, EXTOL International, Sterling Commerce, Cisco Systems, and the interoperability testing firm Drummond Group submitted a list of functional requirements to the standards body OASIS last week for the creation of a new B2B protocol, called AS4, that would adopt AS2 for use with Web services.

With the acceptance of the ebXML Messaging Services (ebMS) 3.0 as a full standard last fall, the OASIS Messaging Services Technical Committee approved the creation of a subcommittee to develop a “profile” of ebMS 3.0

Users of DataMirror’s old data integration tools, including the popular Transformation Server, were finally given an upgrade last week when IBM delivered InfoSphere Change Data Capture version 6.2. The software giant also launched InfoSphere Change Data Capture for Oracle Replication version 3.1, an update on DataMirror’s old iReflect integration tool specifically for Oracle database environments.

When IBM bought DataMirror last year, it primarily did so to get its hands on Transformation Server, which had built up a solid following for its strong showing in the field of real-time data integration and transformation. While DataMirror also had a large base

Alpharma has decided to expand the use of iQ4bis‘ Windows-based business intelligence tools to pull more actionable information out of its back-office systems, including the System i-based JD Edwards World ERP system, iQ4bis announced recently.

Based in Bridgewater, New Jersey, Alpharma develops, markets, and manufactures drugs for humans and animals, including morphine-based pain pills and anti-inflammatory patches for humans, and medicated feed additives and water soluble therapeutics for farm animals.

Supporting this global operation is a collection of back office ERP systems, including JD Edwards World, which is used at company headquarters, as well as JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, which

Island Pacific will continue to market and sell an OEM version of Help/Systems‘ SEQUEL business intelligence software to users of its i5/OS-based Merchandising suite, the companies announced last week. The deal could also be extended to include Help/System’s Robot suite of systems management tools.

Island Pacific has been selling its own branded version of SEQUEL called Island Pacific Viewpoint for some time. Following the sale of the division that developed the Merchandising suite to Australia’s 3Q Holdings last year, that relationship was up in the air for a bit. But the companies eventually found each other again and renewed

The Dutch company Dextron recently launched a new release of its data modeling tool, called Agile System Environment (ASE), that supports Java in addition to Microsoft .NET. As a result, the tool can now work with Java-supported operating systems, including the IBM System i.

Dextron’s ASE serves as a data intermediary of sorts that sits between an ERP system and a business intelligence or CRM system. By manipulating and preparing data (often unstructured) that’s sitting in one application or database for its new role in the system, ASE eliminates the need to make changes in the host or target application,