• Testing At iSeries Shops Not Up to Snuff, Original Finds

  January 18, 2005 Alex Woodie

  The importance of software testing was made painfully obvious to Bill Gates a couple of weeks ago. During his keynote at the consumer electronics show, the Microsoft chairman’s Media Center PC crashed during a demo, and other Microsoft executives had similar problems. While most midrange programmers would bristle at any comparison of Microsoft’s wares to their own, the iSeries world still has a thing or two to learn about good testing procedures, according to a report commissioned by testing tool vendor Original Software Group. In October 2004, Original Software commissioned an independent study to determine how iSeries shops test

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• New PowerTech Product Cracks Down on Special Authorities

  January 18, 2005 Alex Woodie

  In an ideal world, there would be no need to grant All Object (ALLOBJ) privileges on your OS/400 server. Everybody would be granted just enough access to do their jobs, and no more. Of course, we live in an imperfect world, and IT administrators, programmers, and even outside auditors often need special authorities, like ALLOBJ, to do their jobs. Thanks to a new program called AuthorityBroker, launched by PowerTech Group last week, the use of special authorities can be minimized and monitored. Users with special authorities can do quite a bit of damage to an OS/400 server. The big one

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• iSeries Is Center of Lean IT Operation At adidas-Salomon Canada

  January 18, 2005 Alex Woodie

  Marketing people like to talk about how the ease-of-use and low total-cost-of-ownership of the iSeries can help users concentrate on the business at hand instead of worrying about information technology. Well, the folks up at adidas-Solomon Canada are actually living this lean IT dream. A new OS/400 server, a handful of Integrated xSeries Servers, and a new Web application have enabled the sporting goods manufacturer to eliminate Wintel server sprawl and expand customer service to the Internet, while keeping costs low at the same time. With 250 employees and $230 million (Canadian) in annual revenues, adidas-Salomon is the biggest sports

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• NGS Provides a Quick ‘Dashboard’ View into Business Performance

  January 18, 2005 Alex Woodie

  New Generation Software launched new software this month for developing and serving graphical “dashboard” views that allow people to quickly absorb data pulled from iSeries servers. The new product, aptly called the Business Performance Dashboard, is based on the company’s flagship NGS-IQ business intelligence software, and enables executives and other decision-makers to view key performance indicators and other performance data in colorful and interactive Flash presentations. Instead of reading page after page of static reports, executives can get to the heart of the matter much more quickly with the Business Performance Dashboard, says Bernard Gough, president and CEO of New

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• Tango/04 Delivers Affordable BSM, or ‘Tivoli for the Rest of Us’

  January 11, 2005 Alex Woodie

  Tango/04 Computing Group is embarking upon a new IT discipline with the latest release of its systems management suite for iSeries and Windows. With VISUAL Message Center 6.0, the company is now providing business service management (BSM), a relatively new strategy for melding the monitoring of IT infrastructure, applications, and business processes to create a more wholesome view of how these interdependencies affect service levels. Tango/04 seeks to provide an affordable BSM framework with VMC 6.0, which its chief calls “Tivoli for the rest of us.” You will likely hear more about BSM as the march into the services phase

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• eSP Creates New Product Category: ‘Terminal Session Management’

  January 11, 2005 Alex Woodie

  When eBusiness Solution Pros introduced its Stay-Linked emulator two years ago, the company primarily targeted warehouses and retail operations that needed terminal emulators to connected wireless barcode scanners with iSeries servers. With the explosive growth of wireless “Wi-Fi” 802.11 networks, eSP has identified a need for a new class of product that manages the range of devices that organizations want to turn into mobile host terminals. It has dubbed this new class of product “terminal session management.” There are many terminal emulators for barcode scanners on the market, and Stay-Linked is not unique in this respect. But what is unique

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• ProData’s New DBUnifier Creates Interactive Apps in a Jiffy

  January 11, 2005 Alex Woodie

  ProData Computer Services recently announced the general availability of DBUnifier, a new menu-driven tool for creating interactive applications from DB2/400 database files, without any programming. With the capability to create selection lists (F4-lists processes), work with subfile processes, and create inquiry and file maintenance applications with field- and record-level validation, ProData says, DBUnifier gives OS/400 shops a reason to send IBM‘s Data File Utility packing. Omaha, Nebraska, based ProData put itself on the AS/400 map many years ago with its Database Utility (DBU) product, which provides programmers with an easy way to work with data in the DB2/400 database.

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• Help/Systems’ Scheduler Now Automates EnterpriseOne Jobs

  January 11, 2005 Alex Woodie

  Help/Systems last week launched a new interface that allows its Robot/SCHEDULE job scheduling software for OS/400 servers to work with PeopleSoft‘s EnterpriseOne ERP system. With the new Robot/SCHEDULE EnterpriseOne Interface, OS/400 shops can manage all EnterpriseOne batch jobs from within the Help/Systems product, resulting in increased automation. Robot/SCHEDULE was designed to imitate the actions of an onsite operator. In much the same way that commercial pilots fly airplanes with the aid of an autopilot, Robot/SCHEDULE carries out certain tasks for the modern computer operator, freeing him to do other things. Once Robot/SCHEDULE has been set up, the software can

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• Oracle Pledges Support for World ERP System

  January 4, 2005 Alex Woodie

  Thousands of companies that rely on the World ERP system can breathe a little easier now that Oracle has pledged to support and enhance it. In the first public announcement of its intentions for the software product line, Oracle co-president Charles Phillips said his company plans to offer the same level of maintenance and support that PeopleSoft provided. Phillips also said Oracle plans to support the iSeries and competitive databases, although it’s dependent on cooperation with IBM and Microsoft. The half-hour “town hall” session hosted by Phillips on December 20 was intended to be the last public communication about

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• CCSS Adds Killer Queries, FTP Use to Watch List

  January 4, 2005 Alex Woodie

  Sometimes the actions of users can have unintended consequences, like that seemingly innocent query that Jane in accounting set off this morning, which is now threatening to bring down the system. And while the shipping department folks know they’re not supposed to FTP documents from the iSeries anymore, somebody back there is still doing it. These are two actions that new OS/400 software from CCSS would pick up for you, before they cause crashes or arouse attention from auditors. QSystem Monitor is a client/server application that shows system administrators how their iSeries servers are using system resources, such as database

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