If you’ve been waiting for new analytic functions to come to IBM i, your wait is about over. The new release of the IBM i OS that will ship Friday brings several new analytic features to the DB2 for i database–including the capability to do time-based queries and several new OLAP functions–that customers have been asking IBM to add for several years.

Temporal Queries

The new temporal features in DB2 for i will allow users to perform time-based queries, which could be used for business intelligence reasons, as well as for security and auditing reasons. Mark Anderson, the chief architect

Do you pine for the simpler days of the AS/400, when RPG was king and data was served through super-efficient 5250 interfaces? If so, you’re not alone–the relentless crush of modern technologies takes a toll on all of us. But while the world isn’t likely to go back to RPG and 5250, you might find something that works in a similar way in a new technology called WebSockets.

KrengelTech‘s Aaron Bartell had a great description of WebSocket during a recent BCD webinar on Node.JS and other open source technologies for IBM i.

“It’s basically full duplex communication from client

At the turn of the century, extensible markup language (XML) promised to simplify many data interchange tasks for IT professionals. Sixteen years later, XML is firmly part of the technological menagerie in the United States, but nowhere near a universal standard. However, over in Europe, XML is a much bigger deal, which is why InterForm added significant new XML capabilities in the latest release of its IBM i-based forms package.

Supporting XML isn’t just a good idea for companies who deal with clients in Europe. In many cases, it’s the law, says InterForm CEO Peter Sørensen.

“In Europe almost every

Those who do more with less get rewarded. Sometimes the incentive is a raise or a bonus. Sometimes it’s just being able to keep your job. Either way, you could be surprised what can be accomplished in terms of business intelligence, graphical presentations, and modernization with a relatively unknown product called WOW, which is the name of the Web application development tool from PlanetJ.

WOW, an abbreviation for Web Object Wizard, was designed to extract data in real time from relational databases, including DB2 for i and all the other enterprise databases of note, while generating the kinds of

OpenLegacy Partners with ‘Nearshore’ IT Services Provider Softtek

OpenLegacy, a provider of legacy modernization solutions for IBM i and mainframe shops and their applications, this month unveiled a partnership with Softtek, a provider of outsourcing services headquartered in Mexico.

The partnership gives OpenLegacy customers access to the development resources of Softtek, a Monterrey-based IT services provider with 30 offices around the world, including United States, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Spain, China, and India. The company, which trademarked the term “Global Nearshore,” positions itself as a closer provider of outsourced IT services than those based in India.

“Our strategic partnership