• nuBridges Partners with Accellion for Secure File Transfers

  June 9, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Back in the old days of computing, before there was Sarbanes-Oxley, Basel II, HIPAA, and similar regulations that compel companies in various industries or of various persuasions (SOX is about being public) to comply with those regulations that restrict access to systems, files, and data, it was no big deal if system administrators, programmers, and even end users had FTP access to systems. Those days are gone. And that is why Accellion, a security appliance company that was founded in 1999 in Palo Alto, California, has created a set of eponymous appliances that seek to get employees out of

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• Vormittag Associates Partners with 360 Vertical in Food Industry

  June 9, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Midrange ERP software maker Vormittag Associates, of Ronkonkoma, New York, last week announced that it has tapped 360 Vertical Solutions, a specialist in the food services industry, to be a partner to peddle VAI’s S2K Enterprise for Food Distribution software for the i platform. 360 Vertical Solutions is based in Columbus, Georgia, and is an IBM and Intuit business partner, the former gave the company access to and expertise with IBM’s servers (including the System i and Power Systems) and the latter provided expertise in deploying QuickBooks Enterprise on Windows platforms. VAI is, of course, the maker and

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• Recent Acquisitions Helping the BOS Cause

  June 9, 2008 Dan Burger

  Energized by the successful acquisitions of two companies specializing in RFID solutions Better Online Solutions (BOS) posted hefty increases in both revenue and sales during the first quarter of 2008. At the October 2007 announcement that his company was purchasing Summit Radio, Shmuel Koren, president and chief executive officer of BOS, called the acquisition “an important addition to BOS’ international activities, especially in the United States.” He wasn’t wrong. He went on to describe Summit’s business as “highly synergetic with the business of our supply chain division” and viewed it as a pathway to “expand supply-chain sales to major international

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• Exploring the DB2 for i5/OS Extensions to the PHP Language

  June 4, 2008 Erwin Earley

  This is the fifth (and final) article in the PHP on i5/OS series. Previous articles in this series have looked at the structure of Zend Core in i5/OS, basic syntax of the PHP language, and the i5 Toolkit collection of APIs for accessing native i5/OS resources. This article will look at the extensions to the PHP language for accessing DB2 for i5/OS resources. The DB2 extensions can be broken down into a number of categories as follows: Server/Connection Result Commit/Rollback Fetch Field Information Key Information Statement Errors Column/Procedure Table Information This article will focus mainly on functions from the Server/Connection

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• Use Parameter Markers in SQL Persistent Stored Modules

  June 4, 2008 Hey Mike

  I have read your articles about SQL stored procedures with great interest. A year ago I tried to use parameter markers in dynamic SQL stored procedures but couldn’t succeed. I ended up writing stored procedures in COBOL. Could you please provide an example of dynamic SQL stored procedures using parameter markers? –Venkat Parameter markers in SQL Persistent Stored Modules are very easy to implement. If you’re using embedded SQL in COBOL to prepare dynamic SQL statements, you’re probably already 99 percent there. Below is an example of an SQL stored procedure that uses dynamic SQL to create a cursor and

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• Admin Alert: Quick Audits for i5/OS Backups

  June 4, 2008 Joe Hertvik

  In many shops, Sarbanes-Oxley and other regulations require iSeries, System i, and Power i administrators to audit their backup procedures and to keep records showing that regular backups are being administered and that their backups are working as advertised. To help with this effort, this week I’ll review a few common i5/OS commands and parameters that can make your backup auditing process easier to document. Two Alternatives for Auditing Backups When using an i5/OS or OS/400 SAVxxx command, it’s common to have the command produce a report detailing backup results by running the SAVxxx command like this: SAVLIB

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• Data Quality Tool from AMB Now Supports i and z/OS Platforms

  June 3, 2008 Alex Woodie

  Feeling good about the quality of your data? Not losing any sleep over those promises made to the CIO? Then stop reading here. If, on the other hand, you hold reservations about what might be lurking in your databases, then it’s time to admit you might have a data quality problem. One software vendor that can help identify and fix common data quality problems, AMB Dataminers, recently introduced support for i OS and z/OS servers in its flagship product, AMB-Predictive Data Management. People are reluctant to talk about data quality issues, and are even more reluctant to do something

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• DB Technology Cuts the Paper Chase for AS/400 Shops

  June 3, 2008 Alex Woodie

  Grenada Lakes Medical Center faced a quandary when it was getting ready to upgrade its old AS/400 infrastructure with new hardware. The hospital, which runs the MedSeries4 application from Siemens, had thousands of accounts payable transactions sitting on the old machine, and no easy way to move them over. But a solution was found in Report Automation System, from DB Technology, which allowed Grenada Lakes to efficiently mine the AP data into the RAS repository, where it is safely maintained. It wasn’t the AP situation that first attracted Grenada Lakes to DB Technology’s RAS. The hospital was looking

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• NGS Launches SaaS Initiative to Deliver BI as a Service

  June 3, 2008 Alex Woodie

  Buoyed by the emerging market for software as a service (SaaS), New Generation Software last week announced a new business partner initiative to deliver access to its i OS-based business intelligence software over the Web. Under the NGS SaaS Collaboration Program, the company’s business partners–including other ISVs, resellers, or consulting firms–will provide end-user companies with access to several New Gen products, including Decision Assist, NGS-IQ, and its Concert Series financial software. According to Bill Langston, director of marketing and channel development for New Generation, the new SaaS Collaboration Program is aimed at making it affordable and easy for small and

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• IBM Updates Secure Perspective Tool

  June 3, 2008 Alex Woodie

  IBM last week announced a new release of Secure Perspective, a multi-platform security tool that’s designed to make it easier to implement tight security policies using plain English phrases, as opposed to the cryptic commands and configurations used by most platforms. According to IBM, Secure Perspective enables customers to create and implement data-centric security policies using non-technical language, or “natural language” in IBM lingo. The tool then converts this non-technical language policy into an enforceable set of system-level commands that can be readily implemented on the target platforms, which include i (i5/OS), AIX, and Windows. IBM first announced Secure Perspective

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