The Four Hundred Archives - Page 1042 of 1508

BMC Software Shells Out 800 Million Bucks for BladeLogic

March 24, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Those with the cash can make the big deals now in the IT sector, and intrepid and entrepreneurial companies that might have otherwise been snapped up by competitors backed by private equity firms or just by the firms themselves are now being snapped up by larger IT players. And so it is with BMC Software‘s acquisition of BladeLogic, a maker of IT operations management software.

BMC, which is probably best known in the midrange for its Patrol line of systems management tools, is betting pretty big on BladeLogic, which was founded in 2001 in Lexington, Massachusetts. To my

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System i FACT Site–If You Like It, Tell IBM

March 24, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

For a number of years, IBM has been hosting a sub-site on its collection of Web sites called the System i Find And Compare Tool, or FACT for short. If you have been using this tool, IBM put a note up recently saying that any new and additional products added after March 3, 2008, would not be added to this tool.

I didn’t even know the thing existed, to be honest with you, and having looked at it last week because someone told me it was not being updated any more, I can tell you that I wish that

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Grouping a Union

March 19, 2008 Hey, Ted

We have several sales history files–one for each year. When I need to combine data for more than one year, I have to use an SQL UNION. I am trying to group “unioned” data and can’t seem to get it right. Is it possible to group a dataset that is built by a union?

–Tom

This appears to be an easy problem to resolve, but appearances can be deceiving. If you’re not careful, you can get the wrong results when you UNION two or more tables, especially when you’re summarizing data.

Divide the query into two steps: one to union

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Remember the Allocation

March 19, 2008 Hey, Brian

Because we run packages, we do not get to use our i5/OS system knowledge very often any more, and thus some things fall through the cracks. For example, I recently had to add a field to a file that we had made accessible to Microsoft Access.

This special physical file (ALTINVEN) reflected a one record view of our two-file item master file. We store static info in one item file (ITEMSTAT) and dynamic info in the other file (ITEMDYN). As well-intentioned as this design may have been, both parts change regularly. The production department has some specific uses for the

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Stopping User from Using the System Request Menu

March 19, 2008 Hey, Joe

We have some users who misuse the System Request menu by locking critical records and then transferring to an alternate job. They also sometimes use System Request-2 to cancel their previous requests when they should let those requests run straight through to completion. We’d like to restrict access to the System Request menu just for those users. How can I lock them out?

–Bert

There have always been some security and processing issues with allowing everyone to access the System i and AS/400 System Request menu. System Request menu access can be abused and some people need to be kept

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XAware Delivers New Commercial Version of Data Integration Tool

March 19, 2008 Alex Woodie

XAware recently announced it is shipping the commercial version of XAware 5, the most recent release of its eponymous graphical open source data integration suite. The company released the open source version of XAware 5 last fall, when it made the open source plunge. Now that the open source community has had its chance to take a whack at it, XAware is announcing the availability of the commercial version of XAware 5.

XAware is a Java-based data integration tool suite that allows users to create reusable logic to move data among disparate systems. Instead of writing one-off integration points

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iQ4bis Aims to Simplify BI for JD Edwards Shops

March 18, 2008 Alex Woodie

iQ4bis Software, the business intelligence software developer that previously went by the name Q4bis, recently delivered a new release of its Windows-based business intelligence tool for J.D. Edwards and Microsoft Dynamics customers, iQ4bis Analysis 4.0, which features a new AJAX interface and new data visualization tools. The Southern California company also announced a new partnership with AMX International, a JD Edwards business partner to develop supply chain scorecards based on iQ4bis software.

These are exciting times for iQ4bis Software, which was founded by Herbert Schoenek more than 20 years ago to help companies analyze their data. Since it

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LogLogic Launches Appliances for the Mid Market

March 18, 2008 Alex Woodie

LogLogic this week introduced a new line of log collection and analysis appliances geared toward helping mid size businesses address regulatory compliance mandates. The new MX appliances offer the same level of regulatory reporting and forensic analysis capabilities as LogLogic’s enterprise class LX and ST appliances, thereby giving customers more automation and control over their compliance initiatives, but with a simpler all-in-one architecture and a lower price.

The wave of regulatory compliance initiatives is not just impacting large enterprises, but mid size companies, too, says Dominique Levin, executive vice president of marketing, products, and business development at LogLogic. “The drivers

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EXTOL Adds Dashboard Views to EDI Software

March 18, 2008 Alex Woodie

How would you like a graphical view of your company’s outbound deliveries continually updated throughout the day? It could help you spot costly errors, especially compared to reading printed manifests one by one, or monitoring EDI transactions. Such an application is possible with the latest release of EXTOL‘s i5/OS-based EDI translation software, EDI Integrator 6.2, which introduces a new real-time graphical dashboard capability.

For companies in certain industries, such as consumer goods and automotive, EDI transactions are the lifeblood of the organization. Employees don’t produce and machinery doesn’t roll until those purchase orders, invoices, and shipment notices are sent

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CMDB: A Journey, Not a Destination

March 18, 2008 Richard Muirhead

Organizations are increasingly reliant on their IT infrastructure to deliver the solutions they need to drive the business forward. As a result, many organizations are turning to ITIL to help them to address IT support and delivery challenges and deal more effectively with operational processes. The configuration management database, or CMDB, is a fundamental component of the ITIL framework, yet despite increasing awareness and demand for CMDBs by ITIL adopters, many still struggle to understand exactly what a CMDB is and how it can be used and implemented to maximize the potential of their ITIL framework.

At its best, the

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