• Is An IT Career Looking Better for Students?

  February 11, 2008 Dan Burger

  The perception of the value of beginning a career in the IT industry has taken a dive. To use a technical term in the computer business, it’s in the toilet. It’s no coincidence that the number of graduates with computer science degrees is down 32 percent in 2007, according to the most recent statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor. The source of those statistics, however, also reveals that the number of job openings for IT professionals increased 50 percent in the past two years, leading to some optimism that the IT job market is rebounding. At a meeting in

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• Gartner Looks at the Big IT Issues for the Next Few Years

  February 11, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The predictions for the IT market were a little light as 2007 came to a close, but the analysts at Gartner talked to 1,500 chief information officers and other top IT brass and as part of its promotion for its Gartner EXP executive program, where CIOs get to hobnob, the company released some of the results of the surveys. The 1,500 CIOs surveyed represented $132 billion in aggregate IT spending in 33 countries and across 23 different industries. Right up front, 85 percent of the CIOs polled said that they expected “significant change” in their IT organizations over the next

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• SAP Reports Solid Results for 2007, Aims for Repeat in 2008

  February 11, 2008 Alex Woodie

  The U.S. market might be in a recession, but that doesn’t appear to be slowing down ERP software giant SAP, which reported its financial results for fiscal year 2007 last week. What’s more, SAP sees 2008 shaping up much like 2007. For SAP’s fiscal 2007, which ended December 31, the company’s revenues totaled €10.25 billion ($15.0 billion), a 9 percent increase from a year ago. Driving revenues was a strong showing in software and related services, where the company reported €7.43 ($10.9 billion), a 13 percent uptick. Operating income came in at €2.74 billion ($4.0 billion), which corresponded with

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• IBM Emphasizes Security with OpenID and NSA Commitments

  February 11, 2008 Dan Burger

  The emerging Web authentication standard known as OpenID, has received a high-profile boost as IBM, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, and VeriSign have joined forces to bolster security (to whatever limited degree that is possible) on the Internet. The security blanket offered by OpenID is that it increases individual control of digital identities and the personal information shared with participating Web sites. The above-mentioned companies were seated as corporate board members of the OpenID Foundation. The OpenID Foundation supports and promotes OpenIDs, which can be thought of as portable Web identities used in a single sign-on fashion.

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• Setting Up A PHP/Web Environment On System i: Where Do I Start?

  February 6, 2008 Hey, Brian

  This is the first in a series of four articles by Brian Kelley on PHP. Our company has been following your sometimes promising, sometimes depressing, articles and responses regarding a natural modern interface to the System i and RPG. If IBM wants to build these interfaces for its other platforms, that’s fine too, but I don’t really care about those–at least right now. Though I would like the “Good Brian” to be correct in his opinion of the IBM reorganization (see IBM’s Reorg: The Good Me or the Bad Me?), what I have seen from IBM leads me to

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• Don’t Let SQL Name Your Baby

  February 6, 2008 Hey, Ted

  We have started using SQL Data Definition Language (DDL) to define our physical files. One feature we really like is that we can use column (field) names longer than 10 characters. One feature we don’t like is that SQL creates ugly alternate names of 10 characters that we end up using in our RPG programs. Is there any way we can rename these ugly names? –Paul I know what you mean, Paul. If a column name is more than 10 characters long, SQL creates a shorter column name from the first five characters of the field name and a five-digit

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• A Checklist For Moving System i Boxes

  February 6, 2008 Joe Hertvik

  For any number of reasons, you may sometime have to move a System i, iSeries, or AS/400 from one physical location to another. The move may be caused by a company sale or spin-off, or you may have a high availability machine that needs to be hosted off site. Whatever the reason, this week I’ll present a practical checklist of items to address when moving a System i box. My checklist is short and simple. It can be divided into the following three categories that cover the majority of moving issues that you’ll run into: Physically moving the box–What’s

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• New Web Console Debuts with i5/OS V6R1

  February 5, 2008 Alex Woodie

  Move over, System i Navigator. IBM has a new graphical console for configuring, planning, and managing the System i operating environment with the release of i5/OS V6R1. The new Web console, called IBM Systems Director Navigator for i5/OS, is based on IBM’s System Director family of products, and carries the promise of allowing administrators to manage System i servers using the same tool they use to manage Windows, Linux, and Unix servers. OK, let’s get one thing straight: Systems Director Navigator for i5/OS isn’t replacing System i Navigator. At least not yet, anyway. Administrators, operators, and capacity planners working with

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• RPG to .NET Reduces Maintenance Pain, Adds Rich User Interface

  February 5, 2008 Dan Burger

  Like driving with the parking brake on, some business applications put the skids on productivity. Steve Stenglein, the IT director at United States Warranty, could feel the drag that green-screen applications were causing. He’s a big fan of the IBM System i and a skillful RPG programmer, but his staff is small and their time is tightly budgeted. Aging applications required a lot of maintenance and replacing green screens with a graphical user interface was a priority. He knew modernizing apps would not be easy. Most would agree that the most difficult, most time consuming, and most expensive way to

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• IBM Makes DB2 Web Query More Affordable

  February 5, 2008 Alex Woodie

  IBM last week modified the licensing terms for DB2 Web Query for System i, a move that should make the new Web-based query and report writing tool more affordable for some users. By introducing a new run-time user license, customers won’t have to buy expensive named-user licenses for people who are just accessing reports and not creating them. While System i users have applauded the capabilities of the new DB2 Web Query product–especially as it compares to the limitations of the old green-screen Query/400 offering–some users have expressed misgivings. Specifically, they’re concerned that the new DB2 Web Query offering is

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