• IDC Gives 2006 Report Cards for Data Warehousing Vendors

  September 4, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IDC is handing out its annual report cards for the vendors of software in the data warehousing space. Because it takes a long time to gather and sift through the market data, IDC is only just now assessing who did what in the data warehousing generation and management tools market for 2006. The worldwide market was healthy in 2006, rising by 12.5 percent to reach $5.7 billion in aggregate sales. As has been the case for the past decade, the large database makers are big in data warehouse tools. Oracle barely outgrew the overall market, posting $1.9 billion in data

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• IBM’s Toronto Labs Turns 40, DataMirror Shareholders OK IBM Deal

  September 4, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  This month, IBM‘s Toronto Software Labs are celebrating its 40th birthday, and looking forward to adding some technologies and people from DataMirror, a maker of high availability and data transformation software that is going to plug right into IBM’s Canadian software development operations. There has always been a competitive relationship between the various IBM labs around the world, and there has definitely been a lot of give and take and push and pull over the years between IBM’s Rochester Labs, where the System/3X, AS/400, iSeries, and System i product lines came to market, and the Toronto Software Labs,

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• IBM Licenses Tech from Siemens for Unified Communications

  September 4, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  While Web 2.0 is the buzzword of the day in application development, unified communication is all the talk in the messaging and groupware space. And IBM, Microsoft, and Cisco Systems are girding their loins to do battle over a real set of communication technologies and their integration. This stands in stark contrast with the academic distinction between one kind of Web computing and another–what people seem to be talking about when they say Web 2.0–that is, at its root, utter poppycock. Unified communications–bringing voice, email, fax, instant messaging, chat, video, and other forms of communication used by businesses

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• PHP: An Easy Yet Powerful Language Syntax

  August 29, 2007 Erwin Earley

  This is the second in a series of articles on Zend’s PHP for i5/OS. This article presents a discussion of the syntax and features of the PHP language and sets the framework for the third article in the series, which will discuss the API toolkit. I hope you’ll look forward to the third installment, which will delve into the API toolkit that provides the ability for PHP applications to work with i5/OS features and objects. (To read the first installment in this series, go to this link.) Variables Variables in the PHP language are signified with a leading dollar

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• I Want My F15 Back!

  August 29, 2007 Hey, Ted

  I’m trying to get up to speed with WDSc. It’s getting better, but I’m not out of the woods yet. One SEU feature that I really miss is the ability to press F15 and browse another member. Using the Remote Systems Explorer and LPEX editor, I find myself following the navigation tree in order to open a member. Please make my day by telling me that LPEX has a function equivalent to SEU’s F15 key. –Rick OK, Rick, I’m going to make your day. LPEX has such a function. While you are editing, hold down the control and shift keys,

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• Admin Alert: Magical & Mysterious iSeries Access CWB Programs

  August 29, 2007 Joe Hertvik

  Admin Alert: Magical & Mysterious iSeries Access CWB Programs IBM‘s iSeries Access for Windows package includes a little advertised set of CWB batch utility programs that extend iSeries Access functions beyond the core package. These DOS-based programs perform many valuable functions including backing up and restoring an iSeries Access installation and caching passwords for automatic system i logons. This week, I’ll examine these two CWB functions and discuss how they can provide additional capability to Windows machines. What Are iSeries Access CWB Programs? The CWB batch utility programs have a long history with iSeries Access for Windows, where some

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• Help/Systems Launches Comprehensive Security i5/OS Suite

  August 28, 2007 Alex Woodie

  When Help/Systems set out 15 years ago to develop a suite of systems management tools for the AS/400, the company always intended for a security tool to be part of the mix. Now, the Minneapolis-area company is making good on that commitment with this week’s launch of Robot/SECURITY, a collection of five security modules that help protect System i servers from internal as well as external threats. For a version 1.0 release, Robot/SECURITY offers a surprisingly comprehensive array of i5/OS security capabilities. The product offers the obligatory network security through server exit point monitoring, while the audit reporting feature enables

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• Database Optimizing Goes Autonomic with New Tool from Centerfield

  August 28, 2007 Dan Burger

  Remember when the IT version of the snipe hunt was sending the new kid looking for the AS/400 database administrator? That was back when the rookies didn’t realize the AS/400 needed a DBA like a fish needs a bicycle. Ever since SQL and SQL-based applications took root in iSeries shops, things have changed, and the trend toward increasing database performance shows no sign of diminishing. And companies like Centerfield Technology are designing software specifically for database performance and simplification. Most companies that rely on the System i still don’t employ a person dedicated to database administration, but they do need

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• SkyView Opens Up Security Policy Product

  August 28, 2007 Alex Woodie

  SkyView Partners is now shipping a new release of Policy Minder, a product it launched in 2005 to analyze and enforce security policies on i5/OS systems. With version 1.3, SkyView published an API that makes it easier for customers and other software vendors to hook into Policy Minder’s capabilities. And customers can now use Policy Minder to monitor and enforce nearly all i5/OS system settings, not just those related to security. SkyView Partners first launched Policy Minder in the fall of 2005 to serve the growing need for tools that simplify and automate the setup and ongoing management of i5/OS

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• NGS Brings Modern DB2/400 Query Development to BI Suite

  August 28, 2007 Dan Burger

  At the heart of business intelligence solutions is the capability to easily and quickly take care of query and report-writing tasks. In the IBM native System i, iSeries, and AS/400 environment, such tasks have been the primarily confined to green-screen development. Well, guess what? It’s time for graphical point-and-click, drag-and-drop query and report writing courtesy of New Generation Software, which earlier this month introduced IQ Client, a new query development module within the NGS business intelligence product suite. IQ Client will likely surprise many veteran green-screen developers and power uses with its query-building functionality. This is not a watered-down

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