• Is PHP the Systems i’s Next RPG?

  August 21, 2007 Alex Woodie

  For years, the System i platform and its followers have marched through the wilderness of development languages, seeking a suitable replacement for the aging RPG, whose benefits aren’t a good fit for a Web world. Now, some platform advocates see the server-side scripting language PHP stepping into that role. Duncan Kenzie, the president of Excel Systems and one of the main developers of BCD‘s WebSmart PHP development environment, is one of the believers, as you’ll soon see in this Q&A. Alex Woodie: You have been working on the System i platform for 30 years, and have seen many technologies

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• Notes/Domino 8 Hits the Streets

  August 21, 2007 Dan Burger

  At IBM Lotus, the introduction of Notes/Domino 8 last Friday was a huge step into the future. More than at any time in recent memory, Notes has taken off its old coat and put on something fashionable. Actually it’s more than high fashion. It’s highly functional, too. These days it pays to be smart as well as look smart. Although Lotus has been developing collaboration tools for the Notes environment for years, this is the first evolution of Notes that neatly packages Web 2.0-style collaboration with composite application capabilities and lets it all ride on an open source Eclipse-based environment.

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• 450,000-Line RPG App Converted to .NET in Six Months

  August 21, 2007 Roger Pence

  When the StoneEagle Group set out to transform the character-based user interface of its green-screen enterprise application to a modern browser user interface, the company knew what was needed and it knew a two-year rewrite project was an unacceptable price to pay. After selecting ASNA‘s Monarch for the project, StoneEagle ultimately got where it needed to go, and the trip was completed in just six months–a schedule that demonstrated this software company is on top of its game. The StoneEagle Group, located in Richardson, Texas, specializes in providing software solutions and enterprise administration systems. For 40 years, these solutions

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• Relativity Technologies Updates Modernization Suite

  August 21, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Relativity Technologies this month unveiled a new release of its Modernization Workbench, a collection of tools designed to help development organizations better understand their business logic written in RPG and other languages. With version 8.0 of the tool, users will it easier to isolate the code that powers specific business processes and to track how it interacts with other parts of an application. A new browser-based dashboard was also added. The Modernization Workbench works with a range of so-called “legacy” platforms, including System i, System z, Unix, and Windows systems, and helps users get a grip on their applications in

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• Performance and Encryption Combined in Q3i from BOSaNOVA

  August 21, 2007 Dan Burger

  Backup and recovery operations have more than their share of critical issues that require attention. Somewhere near the top of the priority list is the need to reduce the amount of time devoted to the backup and recovery processes. A nearly constant stream of performance upgrades has leap-frogged through the marketplace promising shorter backup cycles. And while performance has blossomed, so have the red flags, which have been raised because of unrealized performance. Lost or stolen data is yet another battle and encryption is the primary defender. “The market is dubious about backup,” says Paul Howard, the designer of BOSaNOVA

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• AOS Teams with ObjectFX for Real-Time Trucking Software

  August 21, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Add On Systems, a developer of trucking software for the System i server, has partnered with ObjectFX to deliver a product called FleetScape that will give executives and managers at trucking companies a new browser-based interface that should streamline decision making. When Add On Systems (AOS) ships the new FleetScape product later this year, it will allow executives, managers, and other people at a trucking company to pull up a dynamic map on a Web browser that shows a variety of information about their operations, including the location of trucks, trailers, containers, warehouses, fuel stops, repair facilities and drop

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• E-Commerce Purchase Adds to Retail Solutions Package

  August 21, 2007 Dan Burger

  Retail management software and services vendor, Datavantage/CommercialWare, has purchased a 51 percent interest in eOne Group, an e-commerce solutions provider with ties to the System i user base. Datavantage/CommercialWare is a provider of retail software and services that include point-of-sale, order management, customer service, inventory and fulfillment systems, business analytics, loss prevention and marketing applications. Datavantage/CommercialWare, which will be renamed MICROS-Retail in September, is a subsidiary of Micros Systems, a major vendor in the hospitality and specialty retail industries. Datavantage claims more than 400 retailers as customers. CommercialWare‘s customer base tops 150. eOne Group, which is

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• Bus Company Combines AS/400 With Telematics, Enjoys Smoother Operation

  August 21, 2007 Dan Burger

  Coach Canada, a subsidiary of the Stagecoach Group–an organization that operates 2,800 buses and coaches in North America and 7,000 in the United Kingdom–was looking for a fleet management solution that could integrate its back-end systems residing on IBM AS/400 servers with data derived from route geofences (a self-defined geographical region), drivers’ logs, and in-cab communications. The company’s final decision was to go to WebTech Wireless and its Quadrant system of vehicle-based telematics using GPS tracking on the GSM/GPRS network. WebTech’s Quadrant system configuration for Coach Canada includes the WT6000 Locator coupled with a mobile data terminal (MDT). The WT6000

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• New Jersey Hospital Picks HMS for Healthcare Apps

  August 21, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Mountainside Hospital, a 261-bed medical and surgical facility based in Montclair, New Jersey, is installing i5/OS applications from Healthcare Management Systems to help run its operations, HMS announced this month. Following the purchase of Mountainside Hospital by Merit Health Systems in June, Merit committed to making $20 million in capital improvements in the northern New Jersey hospital, which was built more than 110 years ago and which employs 1,700 people. As part of that process, the hospital decided to stop outsourcing its clinical and financial management applications and instead run them in-house. Merit CFO John Thompson says HMS was chosen

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• i5/OS V6R1: The TIMI, It Is A-Changing

  August 20, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  By their very nature, technology transitions are difficult. There were many brilliant things about the design of the System/38 and AS/400 minicomputers that are the ancestors of today’s System i platform, but perhaps the most important one is that IBM wove a technology-independent machine interface (TIMI) between the operating system and the underlying hardware. This has made changing the OS layer or the hardware layer a lot easier than is the case with other platforms. But sometimes, the hardware changes so much that even TIMI needs to change. Such is the case with the forthcoming i5/OS V6R1. And when TIMI

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