• InfiniBand Finds Its Place in the Data Center

  May 29, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It is tough for any new networking or peripheral interconnect to break into the computer market, and it is particularly tough for a new technology that seeks to be all kinds of connectivity for all kinds of devices. So it has been for InfiniBand. But, InfiniBand has found its niches in the data centers of the world and has become an established technology for workloads that demand the highest bandwidth and the lowest latency. When the Future I/O spec from IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and the then-independent Compaq was merged with the Next Generation I/O project from Intel, Sun

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• Magic Software Boosts Revenues and Profits in Q1

  May 29, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Development tool provider Magic Software Enterprises has reported its financial results for the first quarter of 2007 ended March 31, and business has picked up enough to flip the company solidly into the black. In the first quarter, Magic Software’s total revenues came to $16.4 million, up 7 percent from the first quarter of 2006 and even up 1 percent compared to the sales level the company set in the final quarter of 2006. The company had an operating profit of $1.1 million, which was better than the $200,000 operating loss in the year ago period, and brought $1 million

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• NetManage’s Losses Grow as Sales Decline in the First Quarter

  May 29, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  While NetManage, a maker of host connectivity and legacy application modernization tools for i5/OS and mainframe servers, managed to close some high-profile deals in the first quarter ended March 31, the company nonetheless saw revenues fall off, pushing NetManage into a loss. NetManage, which has resisted the temptation to be acquired so far and which remains a publicly traded company, reported sales were down by 9 percent in the first quarter to $7.7 million. While services fees rose by 2 percent to $5.9 million in the quarter, software license sales fell by 35 percent to $1.8 million. With costs

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• Send a Spool File from AS/400 with a Specific Subject Line and Message Body

  May 23, 2007 Hey, Ted

  Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. A while back, I was working on a project that required an e-mail to be sent with a resulting spool file as an attachment and with a specific subject line and specific message body. I had no trouble figuring out how to send the spool file as a document and how to create the message body. The hard part was customizing the subject line of the e-mail. This was important because the subject line would have provided the users a hint about the urgency of the task they

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• Searching for Wildcard Characters

  May 23, 2007 Ted Holt

  If you happen to see a bald-headed old geezer staring at a shelf at the local home-improvement warehouse (motto: you can do it; we can laugh), that’s me. I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I’m foolish enough to think I’ll recognize it when I see it. My methodology is something like searching a database using wildcard characters, which is what today’s tip is about. You probably know that database query interfaces typically allow for two types of wildcards: a wildcard that matches exactly one character; and a wildcard that matches zero or more characters. In SQL, my database

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• Admin Alert: i5 IPL Pre-Planning and Post-Planning Checklists

  May 23, 2007 Joe Hertvik

  Unlike Windows servers, which can be rebooted several times a year, i5, iSeries, and AS/400 partitions are so legendarily reliable that IPLing one can become an event. And like any good event, it takes some planning to prepare for the opportunities and risks an IPL presents. To aid you in that planning, here’s my list of things to consider when you’re ready to restart a partition. The IPL Roadmap For the uninitiated, an i5/OS IPL is similar to a Windows reboot, which is when the operating system and machine are taken down and restarted. During an i5 restart, PTFs (operating

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• Rochester Alums Plan New Customer Care App for i

  May 22, 2007 Alex Woodie

  The folks at VACAVA are, you might say, System i bigots. For those who are familiar with the IBM System i server, which is designed and manufactured in Rochester, Minnesota, where VACAVA is also based, that is a good thing. Now the former IBMers at VACAVA are gearing up to launch a new application, for System i shops that run call centers, called Customer Care. VACAVA was founded about 10 years ago by Terry Bird, the company’s owner and president. Over the years, Bird attracted several of his colleagues away from Big Blue and into VACAVA’s sphere, including Jim Kelly,

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• Lakeview Touts Customer Win at Competitor’s Expense

  May 22, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Lakeview Technology is using the bad i5/OS high availability experience of a Nevada casino to tout its own product, MIMIX, and rub dirt in the face of its longtime competitor, Vision Solutions, which now owns and sells the popular Echo2 high availability software. As the story unfolds, it will become apparent that high availability industry still has a ways to go on two fronts: making HA software more automatic and self-managing, and separating HA fact from fiction. Black Gaming Operations is a hotel and casino business based in Mesquite, Nevada, about 100 miles northeast of Las Vegas. The company

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• HarrisData Serves Competitive Party Goods Maker for 14 years

  May 22, 2007 Robert Gast

  Thousands of gallons of punch have cascaded down the fountain since ERP made its debut in the 1990s, and people have figured out how to make some ERP products work without the aid of a platoon of well-compensated experts. The key to having your ERP cake and eating it from a beautifully decorated disposable plate, it seems, is understanding your requirements in detail, having a plan to get everyone in your organization from the CEO on down to buy into the project, and finding a system that snugly fits your business objectives. ERP has had a magnetic appeal with manufacturers

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• ProData Goes Cross-Platform with DBU

  May 22, 2007 Alex Woodie

  ProData Computer Services has released a version of its Database Utility (DBU) that can access other relational database management systems in addition to DB2/400. With the new capability, available from ProData as a plug-in called DBU Remote Database (RDB), System i programmers can now get the same high-powered, real-time access to SQL Server, DB2 UDB, Oracle, MySQL, and other database as DBU customers have realized when accessing DB2/400. DBU is a popular and handy utility that makes it easy for programmers, administrators, and users to view and access any file in DB2/400, without programming. The software, which was

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