The Four Hundred Archives - Page 1234 of 1508

Oracle Buys Hyperion Solutions for $3.3 Billion

March 5, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Database, middleware, and application software powerhouse Oracle went on an acquisition hunt again last week, and captured Hyperion Solutions for $3.3 billion.

The deal will only obliquely affect the i5/OS platform, since Hyperion’s business intelligence tools for Windows, Unix, and Linux platforms, which are called System 9 BI+ collectively, do not run on the platform. However, the Essbase multidimensional OLAP server that is at the heart of the System 9 BI+ tools has been available for more than a decade on the OS/400 and i5/OS platform through a licensing arrangement with ShowCase, which was acquired by BI tool maker SPSS

…

Magic Software Ekes Out a Profit in Q4

March 5, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Magic Software Enterprises, a provider of application development tools for i5/OS and OS/400 platforms, has begun to turn itself around financially after a restructuring of its operations that began in October 2006.

The Or Yeduda, Israel company reported its financial results for the fourth quarter of 2006, and says that it has returned to profitability. Sales in the fourth quarter increase by 8 percent to $16.2 million, and were up sequentially by 7 percent from the $15.1 million in sales the company reported in the third quarter that necessitated the October 2006 restructuring. The brightest spot in the quarter

…

IBM Tosses Google Gadgets Into WebSphere Portal

March 5, 2007 Dan Burger

IBM‘s WebSphere Portal users are about to find a brand new bag of tricks on their doorstep. Next month, the WebSphere Portal catalog will include Google Gadgets, which means portal page designers and portal dwellers will have access to utilities that provide links to research databases, package delivery tracking tools, Google Maps utilities, traffic information, and applications such as Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

These and approximately 4,000 other small applications will end up as the building blocks that configure composite applications supporting a variety of business objectives, says Lauren Wendle, IBM WebSphere Portal product manager. Portal developers will be

…

Determining the Value of Built-in I/O Functions

February 28, 2007 Hey, Ted

What follows is a question that I have paraphrased from the emails of various readers of this august publication, who all seem to be encountering a similar issue: “Is it possible to view the value returned by built-in functions, such as %EOF and %FOUND, when working in the green-screen, full-screen debugger?”

The short answer is “No.” The debugger will not show you the result of any function, built-in or user-defined, unless that function is defined to the debugger. (See Undocumented Debugger Function .) The reason for this behavior is that a function is not a variable. A variable is a

…

Customize the Tab Key in WDSc

February 28, 2007 Jon Paris

One of the things I like about WebSphere Development Studio Client (WDSc) is having the ability to use the Tab key to move through an RPG spec without having to prompt as I would in SEU. But it is WDSc’s ability to customize the tab key behavior that I really like.

To change the standard tab settings, open the Preferences dialog from the Windows menu pull-down and then drill down to Remote Systems –> iSeries –> LPEX editor parsers -> ILE RPG as shown below:

(Click here to see a larger image)

Notice the “User Defined Tabs” check

…

Admin Alert: Better Subsystem Throughput Via Multiple Job Queues, Part One

February 28, 2007 Joe Hertvik

Scheduling system i5 batch job execution can be an art form. Some groups of jobs (such as monthly processing) must run in sequence to maintain data integrity while other jobs (such as nightly reports) can be simultaneously run to achieve better throughput. Luckily, there are specific techniques for creating subsystem job queues to meet these needs. This week and next, I’ll explain how to create multiple subsystem job queues to help with your throughput issues.

Why Would My Subsystem Need More Job Queues?

All i5/OS subsystems use job queues to stage work for processing. Job queues are assigned to a

…

Approva Automates Compliance Efforts with BizRights

February 27, 2007 Alex Woodie

When it comes to ensuring that certain regulatory controls have been implemented in your ERP system, it’s one thing if Joe from accounting gives the “thumbs up” sign while grabbing a cup of coffee, and quite another when the approval stems from a regimented process originating from outside the company. Auditors, in particular, would really rather have an external process, such as the one implemented by Approva‘s BizRights program, which actually is the remediation system used by two of the Big 4 accounting firms.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act has been a tremendously disrupting influence on IT shops over the last

…

PowerTech Unveils New Password Utility

February 27, 2007 Alex Woodie

You’re only as strong as your weakest link. For many iSeries shops, the weakest link is an easy-to-guess password that could give attackers access to critical systems. To help iSeries shops clamp down on weak passwords, PowerTech Group last week unveiled a new utility called Password Control that identifies weak passwords and forces i5/OS users to pick passwords that are hard to guess.

OS/400 contains basic password functionality. As an OS/400 system administrator, you can require that users pick passwords with a certain number of digits, force them to pick a new password after a certain period of time has

…

New BOSaNOVA Appliance Encrypts Tape Backups

February 27, 2007 Alex Woodie

BOSaNOVA this week announced a new appliance that encrypts tapes and other portable media as backups are being performed. Called the Q3 Storage Security Encryption, the new device is intended to prevent sensitive data from being compromised should a tape get lost or otherwise fall into the wrong hands, which has been occurring with surprising regularity.

You’ve probably heard the story before: Organization A (Bank of America, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Johns Hopkins University, the IRS) reports that it has lost a backup tape (laptop, hard drive, network security), compromising the integrity of 50,000 (100,000, 1.2 million) customers, costing the

…

S4i Gives DASD-Plus a New GUI

February 27, 2007 Alex Woodie

Keeping your iSeries server’s direct access storage device (DASD) in peak working condition can be a tedious task, one that sometimes is best left to dedicated utilities that can track disk usage, reclaim lost disk space, and forecast expected disk needs. One such tool, the DASD-Plus utility from S4i Systems, was augmented this week with the delivery of a new graphical interface, called DASD-Plus Chart, that should make disk-related management tasks even easier.

DASD-Plus is a mature product that includes 25 routines that automate standard iSeries housekeeping tasks, such as clearing history logs; compressing data; resizing libraries, job queues,

…

Previous Articles Next Articles

Search for:

Content archive

The Four Hundred
Four Hundred Stuff
Four Hundred Guru

Content archive

Recent Posts

Subscribe

Pages

Search