• Silly Rumor Says Oracle Wants to Buy SAP

  February 5, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Sometimes, the IT press reports rumors not because we think the rumor will pan out, but because reporting on the rumor is fun. And so it is with the most recent rumor that Oracle is considering a bid to acquire application software rival SAP for 38.5 euros per share. The rumor, which appears to have come out of the London stock market, was passed around the blogosphere last week and was reported in the London-based IT trade magazine, Computer Business Review. That rumored acquisition offer by Oracle works out to about $50 a share at the current exchange rates,

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• Manugistics Acquisition Powers Growth for JDA in the Fourth Quarter

  February 5, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  JDA Software, which supplies software for retailers who run their applications on i5/OS or Windows platforms, announced its fourth quarter 2006 financial results, and thanks in part to the acquisition of supply chain specialist Manugistics, JDA was able to show pretty impressive growth. JDA said that for the fourth quarter ended December 31, it had total revenues of $88.6 million, up 61 percent from the $55.1 million in sales for software, services, and maintenance that the company posted in the fourth quarter of 2005. Sales of products and services from the Manugistics line, which became part of JDA when

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• Rocket Software Lowers Bid for Seagull Software Slightly

  February 5, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Middleware software maker Seagull Software announced last week that it has received a slightly lower offer to be acquired by Rocket Software. Back in December, Rocket Software, which makes a bunch of mainframe tools and has extensions to Hewlett-Packard‘s OpenView tools that it licenses to HP, offered 4.68 euros per share to acquire the shares and outstanding stock options of Seagull Software. Just taking into account the shares listed publicly, that came out to about $55.7 million. According to a statement put out by Seagull Software, the revision came about due to “a combination of factors, including continued

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• Finding the Last Transaction for a Customer

  January 31, 2007 Hey, Howard

  I’ve been studying your book, SQL at Work. I was hoping you would answer a question for me. We have a historical transaction file sorted on a descending date field. I’d like to only select the latest record for a specific ID with the most current date. I don’t know the value of this date and I don’t want it to return any other records. Is this possible? Thanks! –Mary This kind of query can be done using a subquery or a join operation. Let’s create a sample table, load it with data, and try a few queries that

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• Sorting Arrays and Subfiles with a User Index

  January 31, 2007 Hey, Ted

  I’d like to suggest another method Jennifer can use for sorting arrays. Why not use a user index? I use user indexes so the user may sort subfiles umpteen different ways. Using a user index eliminates the need to be concerned with size (unless you have more than 4 GB of data). Maybe size would not be an issue in Jennifer’s daily run shipping application. –Drew at BIC Graphic USA Note: the code from this article is available for download Drew sent me some illustrative code and a short write-up about the three API’s he uses–Create a User Index

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• When Fix Central Won’t Let You Download PTFs

  January 31, 2007 Hey, Joe

  When I went to IBM‘s Fix Central Web site to download some i5 PTFs, the site wouldn’t let me complete my order after I entered my contact and shipping information. Fix Central wouldn’t let me advance past the contact screen, and I couldn’t download the PTFs I wanted. Is there something wrong with my browser settings or do I need to adjust something else on my system? –Bob This same problem recently happened to me and I discovered that this issue occurred because I needed to update my i5/OS V5R3 partition’s service contact information. For service-related issues, IBM stores

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• Idiom Translates Globalization Software into Strong Growth

  January 31, 2007 Alex Woodie

  How do you spell “success”? If you’re Idiom Technologies, it depends on what language you’re starting from, and where you want to end up. The Waltham, Massachusetts, company writes Java software that helps global companies take the pain out of translating their work–whether it’s software documentation for Oracle (one of its customers) or owner’s manuals for General Motors (another one)–and streamlining its ongoing maintenance. 2006 was a breakout year for Idiom, which says it tripled its customer base over 2005. Que bueno. Idiom got its start last decade when Eric Silberstein, a Microsoft employee, was stationed in Bejing

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• PowerTech Looks to OpenService for Cross-Platform Security

  January 30, 2007 Alex Woodie

  One of the downsides of the rise of multi-platform, n-tier computing environments most iSeries shops live in is the complication of security. Potential break-ins may not be detected and stopped by scanning iSeries logs, and changes may need to be made across multiple systems. To help iSeries shops get a handle on cross-platform security problems, PowerTech is teaming up with OpenService to bring greater OS/400 depth to OpenService’s security event correlation and reporting tools. OpenService sells a collection of security tools, which it classifies as Security Information Event Management (SIEM). Under this SIEM umbrella lays the company’s flagship Security Management

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• Notes-Domino 8 Beta On Deck, Mid-Year GA Still on Schedule

  January 30, 2007 Dan Burger

  As IBM Lotus prepares to introduce a public beta program for Notes/Domino 8 leading up to the product’s ship date in mid-2007, Big Blue continues to emphasize the theme of open standards as its primary anti-Microsoft message. Collaboration, particularly as it applies to linking with applications that go beyond basic e-mail, continues to play an expanding role, as social networking tools are introduced to the workplace as an integral part of project management and the bridging of information silos. The public beta program for Notes/Domino 8, the final beta phase, will launch in February. N/D 8 has been in what

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• mrc Hits the Throttle with Development Tools

  January 30, 2007 Alex Woodie

  In the world of application development, speed means everything. The faster you can write a program and get it live using real data, and the faster that application hits that database, the sooner you start improving and scaling your business for profit. Speed–of the development, integration, and performance kind–was the focus of a recent round of improvements unveiled by development tool maker mrc. The folks at mrc have seen a lot since the company was founded in the early 1980s. The Chicago company–whose initials stand for Michaels, Ross, and Cole–made its name with a fourth-generation language (4GL) development tool

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