• USDA Farm Service Agency Wants to Consolidation 2,384 AS/400s

  January 15, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  According to a request for information seeking proposals from IT experts put out by the United States Department of Agriculture, the Farm Service Agency, which operates a network of 2,384 AS/400 Model 170 servers that host applications to help the farmers of America, is looking to simplify its IT infrastructure. And rather than just call IBM Global Services, the USDA posted a request for information to solicit ideas from the world at large to help the farm agency solve its unique problem. The FSA network has 2,384 service centers, which host a variety of System/36 RPG, COBOL, and assembler programs

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• LTO Consortium Spins Ultrium 4 Tape Format with Native Encryption

  January 15, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The companies behind the Ultrium Linear Tape Out (LTO) tape drive and tape cartridge specification announced last week that the specification for the LTO 4 tape format had been completed and was available for licensing by interested parties. That means that tape drives and cartridges based on the LTO 4 format, which has integrated data encryption capability, should start appearing this year. This time around, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Quantum are driving the technology behind the LTO spec; disk maker Seagate Technology partnered with IBM and HP to drive earlier generations of LTO technology. With the LTO 4 specification,

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• IBM Wins U.S. Patent Count Again as Vendors Build Up Patent War Chests

  January 15, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Some stories in the IT business have their seasons. About this time of the year, it is typical for the United States Patent and Trademark Office to put out a press release trumpeting the number of patents that were issued in America during the prior year just ended. But this year, USPTO didn’t put out a release, and I called up the public affairs office to find out why. To my astonishment and amusement, I was politely told by the public affairs officer that USPTO was concerned that the industry was focusing too much on the quantity of patents awarded

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• Original Adds Some Manual Features to Testing Suite

  January 11, 2007 Alex Woodie

  When you hear the name “Original Software,” chances are good the words “automated iSeries, Windows, and Web-based software testing” pop into your mind. That is no mistake, as this has been what the English software house has been developing and promoting for as long as this reporter can remember. That is why it is a bit surprising to hear that Original Software is now taking a small step back from its mantra of all automated software testing, and talking up the virtues of manual testing techniques. Make no mistake about it: Original Software is not throwing in the towel on

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• Exporting DB2/400 Dates to Excel

  January 10, 2007 Jeff Haddix

  In order for Microsoft‘s Excel spreadsheet to recognize the set of values for a column as dates, those values must be stored as a number of days. For example, to export the date December 26, 2006, to an Excel spreadsheet, you should export the number 37,066, not a date value like 12/26/2006 or 2006-12-26. However, due to an acknowledged defect in Excel, be aware of the following. Even though Excel claims that 01/01/1900 equates to Day 1, for most purposes it is necessary to actually use 12/31/1899 as Day 1. Otherwise, a one-day discrepancy will occur when converting

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• Resetting Your QSECOFR Service Tools Password

  January 10, 2007 Hey, Bob

  I had to log into Service Tools the other day to do some hardware configuration stuff but the password didn’t work. Someone accidentally had tried to log in and disabled the password. How do you get around this? –Mike Mike, you can follow these steps to change the password: On the AS/400, log onto a session as QSECOFR. It will not work with any other profile. At a command line, type CHGDSTPWD (Change IBM Service Tools Password) and on the Password Parameter type *DEFAULT. Press Enter. On the front of your AS/400, you need to change the mode of the

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• Admin Alert: Combating Cross-Server Failures for the i5 Manager

  January 10, 2007 Joe Hertvik

  System i5 software doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It cooperates and cohabitates with other servers, triggering cross-platform processes that kick off alerts, update files and Web sites, and move information across the enterprise. Unfortunately, i5/OS inter-server communication can sometimes break down in unexpected ways. This week, I will provide a checklist of common communication breakdowns that can affect how your System i5 machine functions in a cross-server world. There are three common scenarios for cross-server processing between a System i5, iSeries, or an older AS/400 and a companion server–such as a Windows or Linux machine or even an application running

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• Micro Focus Builds Closer IBM Ties

  January 10, 2007 Alex Woodie

  COBOL tool developer Micro Focus this year will release new versions of its development environments that function as plug-ins to the Eclipse development framework, the company announced recently. Micro Focus said it would ship an Eclipse plug-in for its Net Express (for Windows-based COBOL apps) and Server Express (for Unix- and Linux-based COBOL apps) products during the second quarter. The plug-in for its Mainframe Express Enterprise Edition will follow, the company said. Redeveloping its various COBOL products into Eclipse plug-ins will benefit users by providing a consistent development experience and leveraging “the efficiencies inherent in Eclipse” to boost productivity, the

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• Magic Adapts iBOLT for J.D. Edwards

  January 9, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Magic Software recently rolled out a version of its iBOLT integration software tailored for J.D. Edwards World and EnterpriseOne environments. The new i5/OS-based product, called JDE Connect, enables users to extend customized J.D. Edwards programs to applications running on other platforms, and, conversely, to bring data from other systems into the J.D. Edwards environment. Software licenses start at around $20,000, about half the typical iBOLT cost. iBOLT grew out of the company’s flagship fourth-generation language (4GL) integrated development environment, called eDeveloper, in 2003. Many eDeveloper users were already using the IDE, which featured a proprietary messaging layer to integrate their

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• Bug Busters Debuts Record-Level Mirroring Solution

  January 9, 2007 Alex Woodie

  While the number of established OS/400 high availability software providers has been declining lately due to industry consolidation (re: iTera, OS Solutions, and Vision Solutions), that hasn’t stopped new players, such as Bug Busters Software Engineering of Seattle, Washington, from entering the market. Last week, Bug Busters announced the GA of RSF 8.0, the latest release of its flagship utility, which gained a new record-level mirroring capability that is key to high availability replication. Bug Buster’s RSF traditionally served as an application lifecycle management tool, not part of a disaster recovery or high availability solution. For years, RSF has helped

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