• Installing PHP on Your Laptop

  March 29, 2016 Chris Ringer

  In my introductory article I walked you through a crash course in PHP. Now I will show you how obtain a free PHP development environment on your laptop in two easy installations of XAMPP and Netbeans. This allows you the freedom to configure PHP and test your scripts as you choose without affecting a production website or needing management approval. However, if you need to manage PHP scripts on an IBM i, you will want to alternatively explore using Zend Studio. This full-featured IDE integrates directly with the IBM i and allows you to write and debug scripts

  …

  Read more

• Ease the Burden of Overloading

  March 29, 2016 Ted Holt

  A while back I said that function overloading is marvelous. I haven’t changed my mind. The same is true of overloaded stored procedures. The only negatives to overloading are a couple of annoyances that the system requires to maintain order. Fortunately, those annoyances are easily circumvented. Here’s what and how. Assume a table of items. Each item is identified by a five-digit ID code for internal use only. Customers use an alternate catalog ID to refer to items. create table Items ( ID dec (5,0), Catalog_ID char(6), MaterialThisLevel dec (5,2), LaborThisLevel dec (5,2), OverheadThisLevel dec (5,2), MaterialLowerLevels dec (5,2), LaborLowerLevels

  …

  Read more

• Finders, Keepers: Long Lost RSE Keyboard Shortcuts

  March 29, 2016 Susan Gantner

  If you have read many of my past Four Hundred Guru tips, you’ll remember that I write a lot about RSE (a.k.a. RDi) and particularly I write a lot about keyboard shortcuts. I’ve even created my own card with my favorite keyboard shortcuts. This tip is to confess that I’ve recently realized that I’ve been missing out on a set of shortcuts that I should have been using and including on my shortcut cards all along. I published a tip about a year ago about Playing with Blocks and I included an edited version of that tip on the back

  …

  Read more

• The Value Of Things That Don’t Change–And Those That Must

  March 28, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The wide expectation is that IBM will announce the next iteration of the IBM i operating system, up until now known as iNext and now thought to be IBM i 7.3, at its TechU conference in Atlanta, Georgia, on April 12. That is a week ahead of when COMMON is hosting a webinar with IBM i chief architect Steve Will to talk about new features in the platform, so the cat is out of the bag. The word we hear on the street is that there will be significant enhancements to the database and to the security systems of the

  …

  Read more

• A Peek At Upcoming Open Source Enhancements In IBM i

  March 28, 2016 Alex Woodie

  Over the past 15 years, the open source community has driven a massive amount of innovation in IT. It has gotten to the point where IBM and Microsoft–two bastions of proprietary development–are now champions of open source. The open source wave is not quite as strong on the IBM i platform, but it appears that wave will gain momentum with the upcoming new release of the OS. It’s hard to quantify the value created through open source development of software. Last year, the Linux Foundation released a white paper that found the total value of the development of the

  …

  Read more

• Observing i: An IBM Power Systems Champion Perspective

  March 28, 2016 Dan Burger

  Pete Massiello is an IBM i advocate, a past president of COMMON the world’s largest IBM i user group, and owner and CEO of a consultancy that specializes in system upgrades, performance tuning, and hosted services. The IBM midrange is his bread and butter. Massiello recently wrote a report he calls IBM i State of the Union, a perspective on the landscape based on what he has seen and what he expects to see. If Massiello was limited to five words to describe his report, they would be: Do not dismiss this platform. He acknowledges that companies are migrating

  …

  Read more

• Mad Dog 21/21: Her Master’s Voice

  March 28, 2016 Hesh Wiener

  Someday there may be a portrait of Siri, the invisible aide of Apple’s users; an image of Google’s nameless virtual servant; an illustration of Amazon Echo’s helpful Alexa; or a graphic depicting Cortana, Microsoft’s attentive assistant. By contrast, IBM’s Watson, which talked to Bob Dylan, has an icon: a Haringesque homosexual planet. None of these characters has achieved the immortality of Nipper the terrier, its attention drawn before 1900 by the recorded voice of its master. A four-ton statue of the duped pooch still adorns the Arnoff Building in Albany, New York. His

  …

  Read more

• Healthcare Tech Trends Shape Industry And IBM i

  March 28, 2016 Dan Burger

  The future of IBM i won’t be found in any crystal balls. And references to omens always seem so ominous, mostly because they are connected to end of the world scenarios. Predictions, in my opinion, have a greater chance of coming true when based on real world observations. What’s happening in the IBM midrange is the best indicator, but what’s happening includes all kinds of things–some good and some bad. Here’s an example. MEDHOST provides enterprise and departmental healthcare-related software to more than 1,000 hospitals. Along with traditional licensed software, it offers software as a service (SaaS), managed services for

  …

  Read more

• Verizon Outlines Disturbing AS/400 Breach At Water District

  March 16, 2016 Alex Woodie

  Cyber intruders who gained access to an AS/400 at a water district were able to manipulate the flow of chemicals into the public water supply, Verizon says in its latest Data Breach Digest. While customers served by the water district were not harmed, the episode shows the potential consequences of failure to properly secure critical systems in an increasingly connected world. Verizon dedicated five pages to laying out the disturbing breach of a water district that it referred to as Kemuri Water Company (KWC), which is not a real name. The water district had first contacted Verizon’s RISK Team to

  …

  Read more

• No Regrets For JDE Shop Following Move To Third-Party Support

  March 16, 2016 Alex Woodie

  Like most technology executives, Dean Foods CIO Brian Murphy has to balance his company’s wants and needs. Its JD Edwards ERP systems must be maintained, but at the same time, employees desire things that make their lives easier, such as a new email system. Murphy found a way to fit both items into his budget after shifting the JD Edwards maintenance and technical support duties from Oracle to Rimini Street. Dean Foods is a longtime user of the IBM midrange server that’s gone by various names over its nearly four-decade run. The Dallas, Texas-based company is one of the

  …

  Read more

Previous Articles Next Articles