• IBM i ERP Vendor Modernizes For Success

  December 2, 2013 Dan Burger

  The IBM i software vendors are one of the big reasons this platform, which is built around business applications, has enjoyed 25 years of greatness. The majority of these vendors are much more oriented on the midmarket than the enterprise, which happens to be where the greatest number of IBM i users do what they do. One of those vendors is VAI, the ERP software company with a healthy customer base of midsize manufacturers, distributors, and retailers. As 2013 draws to a close, VAI is on course to close out the year with an annual growth rate in the

  …

  Read more

• Wanted: The Enterprise Data Center Of The Future

  December 2, 2013 Dan Burger

  There are periodic leaps of progress in the IT business and some don’t even require leaps of faith. It has been 25 years since IBM introduced the AS/400 midrange computer and there are many companies now running the AS/400 successor, IBM i, that have refused, with good reason, to leap into the X86 alternate universe. How will the data center landscape change in the coming years? The IT analysts at Gartner pay little, if any, attention to the IBM i user base, but they are predicting great leaps of progress in data center architectures. Advice for planning data center strategies

  …

  Read more

• IBM Tweaks European Power Systems Trade-In Deal

  December 2, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Back in February, IBM cooked up a trade-in rebate deal for Power Systems customers that gave them cash if they moved to a new machine and turned in an old one. That deal has been extended and tweaked several times as the year progressed–six times to be precise–after an update on November 21. In announcement letter ENUSZA13-1003, IBM made it possible to upgrade some installed Power7-based systems to Power7+ machines as part of the deal. The deal was tweaked back in April so only Power7+ buyers could get the rebates, dropping Power7 machines from the list of eligible machines

  …

  Read more

• IBM Bops Around With Flex System Feature Prices

  December 2, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Trying to keep up with feature price changes is a big pain in the neck for both Power Systems resellers and customers buying machines. IBM has been making a bunch of changes here in there in the past few weeks that you need to be aware of as you shop. In announcement letter 313-110 from November 12, IBM raised prices on selected Flex System features by between 3 and 16.5 percent. The price changes affect features for Flex System x240, x222, and x440 server nodes, which are all based on Intel Xeon processors. Here are the price changes by feature:

  …

  Read more

• Allow Repeated Change With SQL Triggers

  November 20, 2013 Paul Tuohy

  In my previous article, I described how an RPG program as a before trigger, could be used to synchronize two columns in a table. There is an alternative. Instead of using an RPG trigger, we could have used an SQL trigger. An SQL trigger allows us to be more specific about when the trigger is activated and also has the advantage of portability to other database management systems. The scenario was where a date, stored as a packed numeric column, was to be converted to a proper date field. This was accomplished by duplicating the packed numeric column (and

  …

  Read more

• Alan’s Easy Method For Building A CSV File From A Report

  November 20, 2013 Ted Holt

  I love simple solutions to common problems, and boy, have I got a good one for you today! Clever and faithful reader Alan Urtubia recently told me how he turned a report into a CSV file and I was impressed. Alan kindly allowed me to pass this tip along to you. Alan needed to create a CSV file from a report without modifying the RPG program. He found a method to do so without modifying or recompiling any of the original source code. To illustrate his technique, let’s begin with a simple report. Here’s the DDS for printer file QAD001P:

  …

  Read more

• Minimizing IPL Surprises With The IPL Startup Kit

  November 20, 2013 Joe Hertvik

  Unlike a Windows server that can be rebooted several times a year, an IBM i machine is so reliable that it can run for a year or more without being IPLed. But infrequent IPLs can cause their own problems, as functions that should be restarted after an IPL may not necessarily actually restart after an IPL. That’s where it comes in handy to have an IPL startup kit available. Why Create An IPL Startup Kit? Since an IBM i box can go so long between restarts, your system startup routine may not include all the functions that were added to

  …

  Read more

• Hey iDoctor, Can i Get a Walker?

  November 19, 2013 Alex Woodie

  IBM is currently beta testing a new piece of software called the HMC Walker that’s designed to help Power Systems admins pinpoint LPARs that aren’t running at optimal speed. When an admin finds an underperforming LPAR, the HMC Walker interface makes it easy for the admin to drill down into the iDoctor tool to get more details on the problem. The new HMC Walker offering gives administrators a high-level view of all their physical systems and the LPARs that are attached to them via the hardware management console (HMC). The software works with LPARs of all types, including IBM i,

  …

  Read more

• Free Format RPG Is Here with TR7, Context Checking Still to Come

  November 19, 2013 Alex Woodie

  As promised, IBM on Friday delivered the latest update of the IBM i OS, dubbed version 7.1 Technology Refresh 7. The TR7 release brings free format coding to RPG, and big data enhancements to DB2/400. RPG programmers can get started writing free format code as soon as they install the compiler, but they’ll have to wait until next year to get free-format syntax checking in RDi. IBM bundled all the work it did for IBM i 7.1 TR7–including the free format enhancements to the RPG compiler, the Ruby stuff, the SQL pre-compiler, the SQL index expansion, the new database growth

  …

  Read more

• BCD Bolsters Nexus Portal with Authentication and CMS Functions

  November 19, 2013 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops looking for a quick way to communicate with customers and partners over the Web might be interested in the latest release of Nexus, Business Computer Design Int’l.‘s IBM i-based Web portal. With the updated release of Nexus, BCD adopted the OpenLDAP authentication software, and added support for a new visual document designer called TinyMCE. The Nexus portal was initially created years ago as a side project that came out WebSmart, BCD’s Web application development and runtime environment for IBM i servers. One of the very first things that IBM i shops need upon creating a Web

  …

  Read more

Previous Articles Next Articles