• The Spirit Of John Earl Lives On In Scholarship

  April 8, 2013 Jenny Thomas

  Earlier this year, the IBM i community lost a valuable member when John Earl, an IBM i security expert, lost his battle with brain cancer. In a fitting tribute to a man who took joy in sharing his knowledge and was passionate in encouraging others to do the same, the COMMON Educational Foundation has teamed with Help/Systems to fund the John Earl Speaker Scholarship Award. Help/Systems’ participation in funding the award is a nod to Earl’s history in the IBM i community. Earl was a co-founder of Lighthouse Security, which was acquired by PowerTech in 1998. Help/Systems acquired PowerTech

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• IBM Extends Power Systems Trade-In Deal In Europe

  April 8, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  With new machines out the door for entry and midrange Power Systems customers and the economy not doing so great in parts of Europe, I would have expected to see more wheeling and dealing for the Power7+ machines to get customers buying. Rather than come up with a new deal, Big Blue has instead just extended and slightly tweaked an existing trade-in rebate deal for customers moving from old Power-based systems to new Power7+ machinery. In announcement letter ENUSZA13-1003, which was updated on April 4, IBM dropped the Power7 models that were on the eligible list and now, through

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• Abacus Running On Clouds At COMMON, Gives Free Trial

  April 8, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It may have taken some major changes in technology and culture, but the long-awaited promise of cloudy infrastructure for OS/400 and IBM i workloads is becoming a reality. Abacus Solutions, which launched an IBM i cloud at last May’s COMMON Annual Conference and Exposition, is back at this year’s COMMON event in Austin with customer Brooks Running Company to tell potential customers all about the benefits of putting their applications out on the Abacus cloud. Scott Johnson, senior iSeries solutions specialist at Abacus, tells The Four Hundred that the company is teaming up with Brooks to fit prospective customers

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• Maxava Versus Vision Solutions Trial Date Delayed Again

  April 8, 2013 Alex Woodie

  Instead of prepping for trial next month, participants in Maxava‘s false advertising and trade libel lawsuit against Vision Solutions will be waiting–waiting for the judge in the case to issue summary judgment rulings, which will impact how they prepare for the trial, and maybe even lead to an out-of-court settlement. In a filing made last week, Judge George Wu set a new trial date of August 6, and a new pretrial conference date of July 15. The previous pretrial conference date was May 2, and the previous trial date was May 28. The delay was jointly requested on March

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• Bringing Home The Data

  April 3, 2013 Michael Sansoterra

  In IBM i 7.1 Technology Refresh 4 (TR4), IBM gave SQL developers the ability to insert data into a local database table from a remote DB2 for i database table within the comfort of a single SQL statement. (See my article Copy Data From A Remote DB2 Database Using DB2 For i 7.1 for more info). With Technology Refresh 5, specifically DB2 for i Group PTF Level 18 or later, you can dynamically create a local table and insert data into it directly from a remote DB2 for i database query using the CREATE TABLE … AS statement. Recall that

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• Updating Through A Join With SQL, Take Three

  April 3, 2013 Ted Holt

  As I was looking for something in the DB2 for i SQL reference, my eyes happened to see MERGE in the list of statements, and I realized that I had been doing something the hard way. I realized that I was about to abandon the method I had been using to update values in one database table (physical file) from data in another one. Once in a while, someone requests that I use a list of values, which are usually stored in a spreadsheet, to mass update the database on the big computer. Fortunately, several years ago I learned how

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• Admin Alert: A Checklist For Monitoring Your IBM i Environment

  April 3, 2013 Joe Hertvik

  IBM i administration has elements of old-time system operations and real-time monitoring. You need to ensure that everything is working correctly and that problems aren’t silently developing that can: a) interfere with customer processing; and b) violate customer service-level agreement (SLA) requirements or create audit violations. This week, let’s flesh out a checklist of items to help IBM i admins achieve these goals. The Essential Piece In order to catch trouble before it occurs, I highly recommend that you set up an IBM i monitoring system to catch developing situations and alert you via email or text when a problem

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• CM First Uses Hometown COMMON as Launch Pad for IBM i Tools

  April 3, 2013 Alex Woodie

  One of the new IBM i software vendors exhibiting at next week’s COMMON conference in Austin, Texas, is CM First. The Swiss company opened its US office in Austin two years ago, and sees a favorable market developing for its products, including change management and Web and mobile development tools for CA 2E and Plex customers. CM First develops application lifecycle management (ALM) and Web/mobile development tools aimed at helping IBM i and mainframe customers modernize their applications. In 12 years of business, the company has attracted about 400 customers, most of which are located in Europe and have

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• Help/Systems Buys ShowCase BI Products from IBM

  April 2, 2013 Alex Woodie

  Help/Systems yesterday announced that it has acquired several ShowCase business intelligence products from IBM. The transaction gives Help/Systems possession of one of the most storied brands in the history of IBM i analytics. However, it does not include the IBM i port of the Essbase online analytical processing (OLAP) tool, which has died on the IBM vine. Terms of the deal between Help/Systems and IBM were not disclosed. The transaction is done, and some of IBM’s ShowCase customers are now Help/Systems customers. “I’m pleased to add the ShowCase software products to the Help/Systems family,” stated Help/Systems CEO Janet Dryer

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• Braum’s Takes the RPG Path to Mobile Apps with LANSA LongRange

  April 2, 2013 Alex Woodie

  RPG is probably not the first language that pops into most IT people’s minds when they think about mobile application development. But for IBM i shops like Braum’s Ice Cream and Dairy Stores, the capability to code mobile apps in the language they know best–good old Report Program Generator–is a major advantage. In fact, it was the main reason Braum’s chose LANSA‘s LongRange to build a series of mobile apps for its employees. Braum’s Ice Cream and Dairy Stores is something of a local institution for people who live in the south central portion of the United States. In

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