• As I See It: Sub-Atomic Dreams

  October 22, 2012 Victor Rozek

  Theoretical physicist Brian Greene once observed: “No matter how hard you try to teach your cat general relativity, you’re going to fail.” God knows I’ve tried, but my cat is just not interested in relativity. That’s so yesterday. She wants to learn quantum mechanics. But the thing about quantum mechanics is that only a handful of people on the planet can truly claim to understand it. And that’s probably an exaggeration. Even Einstein called it “spooky.” Not only is the math beyond the capabilities of the average smartphone, but concepts like “superposition,” “entanglement,” and “decoherence” have about as much in

  …

  Read more

• Single Sign-On: Then and Now

  October 22, 2012 Dan Burger

  When single sign-on was integrated into the IBM OS/400 operating system in 2002, it was one of the highlighted technologies in the V5R2 release. In the right hands, it allowed system administrators in IBM midrange shops to set up user authentication beyond the boundaries of the i5 system to include multiple servers and applications–Microsoft Windows, Unix, Linux, and others–but primarily the target was Windows, where PC5250 emulators were the bull’s eye. There was widespread use of green-screen applications with emulators running those applications from a menu. Ten years later, why is single sign-on so rarely used? The benefit of

  …

  Read more

• Dell Hires Former STG CTO As It Launches Active System 800 Integrated Iron

  October 22, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  A few months ago, I got a tip that Jai Menon, the chief technology officer for the Systems and Technology Group at IBM, had left Big Blue and was preparing to take a high-level job at Dell. People at the enterprise groups at both IBM and Dell refused to comment on it, and so did Menon when I tried to contact him over the Intertubes, and so I waited for the inevitable announcement. It came last week as Dell launched an integrated, converged system called the Active System 800. Yes, the AS 800. Dell has put together a

  …

  Read more

• IBM Offers PureFlex Power-X86 Deal Down Under

  October 22, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The rack is the new blade server chassis, in case you haven’t noticed. Big Blue launched the PureFlex systems in April, and it wants these machines to do battle against the converged systems stacks that Cisco Systems, Dell, Oracle, and Hewlett-Packard have put into the field. Some companies are so used to having multiple vendors providing servers, storage, and networking that the idea of buying them all from one vendor, and making such a commitment to a single platform, is a little bit scary. (Not so much for System/36, System/38, AS/400, and Power Systems shops, of course.)

  …

  Read more

• Manhattan Associates Posts Revenue Gains For Three Quarters

  October 22, 2012 Dan Burger

  An increase in licensing revenue is a pretty good indicator of how well a software company is performing. So when you see that Manhattan Associates has jumped that number from $37.7 million in the first nine months of 2011 to $47.1 million in the same period here in 2012, the supply chain management experts in Atlanta, Georgia, should be pretty happy with the veritable economic feast. A 20 percent bump is a worthy achievement, especially in an era where it is not uncommon to see software companies relying on services to be the sole bread winner. In the third quarter

  …

  Read more

• SAP And JD Edwards Support Floats Spinnaker’s Boat

  October 22, 2012 Dan Burger

  The third-party maintenance business continues to be a rose garden for the likes of Spinnaker Support, where Oracle‘s JD Edwards software customers and SAP software customers are happy to have maintenance alternatives. Last week, Spinnaker indicated revenues at the company increased 80 percent and sales bookings were up 154 percent during the first three quarters of 2012. Because Spinnaker is a private company, it releases financial reports as it wants rather than according to the financial reporting guidelines that public companies adhere to (more or less). Two weeks ago, Rimini Street, another private company enjoying success primarily

  …

  Read more

• Manta’s IBM i COBOL Training Trifecta

  October 22, 2012 Jenny Thomas

  Earlier this year, Bill Hansen, president of Manta Technologies realized a long-time goal: the introduction of a COBOL training series. According to Hansen, COBOL was the one training course customers consistently asked for over the years, so he is pleased to announce the rollout of Manta’s third COBOL course in the curriculum: COBOL Input Programming. “The pleasant surprise is the people who were asking for COBOL training have turned out to be customers already,” said Hansen. “As courses are coming out, I am seeing them being gobbled up by the COBOL shops.” Manta has already introduced two COBOL training

  …

  Read more

• Database Modernization: A Matter of Survival for IBM i ISVs

  October 18, 2012 Alex Woodie

  In the discussion of database modernization, the question inevitably comes up: What are IBM i independent software vendors (ISVs) doing to modernize their databases? The answer, according to database modernization experts at Databorough, Resolution Software, and TEMBO, is they aren’t doing much. The vast majority of IBM i ISVs continue to use traditional DDS and ISAM database technology and aren’t moving quickly to modern SQL and DDL. Eventually the ISVs will need to invest in database modernization if they want to keep the applications relevant in an SQL world. Database modernization has been on the technology docket

  …

  Read more

• What’s That Name?

  October 17, 2012 Paul Tuohy

  The basis for this article comes from a brief conversation I had over coffee, while recently presenting an Introduction to SQL course. It went along these lines: Tom: “In Run SQL Scripts, how can I get a list of the fields in a file?” Me: “You mean the columns in a table or view.” Tom: “OK. In Run SQL Scripts, how can I get a list of the columns in a table or a view?” Me: “Just do a SELECT * and the column names are shown at the top of the columns.” Tom: “Nope. I took the option to

  …

  Read more

• Non-Equal (Theta) Joins

  October 17, 2012 Ted Holt

  In George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm, all animals were declared to be equal. However, that was not the case. By the end of the book, some were “more equal than others.” You might think that all joins are equal, but you would be wrong. Unequal joins have their applications, too. The equijoin is the norm in business. A customer number in a table (file) of invoices matches (equals) a customer number in a customer master table. But it is also possible to join on non-matching conditions such as not equal, greater than, less than, greater than or equal to,

  …

  Read more

Previous Articles Next Articles