• IBM Preps Big Data, Cloud “Project Sparta” Announcements For October 9

  October 8, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  April was a busy month for IBM with a slew of Power Systems and IBM i announcements, and October is shaping up to be a busy time, too. IBM has sent out the invitations to an online event that it is hosting on October 9 at 2 p.m. Eastern that will talk about “the new PureSystems Family Member,” to quote Big Blue, that will “accelerate big data and cloud with Expert Integrated Systems.” A story last week in the Wall Street Journal‘s All Things D column said that IBM was fixing to launch some new iron that was developed

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• Take The Top Concerns Survey, Ask Others To Do The Same

  October 8, 2012 Dan Burger

  You work in the IBM i community. That gives you a perspective that is worth talking about. Some of that perspective is shared by others who work on the IBM midrange platform and the overall IT professional community. Some of your perspectives are unique to your own career, the company that employs you, and your geographic location. You’re integrated, but you are also a silo of proprietary information. This is about sharing your information. It’s about becoming more integrated with the IBM i community and with IBM. I’m talking about feedback. I’m talking about your view of the IBM i

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• The Search For IBM i Intelligent Life

  October 8, 2012 Dan Burger

  The pipeline of students graduating from college ready, willing, and able to step into an IT position at an IBM midrange shop isn’t what it once was, and those who claim the young talent pool has dried up like a west Texas watering hole aren’t far from the truth. But for companies with current and future jobs for recent grads who have IBM i experience, there’s good news. Worldwide there are 96 schools with classes that include IBM i subject matter, and 44 of those are in the United States. Finding those schools, as companies previously searching for talent found

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• ERP Gets Wrapped Up In New Technologies

  October 8, 2012 Dan Burger

  In the small to midsize business (SMB) arena, the IBM midrange shops have traditionally done well because of the excellent ERP applications available for a wide variety of vertical industries and the scalability that the system provides as businesses grow. However, markets change. Sometimes technologies follow and sometimes they don’t. And sometimes technologies change and cause markets to follow. A recent report from the ERP observers at AberdeenGroup, based on a survey of 300 SMB companies (with no indication if any are running ERP on IBM i), put new technologies in the spotlight. In the process of sorting out

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• The Mobile Enterprise Management Software Market Is Born

  October 8, 2012 Jenny Thomas

  We’ve been warning you for years that mobile devices are poised to take over the world, and the rampant proliferation of smartphones and tablets has caused the analysts over at IDC to create a new market category for our little portable addictions. The name of this new market isn’t exactly catchy or all that clear. “Mobile enterprise management software” sounds like a catch-all for any software that might fall into the mobile category. But then again, it kind of is. IDC explains that back in the old days (which in this case may have been last week), the mobile market

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• Debugging Server Jobs In Green Screen

  October 3, 2012 Susan Gantner

  A few years ago, I wrote a tip about my favorite way to debug programs using the Service Entry Point (SEP) feature of WDSC, which I have now replaced with RDP Rational Developer for Power Systems. If you’re a WDSC or RDP user and have somehow missed out on using SEPs for debugging, take a look at my tip. If you don’t use WDSC or RDP, you probably didn’t pay any attention to that tip. As it turns out, SEPs aren’t just for the graphical toolset. You can use SEPs with the traditional STRDBG “green screen” debugger as well.

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• Alternatives To SQL Literals

  October 3, 2012 Ted Holt

  Literals have caused me grief on more than one occasion. Trying to figure out what a certain number or character literal means in a program has wasted too much of my time, and my time is more valuable to me than money. I have written about this topic before, but I have not talked about literals in SQL. The example I’ve chosen may not be the best one, since the ratio of pounds to kilograms never changes. I chose it because it’s one most people should be able to relate to. The article I just referred to covers the

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• Admin Alert: Seven Things You Should Be Monitoring On Your System

  October 3, 2012 Joe Hertvik

  Last year, I wrote a two-part article outlining a basic plan for monitoring and answering IBM i error messages. But while it’s important to detect and answer error messages that require a response right now, it’s equally important to detect developing situations that will cause system problems if left alone. This week, I’ll discuss seven other things besides error messages that you should be monitoring for on your IBM i systems. The Basics For this article, let’s assume you are already using a system monitoring product to send out pager, email, or text alerts whenever an error message shows

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• Coglin Mill Reaches Out to Salesforce.com with ETL Connector

  October 2, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Coglin Mill is close to shipping a new release of its RODIN extract, transform, and load (ETL) tool for building data warehouses on the IBM i server. With the upcoming release of RODIN version 7.2, the company will include a connector for loading customers’ Salesforce.com data into their IBM i analytics engines. Coglin Mill has also improved the product in the areas of slowly changing dimensions, user defined functions, and real-time ETL. Coglin Mill already supports the most widely used databases with its RPG-based RODIN tool, including DB2/400, DB2 for LUW, Sybase, SQL Server, and Oracle‘s 11g and

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• Infor Rolls Out Cloud for Heavy Equipment Biz

  October 2, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Infor is launching a cloud version of its Lawson M3 ERP system targeted at companies that track and manage pieces of heavy equipment. The new cloud, called Infor Equipment, is the product of Infor partnerships with IBM and Velocity Technology Solutions, an established cloud hosting provider with lots of experience running and managing IBM i ERP systems. Infor is relying on standard cloud math to help attract new and existing M3 customers to the Infor Equipment cloud. Standard cloud math says that CFOs and CEOs dislike the big upfront capital outlays, long timeframes, and risks that are inherent in

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