• IBM Tweaks Power Systems Trade-In Deal

  January 25, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In a move that probably has very little to do with the imminent launch of Power7-based servers, IBM last week tweaked a long-running trade-in deal to offer a nominal trade-in credit to customers using Power5 and Power5+ versions of the entry Power 520 servers running the i/OS. As you can see in announcement letter 310-110, all 9505 variants of the Power 520 lineup as well as 9406 variants of the 520 using processor features 7450, 7451, 7397, 7350, or 7352 are now eligible for a $450 trade-in credit if customers move on up to a Power6 or Power6+ version

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• IBM Claims Major Breakthrough in Tape Density

  January 25, 2010 Alex Woodie

  IBM last week announced a major technological breakthrough in linear tape design that it says will allow tape cartridges to hold 35 TB of uncompressed data, or 44 times the capacity of an LTO 4 tape cartridge. What’s more, IBM says the new techniques and technologies that it and Fujifilm came up with will allow the storage medium–which seems perpetually on death’s door–to increase in capacity for years to come. The big capacity breakthrough is actually the result of several separate, but related, innovations that allow for many more tracks of data to be squeezed onto a half-inch wide tape,

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• Run SQL Scripts: Use Temporary JDBC Settings

  January 20, 2010 Skip Marchesani

  I consider myself to be a power user of Run SQL Scripts and use them for a variety of purposes, including ad hoc queries to do data analysis. Run SQL Scripts can be configured for your personal preferences (SQL default schema or current library, schema or library list, SQL or system naming convention, and other parameters) by clicking on Connection in the toolbar and then JDBC properties. Once you select your personal preferences and click the Connect button on the bottom of the JDBC Setup panel, your preferences are saved and become the default each time you invoke Run SQL

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• Can a Function Return More Than One Value?

  January 20, 2010 Hey, Ted

  Is it possible for an RPG subprocedure to return more than one value? (I assume it isn’t; the RETURN opcode only allows for one argument.) I want to write a function subprocedure that will return a data structure of information taken from various database files. However, the subprocedure will also need to return a status code to indicate whether or not the I/O was successful. Do you have any suggestions? –Travis What you want to do is something like this: eval (MyDataStructure: Status) = GetData (KeyValue) No, that won’t work. But I can show you two other ways that will.

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• Admin Alert: Erasing i5/OS Disk for Fun and Compliance

  January 20, 2010 Joe Hertvik

  When decommissioning iSeries, System i, or Power i systems, there may be legal considerations in erasing disk drive data. Decommissioning can occur when removing disk drives from a system; when completing a Disaster Recovery Test on an outside provider’s machine; or when an i5/OS machine is sold or returned to a leasing company. The problem is that decommissioning disk drives can easily violate legally mandated compliance standards. Compliance and Decommissioned Disk Drives Like most systems, i5/OS data doesn’t necessarily disappear when you reinitialize your disk drives. Clever and determined hackers may be able to reconstruct supposedly erased data if they

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• Unitrends Delivers Backup Simplicity with D2D Appliances

  January 19, 2010 Alex Woodie

  Complexity can be a killer in the IT business. Layer too many moving parts into a given business process, and you can be sure that somebody will find a way to break it. One IT vendor that’s been helping small and mid-sized businesses root out complexity from their backup and recovery processes is Unitrends, which has quietly amassed a substantial customer base with its all-in-one line of disk-to-disk (D2D) and D2D2D backup appliances. Mark Campbell, the CTO and COO of Unitrends, knows a thing or two about the lasting power of simple yet elegant designs. Campbell was running NCR’s

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• Rainmaker’s Profit Optimization Software Good as Gold to Casinos

  January 19, 2010 Alex Woodie

  If you’ve ever been turned down for a room in a major Las Vegas casino when the hotel was obviously not full, it probably made you mad. And it probably doesn’t help knowing that the software that told the front desk to reject you was written by the Rainmaker Group. But when you realize that Rainmaker’s revenue optimization software has made casinos hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars, you can begin to understand why it’s in such widespread use. Rainmaker started out in 1998 writing schedule optimization software for a completely different business: the airline industry. But

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• Pat Townsend Updates MFT Offering for i/OS

  January 19, 2010 Alex Woodie

  Patrick Townsend Security Solutions last week introduced Alliance All-Ways Secure version 5.0, a new release of its managed file transfer (MFT) solution for System i customers. The product brings support for 128-bit SSH encryption over FTP (sFTP), which will allow customers to share files with banks that have standardized on sFTP. Version 5.0 also brings enhancements in the area of configuration and logging, and makes it easier for IBM i users to comply with data privacy laws, PTSS says. Pat Townsend (the man and the company) is a recognized expert in encryption on the i/OS platform, and has been selling

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• Linoma Bolsters GoAnywhere MFT Tool with New Features

  January 19, 2010 Alex Woodie

  Linoma Software last week announced a new version of GoAnywhere Director, its enterprise-strength managed file transfer (MFT) solution that runs on i/OS and other major operating systems. With version 3.0, the vendor has expanded its support for secure transfer protocols and digital signatures, and delivered new ways that customers can use the tool to automate recurring business processes that involve secure file transfer. GoAnywhere Director debuted nearly two years ago as the platform-independent, browser-based replacement for Transfer Anywhere, which Linoma debuted in 2002, and which ran only on OS/400 and Windows. About four months ago Linoma split the GoAnywhere product

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• FIS Reports Solid 2009 Sales of i/OS Core Banking System

  January 19, 2010 Alex Woodie

  Jack Henry & Associates and Fiserv may dominate discussions of so-called “core” account processing platforms that run on the IBM i/OS platform. But with more than a dozen new multi-year licenses for its HORIZON core banking system in 2009, Fidelity National Information Services (FIS) is making a strong case for its i/OS-based software. FIS was created in November 2006 when Fidelity National Financial spun off its information services division into a separate entity, and combined it with card issuer Certegy. Several years and several acquisitions later, FIS chairman William P. Foley, II led the company’s biggest acquisition yet: the $2.94

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