• SAP Profits Despite Sales Slump and Weak Economy

  November 2, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Application software powerhouse SAP didn’t do as badly in the third quarter as some had expected, but the company’s revenue and profit picture and sentiments show just how hard it is to get big IT projects done in this tough–and perhaps improving–economy. For the third quarter ended in September, the German company booked €2.51 billion in sales, down 9 percent from the year-ago quarter, and software license sales fell a staggering 31 percent to €525 million. Services revenues (including software support and subscription-based software sales) declined only 3 percent for SAP in Q3, to €1.94 billion. Within that broad services

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• Getting Started with RDi’s Application Diagram, Part 2: Program Structure Diagram

  October 28, 2009 Susan Gantner

  In Part 1 of this tip, I talked about getting started with RDi’s Source Call diagram. Now let’s continue on the journey. I’ll first cover the basics of the second type of diagram, the Program Structure Diagram. Then I’ll cover some notes that apply to both types about customizing, saving, and using your Application Diagrams for your own documentation. The Program Structure diagram shows relationships between application objects, such as programs that call other programs or reference Service Programs. An example of a very simple Program Structure diagram is shown below. GRAPHIC1 This diagram shows the relationships between three programs

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• Distinguish between Record Types without Indicators

  October 28, 2009 Hey, Ted

  I have an RPG question. Now that indicators are verboten, how does an RPG program distinguish between record types when reading a multi-format logical file? That is, what do I use instead of record identifying indicators? –Tricia Define a file information data structure for the logical file. The system will place the record format name in positions 261-270. Here’s some sample source code to get you started. CODE1 –Ted                      Post this story to del.icio.us                Post this story to Digg     Post this story to Slashdot

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• How Much Temporary Storage Am I Using?

  October 28, 2009 Hey, Joe

  My i5/OS partition disk storage is filling up and it hit 85 percent utilization today. How do I tell how much temporary storage space my system is using? If there’s a lot of temporary storage, what can I do about it? I heard that if you IPL a partition, you can reduce disk usage. –Mick While an IPL can reclaim temporary storage space, it’s wise to first check out how much temporary space is being used on the system, just to see if it’s worth your while to IPL. Since iSeries, System i, and Power i machines generally run for

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• Artech Drives Productivity with ‘Evolution’ Update to GeneXus IDE

  October 27, 2009 Alex Woodie

  It can be tough to stand out in the crowded market for integrated development environment (IDE) tools. With Eclipse and Visual Studio dominating the IDE conversation, companies like Artech must work hard to maintain their established customers and market niches, let alone grow business. With last month’s launch of Genexus X Evolution 1, which re-introduces RPG generators and includes many other features aimed at Web 2.0 enablement, the company believes it’s positioned well to grow along with its customers. Artech is not your standard development tool maker. Based in Montevideo, Uruguay, the company has labored over the past few years

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• Zend Server 5.0 to Run on i OS

  October 27, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Zend Technologies is bringing another PHP product to the System i. With last week’s announcement of the start of beta testing for Zend Server 5.0, the company announced that Zend Server will be supported, for the first time, on i OS. The addition will bring what Zend calls the “most complete stack” of PHP software to the platform, and will give System i developers options beyond Zend’s existing tools. Zend has been a strong supporter of the System i server ever since the relationship between i OS and the open-source, server-side scripting language began way back in 2005. To

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• IBM Updates Host Access Client Emulator Packages

  October 27, 2009 Alex Woodie

  IBM last week unveiled the version 7 release of Host Access Client Package, the pair of emulator products that give customers the choice of accessing i OS, z/OS, and Unix applications from either a traditional Windows-based emulator (Personal Communications) or a Web-based emulator (Rational Host On-Demand). Enhancements delivered with the new version include support for Windows 7, SSL-enabled FTP, new sign-on options for i OS, a text editor, and a range of other changes. There is no shortage of options when it comes to IBM emulators. System i shops that need the full gamut of capabilities will more often than

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• IBM Augments PowerHA with Replication Solution

  October 27, 2009 Alex Woodie

  IBM filled a small gap in its high availability (HA) product lineup last week with the introduction of HA Assist for i. The new offering is a logical replication solution designed to keep certain objects, such as S/36 objects, in synch between production and backup boxes. It’s designed to be used by existing users of IBM’s hardware-based HA offering, PowerHA, and is not a generalized logical replication software offering. PowerHA is the new name IBM uses to refer to its shared storage clustering solution. The PowerHA offering enables fast failovers or role swaps thanks to its architecture, in which the

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• Quantum Launches Midrange Data De-Duplication Appliances

  October 27, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Storage giant Quantum last week launched a new line of data de-duplication appliances called the DXi6500. Based on the same core technology as its enterprise-level DXi7500 series, the new family of appliances is aimed at medium sized organizations that don’t need the extensive configurability of more complicated disk-based backup appliances, and instead are looking for a “set it and forget it” storage solution, company officials say. Quantum will start shipping the first two members of the DXi6500 family in November. This includes the DXi6510, which offers a fixed 8 TB of usable disk, and the DXi6520, which scales from 8

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• With Open Source ETL, Talend Is a Fashionable Choice

  October 27, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Better business decisions are in the forecast for Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, a Southern California college that recently implemented the Smart i Appliance, which is based on IBM‘s DB2 Web Query. A key element of the System i-based business intelligence solution is Talend‘s Integration Suite, an extract, transform, and load (ETL) tool that was updated last week to include change data capture for DB2/400, among other new features. Several years ago, Talend set out to prove that the commercial open source development model can work for ETL tools. After all, the business model was proving successful

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