The Four Hundred Archives - Page 898 of 1515

As I See It: The Future in Parallel

September 14, 2009 Victor Rozek

Ours is a mixed marriage. I am PC and my wife is Mac. We are the Yang and Yin of personal computing. She has Mac OS X, I have Windows XP. She has iPhoto, I have HP Photo. She has iChat, iMovie, iDVD, iCal, iSync, and iTunes, I have no tunes and a bunch of other stuff I seldom use. She has Steve Jobs, I have Bill Gates; which is to say she has cool and I have nerd. She has a virus free computer, I have multiple layers of security software and in spite of daily updates and scans,

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IBM Gets Less Restrictive with Power ISV Rebates

September 14, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Well, that deal apparently didn’t go down well with the customers. Back at the end of June, IBM announced a rebate deal in conjunction with 88 of its independent software vendor partners who make software that runs on various operating systems on its Power Systems line, and it was so strict about greenfield installations of the software that it has had to back off on that restriction.

I told you all about the original Power Systems First-in-Location Rebate offering here in the July 13 issue of The Four Hundred, which was detailed in announcement letter 309-546. As I

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COMMON RiPS: A Good Idea Needing a Better Acronym

September 14, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

The idea is sound. No question about it. COMMON, the AS/400 midrange user group that is now billing itself as The Power Systems User Group, is looking for people who have retired from their coding and administration jobs at i shops who nonetheless can contribute to and participate in the midrange community by staying active with COMMON and mentoring those whippersnappers who still need some schooling.

But calling them RiPs? That’s a bit of gallows humor, isn’t it?

A RiP, you will learn from this COMMON Web page, is short for Retired i Professional, which is distinct from

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EU Haunts Oracle-Sun, Oracle Taunts IBM

September 14, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

While The Four Hundred was on summer hiatus, the European Union’s antitrust regulators threw a spanner into the works of Oracle‘s $7.4 billion proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems. And even though Sun has stopped talking to the press about anything, Oracle is starting to taunt IBM about how the future Sparc product line is gonna whip Power Systems iron on the TPC-C benchmark test and how Oracle is committed to the Sparc platform.

Back in July, Sun’s shareholders voted to approve the Oracle acquisition of Sun, which should cost the company a little more than $5 billion

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IBM Mothballs Older Versions of Host Integration Server

September 14, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

If you are one of the many shops using a relatively old release of IBM‘s Host Integration Server to modernize your 5250 or 3270 green screens and give them zippy Web screens, then you had better get ready to upgrade to a new version or start looking at alternative products.

Last week, in announcement letter 909-222, IBM said that WebSphere Host Integration Server 3.0 and 3.1 for iSeries or for multiple platforms, HIS Intranet Version 4.0 and 4.1 for iSeries or Multiplatforms, and Version 5.0 of HIS for System i or multiplatforms would all see their technical support

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Vendors Go Virtual with Annual User Conferences

September 14, 2009 Alex Woodie

Poor economic conditions are leading software companies to virtual user conferences hosted on the Internet as an inexpensive replacement for the traditional “in person” user conferences. System i software vendors Infor and VAI are the latest to replace physical get-togethers with virtual events, slated for October. But some organizations, including COMMON and Kronos, say virtual conferences can’t deliver the same level of education and networking opportunities and will therefore continue to host physical conferences.

Now in its second year, the global economic recession has hit business travel hard. Companies have reduced or eliminated travel budgets, which has caused attendance

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Greater Responsibility a Necessary Part of Vlok’s Vision

September 14, 2009 Dan Burger

The big highways can only get you so far. Sometimes a route that is off the beaten path is required. Such a plan makes some people nervous. Nonetheless, it is often a good idea. More than that, it actually makes sense in many ways.

Do you think company CEOs are different than anyone else in this regard? A quick chat with Nicolaas Vlok, president and CEO of Vision Solutions, may change your mind. Vlok has become much more interested in an off-the-beaten-path approach since becoming involved with a charity called Children in the Wilderness.

Vlok only learned about

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Use the Dup Key in Subfiles

September 2, 2009 Hey, Ted

I hope you don’t mind another question about the “old” stuff. How do I program for the Dup key in a data entry subfile?

–David

This is a good technique to know, David, and it’s not hard to do.

Let’s start with a simple subfile of 10 records per page. There are three input fields: a date; a customer number; and an amount. Here’s the DDS:

A                                      DSPSIZ(24 80 *DS3)
A                                      INDARA
A          R SFL                       SFL
A            SDATE          6S 0I  8  6DUP(31)
A            SCUST          8A  I  8 16DUP(32)
A            SAMOUNT        7Y 3I  8 30DUP(33)
A          R CTL                       SFLCTL(SFL)
A                                      SFLSIZ(12)

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An Overview of User-Defined Types in DB2 for i

September 2, 2009 Michael Sansoterra

UDTs or User-Defined Types (also known as distinct types) allow SQL developers to implement their own data types. For example, if a database contains many tables that each have one or more columns representing a general ledger account number defined as VARCHAR(30), a suitable UDT can be defined as follows:

Create Type My_Schema/GL_ACCOUNT_NUMBER As VarChar(30) CCSID 37
With Comparisons

In DB2 for i, implementing UDTs is currently limited to deriving a new data type from an existing DB2 built-in data type. This tip will briefly explore UDTs, how they can be used in modern databases, potential pitfalls, and how UDTs

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Admin Alert: The Road to Live CBU Fail Over, Part 1

September 2, 2009 Joe Hertvik

One of the companies I work with performed its first live Capacity BackUp (CBU) switch test last month, where they switched over and used their CBU system as their live production system for several days. In the next few issues, I’ll use their experience in prepping for a live switch as a possible guide for others trying to ensure that their CBU can substitute for a live system.

CBU 101: Understanding the CBU

A CBU is an i, System i, or iSeries machine that is an exact duplicate of a live production system. CBUs generally contain the same amount of

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