• As I See It: The Artist And The Pragmatist

  December 5, 2011 Victor Rozek

  Gather around, boys and girls, Uncle Victor is going to tell you a story. And what a story it is, full of greed and generosity, cooperation and betrayal, respect and disdain, and even death. Scheherazade would be envious. OK, maybe not, but the stakes were higher for her. In any event, once upon a time, there were two little boys, and for a long time that’s about all they had in common. One was abandoned at birth and became a college dropout who collected Coke bottles for food money. The other was very much wanted, went to exclusive schools (which,

  … Read more

• Small Biz To Boost IT Spending In 2012, Says Computer Economics

  December 5, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Small businesses are like birch trees: they are the first to wander out into a new field and turn it into a forest. And as such, small business spending can be thought of as a leading indicator for economic recovery, and perhaps more importantly, create new jobs and, even more importantly for IT vendors, they also tend to invest in computers, software, and other gadgets at a faster pace than larger organizations during economic downturns. The prognosticators and pulse takers at Computer Economics just completed a survey of 157 organizations, most of them in the United States and Canada, to

  … Read more

• TSM and IBM i: Not What It Could Be

  December 5, 2011 Alex Woodie

  It is not unusual in the IBM i world to discover that IBM as a whole pays more attention and spends more time developing solutions and utilities that run on and support third-party operating systems rather than its own IBM i OS. Call it the nature of i beast. But when it comes to IBM’s strategic backup and recovery product, Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM), at least one IBM business partner wonders whether it’s time that IBM i becomes a fully supported TSM client. For years, STORServer has been in the business of packaging, selling, and supporting backup appliances based on

  … Read more

• BCD Jazzes Up Presto Web Enablement Tool with Version 3.5

  November 30, 2011 Alex Woodie

  IBM i developers who use Business Computer Design Int’l‘s Presto now have access to several nifty new features that should make it easier to customize Web pages created from green screens. The new features include a new auto complete function for fields, easier ways to work with screen values and radio buttons, enhancement to its JavaScript event manager, and some overall improvements to its graphical user interface, among other goodies. BCD originally launched Presto about three years ago to provide IBM i customers with a quick way to Web-enable green screens without modifying underlying source code–or even needing access

  … Read more

• Why Are My Batch Jobs Running at Priority 20?

  November 30, 2011 Hey, Joe

  I’m looking at my work management setup on one of my System i boxes. I noticed that all the jobs in my QBATCH subsystem are executing at run priority 20, the same priority as my interactive jobs. What’s going on, here, and how do I reset my batch jobs to run priority 50 where they belong? –Henry In three steps, here’s what I think is happening and how you can change your batch run priorities. Step 1: Your job and its routing data Each submitted job has its own routing data. Job routing data can easily be viewed through the

  … Read more

• Another IFS Interface

  November 30, 2011 Ted Holt

  The Work with Links (WRKLNK) command is underwhelming. If it were my software, I would add a lot of options to it. But since it isn’t my software, I’ll content myself by using an alternate green-screen interface that has features that are missing from WRKLNK. The alternate interface to IFS directories is the Edit File (EDTF) command. If you specify a single file name in the FILE parameter, EDTF opens the file in the editor. However, if you specify a directory name or a wildcarded name, EDTF presents a directory listing. (The Display File (DSPF) command works the same way.)

  … Read more

• Read Once, Update Many

  November 30, 2011 Ted Holt

  Using SQL rather than native I/O to query and manipulate the database is more than replacing one syntactical regulation with another. It requires a different way of thinking. Nevertheless, corresponding features do differ, and today I show one way that the SQL update differs from a native update. Consider the following scenario from a project in which I was recently involved. I needed to read a database table (physical file) from top to bottom. After I retrieve each row (record), I called one or both of two high-level language programs, using parameters to pass data values from the table and

  … Read more

• Starsoft Taps Veryant to Port IBM i COBOL to Open Systems

  November 29, 2011 Alex Woodie

  Starsoft, an Israel-based developer of software for the insurance and financial services industries, is using Veryant technology to help it migrate its COBOL applications to Java and open systems, and to modernize the interfaces, Veryant announced last week. The move will help Starsoft offer solutions that run on server platforms other than IBM i, and bring other benefits, the company says. For more than 20 years, Starsoft has used COBOL and IBM i technologies to develop applications that automate key business processes for companies in the insurance and financial services industries, including policy production, underwriting, claims, collections, commissions, and

  … Read more

• Under Armour Expands Use of ManH’s WMS

  November 29, 2011 Alex Woodie

  Clothes manufacturer Under Armour has adopted Manhattan Associates‘ IBM i-based warehouse management system (WMS) to use in its European operations, the software vendor announced yesterday. Under Armour first implemented Manhattan Associate’s best-of-breed Warehouse Management for IBM i application in 2006 to replace a previous warehousing system that wasn’t working out. The applications (including Extended Enterprise Management and Slotting Optimization) have proven critical to Under Armour’s warehousing operations in Maryland and California. As Under Armour was getting ready to move its European supply chain hub to a new 3PL-run fulfillment center in Venlo, the Netherlands, the company decided to standardize

  … Read more

• Infor to Move HQ to NYC

  November 29, 2011 Alex Woodie

  Next summer, Infor will move its global headquarters from near Atlanta, Georgia, to New York City, the company announced last week. Infor says the move was based in part on the large amount of technology talent in the “Silicon Alley,” and that it plans to hire and house more software engineers and graphic designers in its new location. Infor will move its headquarters from the Atlanta suburb of Alpharetta to the island of Manhattan. It will occupy an office at 641 Avenue of the Americas that features an open, loft-style design that “will fuel product innovation by providing an environment

  … Read more

Previous Articles Next Articles