• JD Edwards Solution Edition Fights Oracle

  November 7, 2011 Dan Burger

  David Ziolkowski has a unique view of the IBM i installed base. He works almost exclusively with companies running the JD Edwards ERP software. His employer, Sirius Computer Solutions, is IBM‘s largest business partner in the reseller channel. His clients are deeply entrenched in their IBM i environments, but because of Oracle‘s ownership of JD Edwards, they are caught in the crossfire of two competitors trying to some extent to be cooperative. To hear Ziolkowski tell it, Oracle’s chances of making inroads to the IBM i users he works with are slim. His confidence is rooted in

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• Fun With IBM i Software Pricing

  November 7, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Last week, as I was building the Power 7 motor comparison monster table to see how the pricing on the new Power7 Gen 2 machines, announced on October 12, stacked up to the prior Gen 1 machines, I kept thinking about the sticker shock that comes with that IBM i 7.1 license fee. No matter how you try to massage it or rationalize it, IBM i represents somewhere between 65 percent to 85 percent of the cost of a base configuration of activated processors and systems software running on it. Even when you add in memory, storage, and other peripherals

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• Adobe Flash Builder for the iSeries Programmer, Part 3

  November 4, 2011 Shannon O'Donnell

  NOTE: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. In my previous articles in this series, I showed you how to use Flash Builder to create a customer information GUI. You learned how to add visual components such as input text boxes, drop down lists, and even a tab navigator control. In this article, I will show you how to make your GUI into a server client that talks to Websphere Application Server Express running on your iSeries, and I will show you how to exchange data with the iSeries DB2/400 database. I will also demonstrate how

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• Admin Alert: What To Do with Vendor Profiles During an Audit, PLUS Two Other Great Features

  November 2, 2011 Joe Hertvik

  System auditors generally don’t like i OS vendor-supplied profiles. You know, those user profiles that vendors require for software installation, ownership, or running special jobs. Some vendors even require you to give these profiles security officer (*SECOFR) or security administrator (*SECADM) authority. This can create audit points because auditors generally don’t like excessive security officer-enabled profiles on the system. Here are two strategies for handling this situation. What Is a Vendor-Supplied User Profile? A vendor-supplied user profile is any profile that exists on your i OS system in order to load software objects, or run vendor programs. It may also

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• Adaptable Data Areas

  November 2, 2011 Ted Holt

  If you’ve worked in IT for more than 15 minutes, you’ve undoubtedly been asked, “How hard would it be to. . . ?” The people who depend on the systems we support are constantly thinking of new and better ways to make information systems more closely resemble the reality of business. Every little thing you can do to ease the effort to modify software is worth doing. Here are two extremely simple ways to reduce the amount of effort required to change the length of a character data area. Consider a data area, FacInfo (Facility Info), that contains one item

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• Debugging Authority Failures, Part 3

  November 2, 2011 Patrick Botz

  Authority failures are the result of attempts (i.e., actions) to access objects to which a user profile is not authorized. Several IBM i features, such as job logs and QHIST, contain some authority failure information. However, the system audit journal has all the information you need, and the OS provides easy-to-use tools to help you quickly find it. These tools are the audit configuration system values, the CPYAUDJRNE command, and the STRSQL command. Audit System Values To begin auditing authority failures, configure three system values: QAUDCTL, QAUDLVL, and QAUDLVL2. QAUDCTL is an on/off switch for auditing specific objects, specific user

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• Camouflage Updates Data Masking Software

  November 1, 2011 Alex Woodie

  Camouflage Software is providing customers with new ways of accessing its data masking functionality–including via API and as a component of an ETL process–with the version 4.2 release of its eponymous Camouflage Data Masking Solution. Camouflage Software has specialized in data masking since it was called in by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 2001 to assist with the testing of a PeopleSoft application. The Mounties flatly refused to hand over its internal database to test the new application against it, as it would have been a major security breach. Instead, it spent a lot of time and money altering

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• Sensage Touts Growth of SEIM Sales

  November 1, 2011 Alex Woodie

  Sensage, a developer of security information and event management (SEIM) solutions, says it had a very good third quarter, with a 100 percent increase in sale bookings over the previous quarter, and a 100 percent increase in the number of large deals as well. Sensage develops SEIM and log management software that helps organizations spot suspicious activity occurring across their IT infrastructure. The company, which can source IBM i security data through one of its 250-plus log adapters, stores data in a patented columnar database that it says scale into the petabyte range. The Redwood Shores, California, company attributes

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• JDA Says Big Deals Drive Record Q3 Results

  November 1, 2011 Alex Woodie

  JDA Software Group, which develops enterprise software for large retailers that runs on IBM i and other platforms, set records for its third quarter revenue and earnings, the company said last week. The logistics software company recorded revenue of $171.6 million for its quarter ended September 30, an 8 percent increase from last year, and net income of $16.8 million, a 100 percent increase. The third quarter was expected to be really good as the result of sales pipeline that JDA three months ago said appeared to be “uncharacteristically strong” at the end of a rotten second quarter, which

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• Ryobi Die Casting Taps Solarsoft for ERP

  November 1, 2011 Alex Woodie

  Ryobi Die Casting will implement an IBM i-based ERP system from Solarsoft, the vendor announced recently. The manufacturer will implement iVP across its three plants in Indiana and one plant in Mexico. Ryobi Die Casting Inc. (USA) manufactures a range of high pressure aluminum die castings for transmission cases and housings, cast engine blocks, steering housings, and structural parts for vehicles. The company, which is a tier-one supplier to the automotive OEMs, is based in Shelbyville, Indiana, where it operates a machining facility and two die casting plants. It also operates a die casting plant and a machining facility

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