• U.S. Unemployment Rate Inches Down, IT Sector Adds Jobs

  November 7, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The job situation in the United States has improved in the past three months, but the growth in the workforce is still not sufficient to keep up with population growth, much less make much of a dent in the unemployment rate, which remains stubbornly at high levels. On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly snapshot of the American workforce based on surveys of employers and of the unemployment rate based on surveys of households. The household data showed that the unemployment rate ticked down one measly tenth of a point, to 9 percent by the end of

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• TUG Night School Matches Enthusiasm with Capability

  November 7, 2011 Dan Burger

  At the end of another grind-it-out day in the IT department, several of the RPG programmers were having a conversation. One mentioned that he had to go to school that evening and he wasn’t really looking forward to it. The others, sensing an opportunity to give him a hard time, asked why he dreaded going to school. “Well, I’m tired and I’d much rather go home and crash,” the nearly truant night school student said. “Those aren’t good reasons,” the others shot back. “So why don’t you guys give me some good reasons why I should go?” the first guy

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• Flexera to Tag Apps on IBM i for Usage Monitoring, License Audits

  November 7, 2011 Alex Woodie

  Flexera Software, the developer of the InstallShield and InstallAnywhere utilities that guide software installations on practically every PC and server on the planet–including those running IBM i–is ramping up a new software tagging initiative. The plan involves embedding XML-based software tags into the applications installed with Flexera’s utilities and then providing software asset management tools to enable customers to more effectively track their application usage and cope with vendor licensing audits. There are two arguments in favor of software identification (SWID) tags: one from the organizations that buy and use software and the other from the vendors that develop

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• Mad Dog 21/21: ARMs To Fare Well

  November 7, 2011 Hesh Wiener

  Steve Jobs was such a captivating promoter of inventions that his products reshaped our thinking, defining or redefining products we once thought we fully understood. At his best, Jobs was almost too good. If Picasso were God all fish would be flounders. But the computer industry, like nature, fosters diversity. Apple‘s smart clients, the iPhone and iPad, are iconic devices built around systems-on-a-chip (SoCs), but they are not the only important applications of this technology. Servers, too, can be made from compact, efficient, and inexpensive SoCs. And they will prove to be exceedingly disruptive. Two examples that have been

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• Profits Boom As Magic Software Snaps Up BluePhoenix AppBuilder Biz

  November 7, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Earlier this year, when IBM i development tool maker Magic Software Enterprises turned in some explosively growing financials, we commented that the company, which was flush with cash, might soon be on the prowl for acquisitions because of that hoard. And indeed it was. Last week, Magic Software shelled out $17 million to acquire the AppBuilder product line and customer base from BluePhoenix Solutions. While it is perceived as being mostly a vendor of IBM mainframe development tools, BluePhoenix sells tools that work on other platforms. The AppBuilder workbench is a code generator that can spit out code for

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• 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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