Planet i

The RPG Café is now open for business. Modeled on the EGL Café and located in the same general area, the RPG Café provides a place for the RPG community to gather and share experiences and serve (we hope) as a single point of departure for news about RPG and related tools. There you’ll not [...]

¬For years, watching TV has involved analog signals and cathode ray tube (CRT) sets. The signal is made of continually varying radio waves that the TV translates into a picture and sound. An analog signal can reach a person's TV over the air, through a cable or via satellite. Digital signals, like the ones from DVD players, are converted to analog when played on traditional TVs.
This system has worked pretty well for a long time, but it has some limitations:
• Conventional CRT sets display around 480 visible lines of pixels. Broadcasters have been sending signals that work well with this resolution for years, and they can't fit enough resolution to fill a huge television into the analog signal.
• Analog pictures are interlaced -- a CRT's electron gun paints only half the lines for each pass down the screen. On some TVs, interlacing makes the picture flicker.
• Converting video to analog format lowers its quality.

Broadcasting is currently changing to digital television (DTV). A digital signal transmits the information for video and sound as ones and zeros instead of as a wave. For over-the-air broadcasting, DTV will generally use the UHF portion of the radio spectrum with a 6 MHz bandwidth, just like analog TV signals do.
DTV has several advantages:
• The picture, even when displayed on a small TV, is better quality.
• A digital signal can support a higher resolution, so the picture will still look good when shown on a larger TV screen.
• The video can be progressive rather than interlaced -- the screen shows the entire picture for every frame instead of every other line of pixels.
• TV stations can broadcast several signals using the same bandwidth. This is called multicasting.
• If broadcasters choose to, they can include interactive content or additional information with the DTV signal.

HDTV is simply the highest of all the DTV standards. The lowest quality digital format in HDTV is about the same as the highest quality an analog TV can display. But whether you see a high-definition picture and hear the accompanying Dolby Digital® sound depends on two things. First, the station has to be broadcasting a high-definition signal. Second, you have to have the right equipment to receive and view it.

We have created a new collection engine for Job Queue data which has been integrated into the next version of RAP. This will allow the users of RAP to start data collection on a source system for the job queues attached to a particular subsystem and see the job information on the target system. [...]

Businesses with 100 to 1,000 employees may want to take a look at a free security assessment tool that has been released by the Aberdeen Group and IBM. A sample report representing what you can expect to get after filling out the survey is provided. The report shows how your ...

The vertical scroll bar gets shorter as the used area of a sheet grows larger, making it inconvenient to use.

Reducing the size of the used area also reduces the size of the workbook.

To reduce the used area:

1. Find the last cell that contains data in the sheet.

2. Delete all rows after this cell, as well as the columns to the right of the cell that do not contain data.

3. Press Ctrl+S to save the file. The address of the last cell in the used area is updated when the file is saved.

There's an old adage that says a picture is worth a thousand words. SkyView Partners is betting that a picture--namely, a graphical user interface (GUI)--is worth much, much more than that to the IT managers tasked with maintaining regulatory compliance in System i servers. To that end, SkyView yesterday started shipping Policy Minder 1.4, which includes a new Web-based GUI that should make it much easier to get one or more i OS servers into compliance, and to keep them there.

Gillani recently announced the pending availability of its iDistribute suite of enterprise applications on IBM's Power Systems server. With its suite of financials and supply chain management software running across the Power Systems' three operating systems--i, AIX, and Linux--Gillani says it's poised to give the big ERP vendors a run for their money.

Hotels and resort operators that use the Stratton Warren System (SWS) to manage their supplies will gain some new tricks for spotting and eliminating wasteful spending with version SWS 8.0, which was announced by Agilysys last week. Support for EDI, new budgeting capabilities, and dashboard applications combine to help the casino resorts and large hotels that use SWS to weather the economic downturn.

Seagull Software took a look back at its System i roots, and decided that it's still a good place to be. As a result, you can expect to hear more System i-related news from Seagull, including a new integration workbench that plugs into the Eclipse framework that will be launched in the months ahead, according to the company.

The slumping economy has dropped Las Vegas tourism 10 percent, a decline not seen since 9/11, but that isn't stopping the gambling industry from showing off the latest and greatest technology at the Global Gaming Expo, which is being held today through Thursday in Sin City. The big dog of the market, Bally Technologies, will also be flashing some new goods, including a new release of its i OS-based casino management software, a new command and control center, and, of course, lots and lots of new slot machines.

RJS Software recently introduced a new release of the Windows-based version of WebDocs, a document management solution that can help to manage output from Windows as well as System i applications. Customers adopting the new version will see more powerful searches, easier integration with ERP systems, and a cleaner user interface, among other enhancements, RJS says.

LANSA yesterday unveiled a new white paper that seeks to address how System i shops can build an enterprise application architecture that works in concert with software from Microsoft. A properly conceived architecture, LANSA argues, can accelerate the selection of tools to automate application development, and enable System i organizations to adapt their IT systems more quickly and efficiently.

ClarkWestern Building Systems, a manufacturer of lath and steel framing systems, is migrating ERP systems. As a result, it will rely on Inovis' managed services offering to run its i OS-based EDI system, Inovis announced recently.

GroundWork last week announced the pre-release of GroundWork Monitor Community Edition 5.3, a new version of the company's open source systems management software that works with all major operating systems, including IBM i. With version 5.3, the company is bringing together the latest releases of many of the open source components that make up its GroundWork suite, and threatening the hegemony of the Big Four.

Curious about what undiscovered IT assets might be lurking in your data center, and what relationship they have with the systems you work with everyday? Tideway Systems, a provider of application dependency mapping (ADM) software, yesterday announced the beta for Foundation Community Edition, a new product aimed at helping small and mid size shops better understand their systems.

In this article, we will see how AJAX works by looking at a simple example of using AJAX to retrieve the description (from the server) for a code entered on a Web page.

I'm trying to set up a stored procedure on our iSeries that can change the server connection to whatever the calling program needs before it runs its query. Your article, Using DRDA to Execute SQL Statements on Another iSeries, seems to address the issue of running SQL statements on a remote iSeries.

I was recently reviewing i5/OS performance data when I spotted an analysis message that said I should Separate batch from interactive jobs. This prompted me to investigate where batch jobs can intersect with interactive jobs and why it's bad to run the two of them together in the same subsystem. Here's what I discovered and what you can do if your batch work starts contaminating your interactive subsystem.

As I told you a few weeks ago, IBM is apparently cooking up a server called the Smart Cube that is based on its Power 520 hardware, the i 6.1 or a kicker operating system, and a stack of application software. This machine, which may have been under development as the

Last week, I was talking to a downstream Power Systems reseller, one of the guys with a few hundred customers that he tends to with new systems, upgrades, software configuration, application tuning, and so on, to make his daily bread. By the sweat of his browser, as it were. And guess what he told me? He had no System i or Power Systems i deals at all in the pipeline for the remainder of the fourth quarter. None. Nadda. Zilch. Zip.

According to a posting on the Midrange-L mailing list, where a lot of the AS/400 intelligentsia hang out to talk and gripe, IBM apparently had some layoffs at the Rochester, Minnesota, home of the AS/400 and its successors. And, if what long-time and staunch AS/400 enthusiast Neil Palmer said in the post is true, the chief architect of what used to be called the System i until last year is getting ready to leave the building.

In the world of Jewish mysticism, there is a concept of demonic possession by a creature called a dybbuk. A dybbuk is basically a soul that has somehow broken free of its original body and for one or another reason becomes a spiritual squatter in the body and mind of a living person. IBM is big on this idea, putting the soul of a System i into the body of a System p. It is also doing well with a similar soul transplant that gives a mainframe life on a processor complex that bears some resemblance to a Power architecture within the z10 machines.

IBM Power Systems head honcho Ross Mauri sat down for a one-hour 'fireside' chat with members of the i community last week. The GM fielded a variety of questions, ranging from upcoming disk- and SAN-related enhancements for i-based blades (expected in 2009) to what are the platform's hottest applications (virtualization and anything written in MySQL/PHP). Mauri was even asked to name his favorite operating system: IBM i, Linux, or AIX? The answer may surprise you. . . . Then again, it may not.

You can hear air leaking out of the tire, but it's not flat yet. That's how I view the most recent IT spending forecast by the analysts at IDC. We might be getting close to pulling over to the side of the road and putting on the spare, but, heck, we don't even know with any certainty whether the spare has any air in it. So let's keep driving on this one and see how far we get. We'll just drive a little slower.

It took a little bit longer than expected, perhaps, but IBM has finally delivered its Active Energy Manager plug-in for its Systems Director system management tool. The tool can be used to monitor power consumption and thermal conditions of IBM and non-IBM systems, as well as capping the power that can be used on selected server models.

IT market researcher Aberdeen Group and IBM have teamed up to offer midrange IT shops a survey-driven security assessment tool to help them figure out how secure their IT assets are.

BluePhoenix Solutions, a maker of legacy application modernization tools for midrange and mainframe platforms, reported its financial results for the third quarter of 2008 last week, and said that its revenues and profits were adversely impacted by whipsawing currency exchange rates between its Israeli home market and the North American and European countries where it does a lot of its business.

Just after the presidential election two weeks ago, IBM's president, chief executive officer, and chairman, Sam Palmisano, gave a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. And for once, he did something you do not see every day--or even every year--from the head honcho at Big Blue: He spoke his mind about the issues facing the country and the world.

Ever wonder what happened to one an object that is missing on a system? If not too much time has elapsed, you might be able to track what happened to that object (or set of objects) by viewing the Security Audit journal on the local system (provided you have access to the journal and the Audit Journal is running). Enter the following command: DSPAUDJRNE ENTTYP(DO) OUTPUT(*PRINT) JRNRCV(*

Last Friday I was presenting at the Wisconsin user group (WMCPA) on various RDi related topics. It was their all day fall conference and it went really well IMHO. Here are a few random thoughts from the day.

There is a mental shift moving from the green screen "single task" based tools to the "multi-task" based RSE environment. I'm not just talking about the learning curve of learning a new tool, it's more about the mental shift of really understanding how the new tool works.

That's a bit abstract, so let me try to make it more concrete with an example. Recently I've gotten the following question from 3 different people: "Can I run a CL command while editing in the RSE?" The assumption seems to be that, while the editor is open, you can't do anything else. This is what I'm referring to as the single task mode (yes, I know SEU allows you to run a CL command, but that takes over the editor while you are doing it). Another example: while you are debugging on the green screen you can't also be editing code unless you open multiple emulator sessions.

In the RSE you can do most things at the same time. You can run CL commands and work with your objects and members while editing, you can edit multiple members at the same time, you can be debugging one or more programs in the debug perspective and then switch to the RSE to do some other things, then switch back and continue debugging. You can use the RSE in a single-task mode, but over time you make the mental shift and really start leveraging this power. This is not something that can be taught, it just comes with time and experience.

Second observation: always find out the true problem before giving an answer. There are many ways to do things in the RSE, you just need to find the way that best solves your problem. I've written about this before, specifically about using spool files to find compile errors and cross reference information vs. using the Error List and Outline view.

I came across another case of this while running the open lab. A woman in the class was trying to get F1 help for an RPG built in function, but when you press F1 on a BIF it takes you to the help for the opcode (a possible defect?) So I embarked on showing her how she could find the help page that lists the BIFs and bookmark it so she could always jump back to it quickly. She seem okay with this, but not overly thrilled.

A few minutes later she mentioned that she only needed the help because she can never remember what parameters some of the BIFs require and the order they are expected. Ahhhh! What she really needed was the content assist for the BIF which shows you the parameters and a small help blurb. When you select the BIF from the content assist list it even puts up a hover box showing the parameters until you have them all entered in. This got the excited response I was hoping for.

My last observation is more of a comment. Jim Buck, who is the president of the user group, is also a teacher at Gateway Technical College which has an IT - Programmer/Analyst programthat teaches System i and RPG programming. Very cool!

AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript And XML. AJAX is a type of programming made popular in 2005 by Google (with Google Suggest). AJAX is not a new programming language, but a new way to use existing standards. With AJAX you can create better, faster, and more user-friendly web applications. AJAX is based on JavaScript and HTTP requests.
AJAX, is a group of interrelated web development techniques used for creating interactive web applications or rich Internet applications. With Ajax, web applications can retrieve data from the server asynchronously in the background without interfering with the display and behavior of the existing page.
Advantages
• In many cases, the pages on a website consist of much content that is common between them. Using traditional methods, that content would have to be reloaded on every request. However, using Ajax, a web application can request only the content that needs to be updated, thus drastically reducing bandwidth usage and load time.
• The use of asynchronous requests allows the client's Web browser UI to be more interactive and to respond quickly to inputs, and sections of pages can also be reloaded individually. Users may perceive the application to be faster or more responsive, even if the application has not changed on the server side.
• The use of Ajax can reduce connections to the server, since scripts and style sheets only have to be requested once.

There is a new section in the Tips and Questions area of the forums dedicated to Open Source software on IBM i.  Post your questions and answers for the community.

Justin Porter was recently interviewed in System i News.

http://systeminetwork.com/article/fresh-i-justin-porter-november-2008

Could it be that the tide has turned and that at long last the majority of IBM i users are actually taking concrete steps to...

Draft Redbook, last updated: Tue, 18 Nov 2008

- Understand the role of DB2 for z/OS in SOA
- Develop and test Web services with Data Studio
- Utilize WebSphere DataPower Appliance

Flexibility in business has become equal in importance with operational efficiency.

Redpaper, published: Tue, 18 Nov 2008

The Power Systems™ (i) Benchmark Center used IBM® Rational® Performance Tester (RPT) to test Oracle® ’s JD Edwards® EnterpriseOne application.

A certificate or other document that is completed immediately prior to a new or modified process being accepted into the live environment for business use. It provides a degree of confidence that all required activities have been undertaken to ensure that the service is capable of being delivered to the process owner's satisfaction.

Incomplete tasks should be recorded here as should the degree of risk to which these shortcomings are now exposing the business. Based upon that information, the decision can be taken as to whether the new or changed process should be released into the live environment.

Automated Clearing House (ACH) is the name of an electronic network for financial transactions in the United States. ACH processes large volumes of both credit and debit transactions which are originated in batches.

ACH credit transfers include direct deposit payroll and vendor payments. ACH direct debit transfers include consumer payments on insurance premiums, mortgage loans, and other kinds of bills. Businesses are also increasingly using ACH to collect from customers online, rather than accepting credit or debit cards.
Uses of the ACH payment system
• Debit card transactions
• Direct deposit of payroll, Social Security and other government benefits, and tax refunds
• Direct debit payment of consumer bills such as mortgages, loans, utility bills, and insurance premiums, rents, and any other regular payment.
• Business-to-business (B2B) payments
• E-commerce payments
• Federal, state, and local tax payments
• Bank Treasury management departments sell this service to business and government customers

We have been usin API’s to gather information for sometime in our products so we have had to work out how to use quite a number with some interesting results! To say the manuals are hard to understand is only part of the problem, even reading through the header files trying to determin exactly [...]

It’s not going to be easy to get throught this hard economic time. Sadly SUN was not in a position I think to survive it anyway. They have been on the bubble for years. I wish all the empoyees who got thier walking papers good luck, there are jobs out there you just have to be creative.

LINK :: Sun to lay off 6000 Workers

Welcome to the RDi Team Blog!

Here the members of the RDi development team will chat about ways to use RDi, the kinds of things that are happening to RDi, and perhaps even give some heads up on the kinds of features we would like to include.

Personally, I work on two aspect of RDi, the underlying OpenRSE support as an Eclipse project committer and in the i Project (formerly i5/OS Project) support where I'm the team lead. Other who will be contributing to this blog (see their names at the right) are all deeply involved in the development of RDi, RTCi, and the RPG compiler.

We hope you enjoy the discussion.

Dave Dykstal

By default, the WRKACTJOB screen shows commands at the top of the screen, but when you press F21, these commands are hidden and you will see six additional jobs on the screen. Disclaimer: Vision Solutions makes every effort to provide accurate system management information and programming code; however the company cannot be held liable for the accuracy of information nor its compatibility in

SkyView Partners has announced a new release of its Policy Minder software for IBM i and i5/OS. It includes a new graphical user interface (GUI) to help users in doing security policy compliance. "The power of Policy Minder has really been harnessed by the enhanced interface as it provides a new ...

Frank Soltis, who is considered the father of the AS/400 and its various sequels, will reportedly be leaving IBM at the end of this year. He has been with IBM for about 40 years and has penned two books on the platform: Inside the AS/400 back in 1997, and Fortress Rochester: ...

Ross Mauri, the general manager of IBM Power Systems, held forth at a fireside chat at iSociety earlier this week. The full transcript of the chat is worth reading. Hat tip to David Vasta for the heads-up. Here are a few excerpts of the transcript. On early feedback of System i ...

A buffer pool is an area of storage in memory into which database pages (containing table rows or index entries) are temporarily read and changed. The purpose of the buffer pool is to improve database system performance. Data can be accessed much faster from memory than from a disk. Therefore, the fewer times the database manager needs to read from or write to a disk, the better the performance. The configuration of one or more buffer pools is the single most important tuning area, since it is here that most of the data manipulation takes place for applications connected to the database (excluding large objects and long field data).

By default, applications use the buffer pool called IBMDEFAULTBP, which is created when the database is created. The DB2 database configuration parameter BUFFPAGE controls the size of a buffer pool when the value of NPAGES is -1 for that buffer pool in the SYSCAT.BUFFERPOOLS catalog table. Otherwise the BUFFPAGE parameter is ignored, and the buffer pool is created with the number of pages specified by the NPAGES parameter.

There is a YiPs Conference Call scheduled tomorrow (Thurs. Nov. 13th) @ noon CST. 

The call in information can be found in the Conference Calls section of the Forums.

On the agenda for the call:

• Website Updates and New Content
• Plans for upcoming COMMON Conference in Reno, NV

Please join us to discuss the direction of the group.

Ross Mauri is the new POWER SYSTEM Exec at IBM over all the POWER SYSTEMS. iSociety held a fireside chat with him to find out how things are going at IBM with the new single hardware platform, POWER!

Here is the Transcript @ iSociety

Frank Soltis, the father of the IBM AS/400 in 1988, is rumored to not be working at IBM anymore. Let go or whatever, it’s hard news for a person like me to stomach. It’s pretty sad really. Frank has always been that rock star engineer who quantified the IBM i. He was the corner stone and in person a super nice guy.

There is think Thread in the Midrange.com Site and it’s an opinion, one which I agree with parts of but is not my writting.

While I don’t have anymore details than that I can’t seem to find anything further. Seems I am kind of breaking news here. So if anyone has any details and would like to share them I am going to be putting out feelers for what has happened to Frank. He’s not going to be at IBM anymore which scares me as an IBM i person, but maybe IBM is going to fix the problems with marketing now that he is gone….probabaly not.

More to come….

Either while reading an email message, or when it is selected in a folder/view, choose "Actions - Add Recipients - to new Group in Address Book".




You will be presented with the following dialog box where you enter the group's name, type (normally you just leave this as Mail only), description, and select/de-select with members you want the group to contain.




When you press OK, Lotus Notes will automatically create a new mailing group (some people call them distribution lists) in your Personal Address Book, which you can access from the "Groups" view.



Now when creating an email or calendar entry, you can simply enter the group name instead of typing in all the names individually. For example, if I named the group above "IBM Executive Team", then I could enter than in the To field...




and when I press F9 to refresh the document, the group name will be replaced with the names of the members.

If you happen to dabble with any sort of Web development (or even if you don't), you have probably heard of Asynchronous JavaScript and Extensible Mark-up Language (XML)--better known as AJAX.

I am coding a .NET reporting application. The new .NET reports need to look like the old iSeries reports with the user name at the top. I am using the DB2 managed provider to connect to the data files.

On behalf of Admin Alert reader Jean-Pierre, I recently challenged my readers to a contest to pimp my PC5250 font size in a consistent and validly cool manner. A number of readers responded and they solved Jean-Pierre's problem, winning themselves no-prizes in the bargain. Here's how our most recent challenge came about and how it was solved.

Last week, we had the pleasure of inducting some new members into the RSE fan club. We taught RSE (the Remote System Explorer in WDSC...

Draft Redpaper, last updated: Tue, 11 Nov 2008

- PAPI installation and usage
- Tools to visualize and analyze your performance data
- I/O node and GPFS performance tuning

This IBM® Redpaper publication is one in a series of IBM documents written specifically for the IBM System Blue Gene/P Solution.

I’m heading to Wisconsin to present at the Winsonsin Midrange Computer Professional Association (WMCPA)’s Fall Conference. I’ll be covering 3 presentations (Customizing the RSE, Debugging, and What’s New in RDi 7.1 and WDSC 7.0) and one open lab (Using RSE, Customizing RSE, and Working offline with projects). These are standard presentations I have given before, but [...]

1. An independent retailer that purchases products and services from a cooperative wholesaler.

2. Independent retailer who affiliates with other independent retailers under a common trade name for merchandising purposes. A group of such independent retailers will advertise under this common trade name.

Well known examples of affiliated groups are SUPERVALU, Certified Grocers of California and Independent Grocers Association in the United States.

Another national election came and went last week, leading to the election of new leaders and the passage of new laws. While the promise of change from President-elect Barack Obama made the biggest headlines, businesses around the country should not overlook the many tax increases (or even decreases) approved at the state, county, city, and special-district level. Hand coding these changes directly into an ERP or accounting system can be a daunting task, but thanks to Independent Systems, System i shops can automate the calculations and remittance, and keep the taxman at bay.

Jinfonet Software yesterday announced the general availability JReport 9, a new version of the Java-based business intelligence tool that's designed to integrate directly into Web applications. Improvements to JReport's memory utilization have boosted its performance by at least 40 percent, according to Jinfonet, while enhancements to its user interface, support for JSR168, and several dozen other new features round out the release.

It will be easier to produce highly tailored Excel spreadsheets loaded with i5/OS data using the latest release of the SpoolFlex output management system unveiled by DRV Technologies last week. SpoolFlex 4.2 brings new options for specifying how i5/OS data will appear when converted to the XLS format, including font, size, justification, and even color highlighting of rows and cells. The new release also makes it easier to configure SpoolFlex's e-mail distribution feature on System i servers.

Informatica is having success selling data integration tools and services to customers and providers of software as a service (SaaS) and cloud computing services. Last week the Silicon Valley outfit revealed that more than 10 percent of its OEM partners are cloud computing providers. The company also unveiled its latest cloud-based offering for Salesforce.com customers, and launched a new training and certification program around the data quality discipline.

Brainware, a young company that makes document scanning and content management software, has partnered with Fujitsu to sell pre-integrated data capture solutions based on Fujitsu's scanning hardware and Brainware's software, the companies announced last week.

Wavelink, a developer of software for mobile devices, rolled out a new product last week that ensures only authorized users can connect mobile devices to corporate radio frequency (RF) networks. Called the Avalanche Certificate Manager, the new product will help prevent hackers from stealing corporate assets from rouge devices, while giving companies the user-level customization they need.

Partners PowerTech and LogRhythm are teaming up this Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. ET to offer two free Webinars on System i log management for financial institutions.

Lawson Software last week rolled out a new solution, called Lawson Security FastTrack, aimed at speeding the implementation of its security offering for its S3 suite of ERP software, Lawson Security 9.0.

Surprise, surprise: Small and mid size businesses (SMBs) are pulling back on IT spending plans in reaction to the economic crises. This, according to a new survey from Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA).

A study released last week by ABI Research predicts that spending on radio frequency identification (RFID) products will grow at an average rate of 15 percent over the next five years, becoming nearly a $10 billion industry by 2013. However, that number could drop as a result of the global economic crisis.

Our RAP uses the IBM APYJRNCHG command to apply the data on the target system every time a receiver is changed. The technology has been around for many years and IBM has been announcing changes to supported objects for the past couple of years. The latest change in V6R1 is the merge of the [...]

• Vertically from top to bottom, press Ctrl+Down Arrow.
• Vertically from bottom to top, press Ctrl+Up Arrow.
• Horizontally from left to right, press Ctrl+Right Arrow.
• Horizontally from right to left, press Ctrl+Left Arrow.

Using the mouse

Double-click one edge of the selected cell when the mouse image changes to four directional arrows.

Information about the midrange of the corporate computing market--the place where hundreds of thousands of companies worldwide generate tens of billions of dollars in server and storage spending a year--is a little hard to come by. I always have an eye out for statistics because it is so rare to see anything quantitative that is available to the public. I am sure there is plenty of data available on the midrange from the server makers themselves and the big IT market researchers, but that is the kind of information that costs big bucks these days.

For most people, the prospect of fundamental change is about as comforting as a root canal. By their state of nature, most people are change averse, preferring the quiet predictability of the status quo to the frothy tumult of a fundamental shift. That is, until change seems to be the only tenable answer.

To find out what companies in the wholesale and distribution business are doing to succeed in these turbulent economic times, I set up an appointment with IBM's wholesale industry segment executive, Roberto Sanchez, who works not only with customers, but also with independent software vendors and resellers in the sales channel. Sanchez understands the System i because many companies rely on it in this market and also because he was once a systems engineer for the AS/400.

When the Internet was first spreading around the globe with the speed and infectiousness of an airborne virus, it soon became evident that many nations would not tolerate the unchecked proliferation of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Governments that could not abide opposition became intent on regulating what would otherwise facilitate a dangerous flow of uncensored data and subversive ideas.

IT equipment leasing, a favorite method used by hardware suppliers that garner revenue from places they never could crack otherwise, is feeling the woozy effects of the stormy economic seas. It's not just IT equipment leases that are taking on water. All types of equipment leasing are in the same boat. The name on that boat is the S.S. Default. It's much too early, however, to say the boat is sinking.

As many iSeries and System i shops have found out, the move to Power6-based blade servers and the Virtual I/O server that is required to support the i 6.1 operating system is a bit tricky compared to the OS/400 installation and migration procedures that they are accustomed to. That's one reason why I was a bit surprised by a recent IBM Power Systems announcement.

A Federal Court judge on Friday granted a temporary injunction preventing Mark Papermaster, the former IBM executive who helped build the Power processor architecture, from joining Apple, where he had taken a job leading the hardware engineering teams working on the iPhone and the iPod.

While IT departments are understandably excited about the possibilities of so-called Web 2.0-style online applications and how they might be used within their organizations, these same IT shops are equally perplexed about how they are going to control and secure the use of these online applications among their end users.

It's been a rough couple of months for the U.S. economy, and it has also been tough on i platform reseller and application software developer Agilysys, which four weeks ago said it wasn't going to make its numbers in the quarter and then two weeks ago did a management shakeup that saw four top executives leave the company. Last week, Agilysys wanted to let everyone know it is getting its financial house in order--and fast.

As readers of The Four Hundred are aware, Swedish ERP software maker International Business Systems, has been rejiggering its management and business model in an attempt to get its midrange hardware and application software revenues growing again. The third quarter ended in September proved difficult for IBS, as it was for most companies thanks to the economic crisis.

Technote, published: Sun, 9 Nov 2008

Disasters happen, whether it is a natural disaster like a hurricane or a flood, a more localized disaster like a power outage or a fire, or even an operator dropping a cup of coffee on your IBM i machine.

Draft Redbook, last updated: Fri, 7 Nov 2008

- Covers AIX, IBM i and Linux for POWER virtual I/O clients
- A collection of managing and monitoring best practices focused on Virtualization
- Includes the Virtual I/O Server 2.1 enhancements

PowerVM™ virtualization technology is a combination of hardware and software that supports and manages the virtual environments on POWER5™ , POWER5+™ and POWER6™ -based systems.

The idea of daylight saving was first conceived by Benjamin Franklin during his sojourn as an American delegate in Paris in 1784, in an essay, "An Economical Project."

The main purpose of Daylight Saving Time (called "Summer Time" in many places in the world) is to make better use of daylight. We change our clocks during the summer months to move an hour of daylight from the morning to the evening. Countries have different change dates.

According to some sources, DST saves energy. Studies done by the U.S. Department of Transportation in 1975 showed that Daylight Saving Time trims the entire country's electricity usage by a small but significant amount, about one percent each day, because less electricity is used for lighting and appliances. Similarly, in New Zealand, power companies have found that power usage decreases 3.5 percent when daylight saving starts. In the first week, peak evening consumption commonly drops around five percent.

There may also be an economic benefit to DST, as daylight evening hours encourage people to go out and shop, potentially spurring economic growth.

For more information please visit
http://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/index.html

A communication using electronic data interchange (EDI) that manufacturers use to notify wholesalers or retailers about future shipments.
In the EDI X12 system, it is known as the EDI 856 document. The ASN can be used to list the contents of a shipment of goods as well as additional information relating to the shipment, such as order information, product description, physical characteristics, type of packaging, marking, carrier information, and configuration of goods within the transportation equipment. The ASN enables the sender to describe the contents and configuration of a shipment in various levels of detail and provides an ordered flexibility to convey information

Google in 1964:   Google in 2084:

Jim writes an blog post that I found is not just for OpenSolaris User Groups, but could be used for all User Groups. Thanks Jim for the great post and sharing you thoughts on the matter.

LINK :: Jim Grisanzio -  Running Successful OpenSolaris User Groups

I tried at one time to get the Colorado Lotus Users Group back up and running and kind of hit a brick wall after the first year. In Charlotte by accident I kind of started a group of users we call, Lunch Time Geeks or LTG, and we just meet for lunch. No agenda, no meeting, just hanging out and eating. Maybe I can grow it from there? Maybe not?

When using the WRKACTJOB command, the JOB parameter can be used to see all jobs (*ALL appears by default) a specific active job by name, or to select and view multiple jobs using a wildcard. As an example of a wildcard, the following would show all jobs that start with "BATCH": WRKACTJOB JOB(BATCH*) Disclaimer: Vision Solutions makes every effort to provide accurate system management

Spam is flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message, in an attempt to force the message on people who would not otherwise choose to receive it. Most spam is commercial advertising, often for dubious products, get-rich-quick schemes, or quasi-legal services. Spam costs the sender very little to send -- most of the costs are paid for by the recipient or the carriers rather than by the sender.
SpIM is a term that has recently been coined to refer to spam sent via instant messenger programs, such as AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger and ICQ. Someone who sends instant messenger spam (SPiM) is referred to as a spimmer, again a play on the term spammer.
SPIT (Spam over Internet Telephony) is one of the foreseen future forms of spamming that Internet authorities are preparing for today. With the increasing use and dependence on the Internet for communications and data transfer, malicious software programmers have taken advantage by creating VoIP bots with the ability to harvest data and advertise massively at a very small cost. These advertising methods include email spams, SPIMS or spams over instant messaging applications, malicious bots that generate pop up ads, initiate redirects, etc.

If you are reading this and it’s still Tuesday 5 NOV 2009, you need to stop reading and go VOTE please. It’s fun and you get to be apart of a US tradition.

I was riding home from work in my car and on the radio came an IBM i ad, or maybe I should say a System i ad. It was one of the IBM Drive-Thru commercials that I truly do like, but in the end they were still selling the System i Express? IBM if you plan of anyone taking you seriously in the IBM i space and you want to have the right to complain that some people still use the term AS/40, then you have to be organized enought to all be on the same marketing page and not contenue to call a system you renamed over 9 months ago what you used to call it. I closed my eyes and was sad for a second becasue I knew IBM has still no clue how to market anything they own.

We recently started adding Web customers to our customer master file, in which a customer ID is a field of seven characters. The ID's of Web customers consist of the letter 'W' followed by six digits. Is there any way using OPNQRYF to change only the customer IDs that start with 'W' to the customer number '5000000' for reporting purposes? Doing so would allow us to keep a lot of existing programs running without a lot of modification.

Modern day printers are fabulous in all that they do. In addition to accepting basic ASCII text streams, modern general purpose laser printers usually process either postscript (PS) or printer command language (PCL) streams to generate ornate printouts. So what about using these printers with the IBM i? If the printer understands PCL (or a few other data streams such as IBM's PPDS or Epson FX/LQ), then there is no problem because IBM's host print transform functionality magically converts SCS/AFP spool files into one of the aforementioned data streams that the printer can understand. The host print transform function has made most of my life doing IBM i based printing has been very good--until recently.

i5/OS remote output queues are used to send spooled files to printers attached to remote systems. They are commonly created with two objects: the remote output queue itself; and a virtual printer device that allows the queue to function as a locally attached printer device. However, this configuration has some issues when it is restored from backup media, but those problems are easily fixed if you know the right tricks.

In working with a customer to do some performance tuning of their Domino environment, it became very apparent that Domino release 8 requires less memory.  This particular customer is running 7 Domino servers on one LPAR on a 550 (iSeries).  Three of the Domino servers provide mail and calendaring services for about 1500 users, one server is a Sametime server providing instant messaging services, and the other three servers are used for development and testing of applications that integrate with back-end data. 

The customer was running Domino 6.5.5 prior to the upgrade.  They upgraded to release 8.0.1 on April 19.  The graph below shows a significant reduction in paging and faulting rates as soon as the upgrade happened.


The paging and faulting rates went from around 700-800 faults/second down to 300-400 faults/second.  There were no changes to the NSF buffer pool sizes for any of the servers, the only thing that changed was the release of Domino.  The graph shows pool 2, which is the base memory pool for i5/OS.  This is where all Domino servers run by default, so this was a pretty standard setup.

This significant reduction in paging and faulting would result for a customer with a similar configuration upgrading from release 7.  I have found there is very little different between release 6 and 7 servers from a memory management and consumption perspective.  Release 8 however is significantly more efficient when it comes to memory consumption. 

The Work with Domino Servers (WRKDOMSVR) command is a wonderful utility provided with the Lotus Domino server code for i5/OS.  It provides an interface to work with Domino servers in many ways.  The most commonly used features are starting, stopping, and displaying or working with the Domino console.  There are some options on the WRKDOMSVR command that are seldom used, however they provide some very helpful features.  These features aren't displayed on the main screen for this command, therefore I am finding few people know about them.

These hidden features are options 14, 15, and 16.  Option 14 is 'Work with support files'.  This option takes you directly into the IBM_TECHNICAL_SUPPORT subdirectory of the Domino server's data directory.  Option 15 is 'Work with NSDs' which takes you into the IBM_TECHNICAL_SUPPORT directory and only displays the NSD files.  Option 16 is 'Dump server call stacks'.  This option is especially helpful if you are experiencing a server hang condition or other critical issues with your Domino server.  By using option 16, call stacks are dumped for each active job running on the Domino server.  It used to be that you had to download a special utility to dump the call stacks, now it is as simple as specifying option 16 next to the Domino server!

There is one other option I would like to point out.  This one is shown on the main WRKDOMSVR screen, however I find it is not used as frequently as it could be.  This is option 9, 'Work server jobs'.  I find I use this option all the time.  I can quicly see which jobs are running on the Domino server, what their run state is, how much CPU they are consuming, and the number of threads that are active under the job.  When working with customers, I often see people switching to WRKACTJOB to see the jobs running under the Domino subsystem.  Once I show them how easy it is to get to the information they're looking for by simplying selecting option 9, they are quite pleased.

There's a risk that this post is going to sound horribly self-serving, but we hope those who know us will understand the motivation behind it....

The Poisson Distribution is a discrete distribution which takes on the values X = 0, 1, 2, 3,... It is often used as a model for the number of events (such as the number of telephone calls at a business or the number of accidents at an intersection) in a specific time period. It is also useful in ecological studies, e.g., to model the number of prairie dogs found in a square mile of prairie.

The Poisson distribution is determined by one parameter, lambda. The distribution function for the Poisson distribution is f(x) = exp(-1*lambda) lambda^x / x!

Definition: How many times during a period that a business sells its inventory and replaces it.

Also Known As: Turns, Stock Turns, Stock Turnover

While I have been watching IBM for longer than I have done just about anything else in my life except watching Penn State football and marveling that I can get paid to do the job I do, even after all these years, sometimes Big Blue does something that surprises me. Sometimes, the surprise is caused by the company's utter stupidity, or incompetence. Sometimes, it is the genius of its engineering. Sometimes, it is just the way IBM puts something and then the coffee comes out my nose.

In the server racket, the term upgrade has a lot of different meanings. In general, it involves some means of boosting the processing capacity of a machine, be it from additional processors, memory, disk spindles, or I/O capacity. But when most people talk about upgrading their AS/400, iSeries, System i, or Power Systems i box, they are talking about adding processing capacity. And sometimes, that means a little change inside a server or swapping out most or all of the guts in a box to make a change to the system.

IBM last week filed a lawsuit to prevent former executive Mark Papermaster from taking a job at Apple. IBM claims that, as its 'top expert' in the Power architecture and head of development for X64-based blade servers, Papermaster would use his knowledge to hurt IBM's server business as he helps expand Apple's fledgling server business, and thereby violate a non-compete clause along the way.

You make and distribute products. That's your business--one, the other, or both. But the pressure is on to squeeze more efficiency out of operations and drive more profits to the bottom line. You may have your choice of dragons to slay, but the decision to improve transportation planning, shipment execution, financial settlement, and tracking visibility are popular choices. Not coincidentally, this is one of those IBM System i strongholds.

If you had a crystal ball, or any inanimate object (such as a computer running a simulation like nothing Earth has ever seen and likely never will), and you could predict IT spending in the coming year, you could make yourself a whole lot of money. But you don't. So that means we have to listen to what the experts have to say and then try to reckon our own way through their prognostications, perhaps with a little of our own input.

You listed many areas where IBM has divested itself of revenue streams (PC, disk drives, networking, printers, etc.). There is one you left out (sort of) and it might be the most telling. A few months ago, Lenovo started offering Intel servers 'based on technology licensed from IBM.' These are nearly clones of the IBM x3200, x3400, x3650, etc. This is the heart of the entry Intel server lineup from IBM.

My name is Anthony Leach, Sr., and I am one of the organizers of our AS400/iSeries user group. We used to be called the Sacramento Midrange User Group or SMUG. We are now the Power Sacramento Users Group or Power SURG.

IBM and its software development partners that are interested in seeing its Rational development tools and the Enterprise Generation Language (EGL) that the tools kick out have established an online user group dedicated to Rational Business Developer and its EGL bolt-on, according to a notice we received from PKS Software.

Well, that title pretty much sums up the sorry state of the business world these days, right? That was Leo Apotheker, the co-chief executive officer of German application software giant SAP, when he was asked by the Wall Street Journal about projecting where the fourth quarter of 2008 might be in terms of revenues and profits.

An economy never goes to zero, never anywhere close to that, and in hard times, some companies, for whatever reason, do better than others. While plenty of public companies are taking it on the chin financially these days thanks to the economic meltdown, JDA Software does not appear to be one of them.

The IBM Enterprise Modernization Sandbox for IBM i that is! We often hear that developers want to try out RDi but don’t have the time to do it at  the office and don’t have access to an IBM i box at home. So we created the Enterprise Modernization Sandbox for IBM i; an set of [...]

From the contacts view in your Personal Address Book, you can easily create a group containing names from selected documents.

For example, if I select people in my family, and then choose Tools - Copy Into New Group



Notes create a new Group document, with the values of each contact filled in automatically. All we need to do now is give the group a name, and save and close.




This is very useful if you often find that you are sending emails to the same group of people.

OK so we now have fully automated Object replication working and driven by the audit journal in the same manner as the other HA products. Hopefully we will see a lot more traction in the market for the product once we start shipping this feature? Having said that the current economic climate is tending [...]

Wow, that's a mouthful. Anyway, IBM Systems Magazine recently published an illustrative timeline of the 20 years since AS/400, short for Application System 400, was first introduced by Big Blue. Here's a sample of it. The full AS/400, iSeries, System i and Power Systems running IBM i timeline is here, and it's ...

Tom Jarosh, the former general manager of IBM's AS/400 line (when it was still called that), died Oct. 17 from melanoma. He was 55. Jarosh worked as the GM of the AS/400 line until October 2000, when he moved into other positions within IBM's server and technology group. I personally never ...

I haven't been posting this month because I've been really busy getting ready for iSeries DevCon. This is one of the best technical conferences, although you might consider me a little biased; in four days, I give one all-day jumpstart (this year on migrating from PDM and SEU to RDi) and then 10 sessions and hands-on labs. It's always been a forward-thinking conference; I did sessions there on Eclipse and Visual Age for Java (Eclipse's predecessor) as far back as 2001, along with some of my first web-enabling sessions.

Since then, they've always been ready to present the latest technologies and so this year I gave what I'm pretty sure was the first hands-on EGL lab at an i technical conference, along with a number of other sessions and labs ranging from multi-tier architecture development to extending Rational tools with Eclipse plugins. My session on Eclipse, WebSphere and Rational was repeated, and even though the second one was in the last slot on the last day, we still had good turnout.

In the i space, EGL has to deal with all the buzz surrounding PHP and MySQL. To me, that buzz is nothing more than white noise because PHP just doesn't stand up to EGL when it comes to ease of use, adoption of advanced technology and integration - especially with the i. As a simple example, PHP's connection to the i involves using a PHP knockoff of IBM's Java toolbox, and while the toolbox is phenomenal technology, using it directly requires a lot of code; a simple program call might require dozens of lines of code. With EGL, it's a simple CALL statement. And when I demonstrated how easy it was to build entire applications using RDi-SOA to write EGL front ends and RPG back ends, people started getting excited. In a simple 90-minutes lab attendees with no prior Java experience were able to create an EGL record, build a JSF page, then flip over to the RSE perspective to compile the RPG business logic, and then back to the EGL to add a few lines of code to attach the two.

I also did a lab on multi-tiered architecture without EGL (using plain old JSP and Java) and the people who attended both really got an understanding of what EGL was all about: simplifying the plumbing. Even the simplest web application requires a significant amount of plumbing code in any 3GL, whether it's Java or PHP or RPG-CGI. EGL removes all of that for you. Not only that, but the very nature of the language makes it easy to reuse code, so that once you've created a JSF client, it's simple to turn around and create a rich client or a web service. I think that really hit home with a lot of the attendees.

Anyway, I'm back now and I'm focused on the Rich UI book. You'll see a lot more about that in the coming weeks. It's good to be back, and thanks for reading!

This post is about Eclipselink and my experience using it with the System i. It also describes some problems I ran into so you can avoid them if you try Eclipselink. Eclipselink is Eclipse Persistence Services Project, version 1.0 was released July 9, 2008. See http://www.eclipse.org/eclipselink/ I won’t ...

Over the past few months I've become quite a tool builder. The project I'm currently on involves a lot of really repetative code changes and analysis ... basically I've been externalizing as much of the text in the product as I can (to message files).  There are a LOT of display ...