In last week's issue, I talked generally about big data and the use of tools like the Hadoop big data muncher created by Yahoo to emulate the very early unstructured data processing and related file system created by Google to power its search engine. While you do not have to take a snapshot of the Internet and index it continuously, as Google did when the Google File System and the MapReduce batch processing method was created, you do have your own big data challenges.

Vision Solutions last week unveiled MIMIX DR, a new disaster recovery (DR) product designed to help eliminate data loss and speed the recovery of systems and applications following a disaster at smaller IBM i sites. MIMIX DR uses the same data and object replication capabilities that are found in the full MIMIX high availability (HA) offering. But MIMIX DR lacks the automated failover capabilities of MIMIX HA, and instead uses a manual failover process.

Being more responsive to customer needs is a common theme these days. Companies can quickly get into hot water by neglecting customers either completely or by choosing favorite segments, such as those with the biggest budgets. IBM's customer consciousness, as it applies to the Power Systems and IBM i community (the focus of IT Jungle newsletters), includes the independent software vendors (ISVs). The IBM i ISVs are hugely important. Big Blue must wish it had a similar vendor base for its other platforms.

In the world of corporate credit unions, excitement is not necessarily a good thing. While regular banks take big exciting risks in search of big exciting profits, the not-for-profit credit unions seek the repeatable and the predictable. So when Core Network Processing (CNP) tapped Worknet to take over hosting and management of its core, IBM i-based application, it made its decision carefully, since it would effect nearly a fourth of the country's 8,000 credit unions.

COMMON Europe has given a jolt to the IBM i community, and right as we are approaching the 25th birthday--the silver anniversary, in fact--of the "Project Silverlake" machine that became the AS/400 minicomputer. After a hard look at the attendance data for its European Power Summit 2013 a month from now, COMMON Europe made the tough decision to cancel the event.

Business intelligence software vendor SEQUEL Software has made fairly extensive changes to how its ViewPoint client handles data with the introduction of a new objects, called script views. The new script views objects will not only simplify the steps required to complete common reporting functions--including displaying data on a dashboard, and emailing and printing--but provide a performance boost to complex data processing tasks as well.

In 2004, PowerTech unveiled its first report on the state of security for the iSeries server, as the IBM i platform was then called. The report uncovered major problems at iSeries shops involving passwords, remote access, and user profiles. Fast forward to April 2013 and PowerTech's 10th annual report, which uncovered systemic problems with--you guessed it--passwords, remote access, and powerful user profiles.

Computer Keyes last week unveiled a new IBM i software product that will allow users to access IFS files from any Web browser, including those running on mobile devices. The product, called kLink, includes two separate mobile application servers, including one for the employees of an organization, and another one for its customers.

It's not exactly what you think. This isn't about speeding tickets or parking tickets. It's about tickets to sporting events and how the IBM i platform and a software vendor in the United Kingdom have teamed up to create a faster, more dependable, and much more user friendly experience for buying tickets and merchandise. It's also about what a performance boost, courtesy of Power7 processors, and an innovation boost, thanks to the cloud, can mean for business.

Shield Advanced Solutions last week announced it's now shipping an update to its FTP security tool for IBM i. FTP Guard4i version 7.1 features several upgrades over the product it replaces, FTP Manager 6.1, including better auditing of users' FTP activities and a new Web interface designed to make it easier to use.

With new Power7+ entry and midrange servers fully ramped and Big Blue well into its second quarter, it is time to add the new Power Systems machines to more deals, and that is precisely what IBM has done.

The green screen PDM and the GUI Rational Developer for i (RDi) tools provide developers an easy way to search through source code to find a specified text literal. But what if these tools don't have access to all your code, in particular the SQL code? Many developers may not be keeping an up-to-date source copy of their SQL persisted stored modules (functions, procedures and triggers) and further, may not be keeping a copy of the source at all. If this is the case in your shop, never fear, for DB2 for i maintains a record of the source statements in each SQL-based object that it creates. This information is stored in the DB2 catalog views and can be easily queried.

Infor is targeting Oracle's PeopleSoft customer base with a promise to lower maintenance costs by 20 percent if they move to Infor's products, most notably its Lawson S3 software.

I advise, recommend, urge, admonish, and even cajole RPG programmers to quit using subroutines and start using subprocedures instead. Yet I still hear from people who work in shops that allow the use of RPG IV (a.k.a. ILE RPG), but do not allow binding to modules and service programs. Today I offer two ways to use subprocedures that do not require ILE binding.

High availability and disaster recovery software maker Maxava is throwing its money around the IBM i community again, and I mean that in the best way possible. The New Zealand company, which has become an increasingly global company over the past decade, has been generous once again and has ponied up $50,000 to fund the Maxava iFoundation, which it started three years ago.

I want to add another batch job queue to my QBATCH subsystem for submitting reporting jobs that take a long time to process. I want to put them in their own job queue so they can just chug away in QBATCH without interfering with my other batch work. How do I add another job queue that I can submit these jobs to?