-
Admin Alert: Getting Started with i/OS Security Auditing, Part 1
September 15, 2010 Joe Hertvik
Sometimes you need more information about what’s happening on your system. Who changed their password? Have any system values been changed recently? Who added an entry to the System Reply list? For company security and auditor information, sometimes you need to gather information about system events. That’s where i/OS security auditing comes in.
Security Auditing in Two Paragraphs
IBM i/OS security auditing allows you to collect information about system events that can affect system security and integrity. To implement auditing, a user configures his system and specifies what types of information he wants to collect. After turning auditing on, he
-
Vision Merges HA Products Into MIMIX Availability 7
September 14, 2010 Alex Woodie
Ever since Vision Solutions acquired rival Lakeview Technologies more than three years ago, Vision executives have talked about eventually merging the two companies’ flagship products into a single entity. That union officially started yesterday, when Vision announced MIMIX Availability 7 for IBM i, which combines elements of Vision’s old ORION HA product with MIMIX. Vision also unveiled MIMIX Global for managing MIMIX clusters and hybrid IBM i disk-based clustering environments.
Officially, MIMIX Availability 7 combines elements of the old MIMIX HA product with OMS and ODS, the names of the high availability products that Vision developed years ago, and which
-
MKS Offers Full Support for IBM i 7.1 in ALM Tool
September 7, 2010 Alex Woodie
IBM i shops that rely on application lifecycle management (ALM) software from MKS can now use all the goodies in IBM i 7.1 without worrying that the ALM tool, called Implementer, can’t keep up with the new technology. Implementer 2010, which shipped in late July, supports the IBM i 7.1 OS itself as well as new features, like the SQL capabilities. It also supports the new Rational Developer for Power development tool, and is improved for the Japanese IBM i market.
The 100-plus enhancements that MKS made with the latest release of Implementer can be grouped into two general categories.
-
Valid and TGS Gang Up on Buddy Punchers
September 7, 2010 Alex Woodie
“Buddy punching” may sound like a harmless game enjoyed by adolescent American males. But the activity, which involves employees punching timecards for each other, is actually a form of theft, and causes American businesses to wrongfully pay employees billons of dollars per year for time they didn’t work. Now, two IBM i software developers, Valid Technologies and TimeGathering Systems, have teamed up to integrate their solutions, and put an end to buddy punching and its profit-sapping effect.
While it may seem like companies aren’t investing in employees during the current recession, “human capital”–that abstract term that refers to employable
-
Mad Dog 21/21: Craft Nouveau
September 7, 2010 Hesh Wiener
Somebody at Google knows about Bing. Not Bing the Microsoft googloid. Bing as in Siegfried (Samuel) Bing, the German expatriate whose Paris gallery, L’Art Nouveau La Maison Bing, founded in 1895, gave its name to a worldwide movement in art, craft, and design. A Google logo celebrated Art Nouveau on July 24, the 150th birthday of Czech illustrator and temporary Parisian Alphonse Mucha. Today, one can find that je-ne-sais-quoi of turn of the Twentieth Century Paris in cyberspace. Its message: Computing, to succeed, must, like the Eiffel Tower, marry art and science.
The Eiffel Tower, opened
-
Mad Dog 21/21: Smart Cube Is IBM’s Half-AS Imitation of Apple
July 19, 2010 Hesh Wiener
There are something like 225,000 iPhone programs available for download from the Apple App Store. By contrast, there are only about 10,000 true iPad apps. Google’s Android phones have 75,000 apps on tap, more or less. The original Application System, the IBM AS/400, now called the i like Apple products (but easily distinguished by checking sales volume) has a pathetic Web store selling canned systems under the Smart Cube rubric. There are about 80 software packages, but only 26 of them are for the i; the rest are for Intel-based Linux servers.
You think I’m kidding? I’m not.
-
i/OS 7.1 Marks a Change in the JVM Guard
July 14, 2010 Alex Woodie
There is one piece of news from IBM‘s i/OS 7.1 roll-out that didn’t generate a lot of attention in the System i community, but is important for programmers who develop in Java as well as their customers. Starting with i/OS 7.1, IBM no longer supports the “Classic” Java Virtual Machine (JVM) that Rochester developed years ago specifically for OS/400. This leaves the platform with two JVMs: one 32-bit and the other 64-bit. IBM says that performance and cross-platform compatibility will improve with the new JVMs, although some developers may need to fiddle with their apps to make them work.
-
JDA Software’s i2 Unit Smacked with $246 Million Judgment
June 21, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
JDA Software didn’t try to acquire supply chain software specialist i2 Technologies once, but twice–first in August 2008 for $346 million, an attempt that failed, and again in November 2009 for $396 million. Whoever did the due diligence as part of the merger and reckoned the effect of a lawsuit between the Dillard’s department store chain and i2 did not reckon on the jury in the District Court of the State of Texas for the County of Dallas, which came to the conclusion that i2 had not met its software license agreements and awarded $246 million in damages.
Yeah, you
-
Synergivity Brings i/OS Change Management to US Market
June 15, 2010 Alex Woodie
There is a new name in the i/OS change management market: Synergivity Software. The New Hampshire-based company was founded recently to be the U.S. distributor for i/OS change management tools developed by Midrange Dynamics, which is headquartered in Switzerland. In addition to change management, Synergivity sells impact analysis and auditing software developed by Midrange Dynamics–and hopes to add other security, testing, and high availability tools to its portfolio in the future.
Synergivity Software’s flagship offering is MDCMS, the i/OS change management system developed by Midrange Dynamics. MDCMS helps customers streamline various application development lifecycle tasks, including everything from
-
Admin Alert: How To Run NetServer from the Green Screen in 10 Minutes
June 9, 2010 Joe Hertvik
IBM i NetServer is a handy server. With very little configuration, it allows i/OS machines to provide file and print-sharing services for Windows-based PC clients. Unfortunately, NetServer has an image problem. Many people think they can only control NetServer through iSeries Navigator and that there isn’t a green-screen interface for NetServer. They are wrong. There are green-screen NetServer commands, and you may already have them installed on your machine.
Here’s a quick overview of what i5/OS NetServer is, and how you can start, stop, configure, and control it through 5250 green-screen commands.
What is IBM i NetServer?
Originally called iSeries