June 1998

• In This Issue -
• Letters -
• An Anniversary to Be Proud Of - Ten years later, Wayne Madden says, the AS/400's anniversary is one worth celebrating as the system continues to represent the leading edge in business computing.
• A Letter to Oprah Winfrey - In this letter to the well-known television talk-show host, Bob Tipton calls on programmers to help spread the word in their communities about the potential dangers related to the Year 2000.
• The Case for CASE - Now - Xavier Delorme says CASE vendors and customers alike have learned from past mistakes, making today's CASE a productive, powerful, and flexible solution for AS/400 application development.
• Newswatch -
• Briefs -
• San Francisco Frameworks Becoming a Reality - Pam Jones reports on the latest news from IBM's San Francisco frameworks project: the debut of application prototypes built with San Francisco and a second release that includes two new frameworks and other enhancements.
• Data Warehousing: Gain the Competitive Advantage - As you've updated your AS/400 operational systems, you may have lost your competitive advantage. Paul Kjer explains how to use data warehousing to regain that edge.
• Today's EDI: Alive and Thriving - The time-tested technology of EDI is changing to embrace today's global, Internet-enabled business world. Nahid Jilovec describes how.
• Hacking the AS/400 - OS/400 has a reputation as a secure operating system. But its security features don't extend outside the AS/400's thin metal skin - on a network, OS/400 must rely on other measures for protection. We tested an AS/400 as a Web server in the harshest of all network environments, the Internet. Our "ethical hack" subjected the AS/400 to intense attack using dozens of known server-penetration techniques. Did the AS/400 survive? Read Mel Beckman's article to find out.
• The Essential RPG IV Style Guide - Bryan Meyers presents style standards for developing RPG IV programs that are readable, understandable, and easy to maintain. A sidebar excerpts some interesting style discussions from NEWS/400's RPG IV Style forum on the Web.
• Ensuring the Integrity of Your Data with DB2/400 - DB2/400 supports constraints and triggers for enforcing data integrity, but feedback about attempted violations leaves much to be desired. Julian Monypenny explains what you need to know to ensure data integrity and get useful feedback about attempted violations, and he provides a service program to handle database errors in your applications. A sidebar explains service program DbErr, which handles database errors.
• The Truth about Shared ODPs - Shared ODPs and ending programs without deactivating them can both improve performance when an application opens files repeatedly. But which technique is better? Mike Cravitz asserts that there's rarely good reason to use shared ODPs and supports his reasoning with benchmarks.
• Java Operators - IBMers Phil Coulthard and George Farr explain arithmetic, assignment, relational, logical, bitwise, and other Java operators.
• A Service Program for User Space APIs - You can hide the complexity of APIs by encapsulating them in a service program. In this article, Gary Guthrie provides a service program that contains ready-to-use procedures for three user-space APIs and serves as a blueprint for writing other procedures.
• Touring Obsydian - Terry Smith explores Synon's Obsydian object-oriented application development platform, which lets you develop and generate AS/400 client/server applications by selecting and customizing reusable business objects.
• Check Out the Latest 32-bit Emulators! - Jim Hoopes describes today's evolving 32-bit Windows emulation products, which include new capabilities such as TCP/IP, ActiveX and OLE DB support, screen scrapers, and installation enhancements in addition to tried-and-true features such as terminal and printer emulation and file transfer.
• Security at the System Level - Wayne Madden and Carol Woodbury suggest a system security level and general, password, and auditing system values that will safeguard your AS/400.
• Tech Corner -
• Security FAQs -
• RISC Upgrade FAQs -
• New Products & Services -
• IBM Announcements -
• Street Talk -
• With so many “active” CISC and RISC releases, I can’t keep track of which releases’ upgrade paths IB -
• How do I buy e-Jump? -
• I’ve heard that people are upgrading using “unsupported paths,” for example, directly from V3R1 to V -
• What about moving objects between releases with an unsupported upgrade path? Is that a problem? -
• I want to use my AS/400 as a Web server — where do I start? -
• Can I turn my existing AS/400 into a Web server? -
• How do I secure communications on an AS/400 Web server? -
• How do I protect my AS/400 against hackers attempting to sign on the system? -
• Can I safely run a Web server at security level 30 or lower? -
• Do I have to follow all these tips to have a secure Web server? -
• Send Spool Files via E-mail -
• Dynamically Add Century to Millennium-compliant Date Fields -
• Last-Used Date of Objects -
• Two IP Connections -
• CA for Win95 and V3R7 -
• Forcing Level Checks with Embedded SQL -
• Pull-Down Menu Bar Problem -