July 1999

• In This Issue -
• Letters -
• Four Ways to Fail with ERP - Robert Tipton advises those thinking about or in the middle of an ERP implementation to steer clear of these fatal attitudes.
• It's Time for IBM to Pull the Plug on RPG - Half measures such as free-format C-specs are too little, too late, for ILE RPG, writes Roger Pence. IBM AS/400 developers should be working on the next generation of application development tools.
• Newswatch Listings -
• Hot New Products -
• How the AS/400 Learned to Love Unix - Frank Soltis, IBM's AS/400 chief scientist, says running the Unix operating system under the covers of the AS/400 is probably a bad idea. But the AS/400 can natively run Unix applications today, thanks to support for major Unix APIs, software services, and V4R4's new teraspaces.
• WebSphere - The AS/400 - Paul Conte explains that the AS/400's future may hinge on WebSphere's success as a world-class - and IBM's only - Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) server.
• IBM Says No to Portable AS/400 - An easy-to-carry AS/400 could help Business Partners increase sales and provide better customer service. But Big Blue says a portable machine isn't profitable, reports Pam Jones.
• Cat Logistics Conducts Web-Enabled BI on the AS/400 - Scott Steinacher examines how Coglin Mill's Rodin and Silvon Software's DataTracker help clients of Caterpillar Logistics Services, Inc., access custom data warehouses and data marts from Web browsers.
• Choosing an e-Business Consultant - Nahid Jilovec offers specific criteria for selecting a consulting partner for e-business.
• Inside an SQL Stored Procedure - Paul Conte shows you how to easily write SQL stored procedures that run between SQL databases using the SQL stored procedure language (SPL).
• The Essential CL Style Guide - Gary Guthrie presents suggested style guidelines to follow to write CL code that's easy to read, understand, and maintain.
• Getting Started with SQL/400 Joins - SQL provides the simplest, most flexible means of performing join operations on the AS/400. In this article, Mike Cravitz gives you a lesson on coding basic joins in SQL.
• RPG IV's *JOBRUN Simplifies Date-Format Conversion - Azubike Oguine explains how his utility uses RPG IV's *JOBRUN special value to let end users in different countries specify dates in the formats they normally use.
• Is Your AS/400 Ready for the Year 2000? - IBMers Dan Lacine and Jayne Sims summarize Year 2000 readiness information for the AS/400 and point you to IBM resources on the Web that can help you determine the status of your system.
• Serving AS/400 Data from NT's IIS - Brian Singleton explains that Microsoft's Active Server Pages are the functional equivalent of IBM's Net.Data. They let you bring logic and AS/400 data to Windows NT Internet Information Server Web pages.
• Release 5 Simplifies Domino Administration - Greg Neilson explains Domino 5.0 features that help Domino administrators, including a separate Administration client program with tabbed pages, an enhanced AdminP task that enables cross-domain administration, message-tracking, transaction logging, and more.
• Clean Up Your Output Queues - Julian Monypenny presents the CLNUPOUTQ command, which cleans up old spool file entries from your output queues, letting you archive or delete them as necessary.
• Custom APIs Boost CGI Program Performance - Azubike Oguine explains how his APIs, GetFrmInp and WrtStdOut, perform better in CGI programs than their counterparts in IBM's HTTP Server, the QtmhRdStin and QtmhWrStout APIs.
• SNMPc 5.0 - Mel Beckman reviews SNMPc, Castle Rock Computing's network monitoring product that maps and monitors a network, tracks traffic flows, and alerts you to problems before they become serious.
• Tech Corner -
• Street Talk -
• PTF Watch - PTF Watch lists selected High Impact Pervasive (HIPER) PTFs that aren't — or aren't yet — part of a cumulative PTF package.
• Print Word Documents from an AS/400 -
• Can CHGQRYA Speed Up SQL Batch? -
• Batch vs. Interactive Jobs -
• QNOTES in QSYSLIBL? -
• Null-Capable Fields in RPG -
• CPYTOPCD Quandary -
• Renaming Record Formats for Logical Files -
• Page-Range Problem -
• Modifying IBM Edit Codes -
• In Focus: Patterns: Finding a Good Fit in the AS/400 World? -
• In Focus: Getting Young Faces in AS/400 Places -
• In Focus: Future Voices of the AS/400 -