December 2005

• Industry Observer - Privacy Legislation Takes Center Stage; iSeries Performance Toolkit; Internet Trends and Directions; Municipal Wi-Fi Coast to Coast
• Dr. I Doctor - Dr. I Doctor describes Window's little-known but powerful portqry utility and discusses the maintenance effort required to manage enterprise VoIP.
• 8 Security Tips - If you haven't tried these cool tools for enhancing security in your OS/400 or i5/OS system, you're in for a reconfiguration rush!
• A Comparison of Subfile Sorting Techniques - Read along as Scott examines several methods of sorting a subfile, discusses each method's pros and cons, and benchmarks each method's performance.
• 8 iSeries Navigator Tips - You're probably familiar with iSeries Navigator's handy graphs of realtime historical performance, wizards, and database topology, but as these tips show, it provides several subtle capabilities that are nifty, too.
• Tech Tips - Externally Described Data Structures Get Null-Capable Subfields; Create a Tailored Installation Image of iSeries Access for Windows; Copy/Paste Between Opened Source Members; Use Groups to Keep Scheduled Tasks Scheduled; Simplify Database Monitor Collections
• 5 iSeries Access Tips - iSeries Access contains several products that let you easily access iSeries data and resources. These tips show you how to take advantage of some old and new iSeries Access Family capabilities.
• Reining in WAS Application Response Times - Keeping your Web-based applications running their best requires diligence. Putting these options to work can help you achieve more consistent WebSphere Application Server (WAS) performance.
• Using PEX APIs to Trace Application-Specific Transaction Performance - Measuring the transaction performance for non-5250 applications can be a complex task, but the new PEX Transaction APIs in i5/OS make this task easier for applications running on an iSeries server.
• 4 RPG Tips - These handy tips show how to automatically trim a parameter of blanks, define a subfield to start at a specific position, perform the same operation on every element in an array, and more.
• 2 DB2 Tips - Use SQE constraint awareness and QShell to tighten up your database administration.
• Understanding Access Plans and Open Data Paths - By automatically attempting to reuse open data paths, SQL reduces the high performance cost of file open and close operations.
• Pick of the Tips - This article contains a tip or favorite piece of advice from eight expert contributors to the December 2005 tip collections. There is one tip each for RPG, CL, SQL, Java, WDSc, iSeries Access, iSeries Navigator, and OS/400 security.
• IBM Announcements -
• Electronic Commerce Solutions Product Roundup - Electronic commerce is getting more important to many enterprises' bottom lines. If you're looking for a seat on the bandwagon, one of these solutions should help you get up and running.
• Robot Automation Multisystem Tasks at Sorrento - By using Help/Systems' Robot Automated Operations Suite, Sorrento Lactalis, a cheese manufacturer, eliminated a six-page daily task checklist and coordinated tasks on five iSeries systems.
• f.y.iSeries -
• 2 Java Tips - Java is finally mature — with powerful IDEs and widely accepted best practices. Here are two tips to make Java even more productive in your iSeries environment.
• Help Is On The Way - Astro's master gets a call from a pansophical help desk and receives some surprising recommendations.
• What Do We Have In COMMON? - Attendance at COMMON is a mere shadow of what it was in the heyday of the AS/400. COMMON needs to become less dependent on the RPG developer community and capitalize more on the iSeries' ability to simplify infrastructure and consolidate workloads.
• I Need More Power, Scottie! - More processing power at a lower cost will let IBM out-accelerate the competition and allow us to build the next generation of data centers and business solutions.
• Hot New Products -
• Some Help for Our Insecurities - Conventional wisdom says the iSeries is a secure system. Some significant new products remind us we shouldn't take that for granted.
• Improve and Tune IFS Performances, Part 2 - The i5/OS integrated file system (IFS) is a robust, scalable, highly secure, and highly available file system. Find out how to maximize its performance!
• 4 CL Tips - New CL enhancements are on the way — that means cleaner, faster code and new functioniality. Get the insider's perspective on what's new and how you can use it to write apps that will wow both your boss and your co-workers.
• Security in the Age of Compliance - The biggest issue in security these days is regulatory compliance, and savvy IT managers recognize that Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, and other regulations provide an opportunity to get the necessary resources to strengthen their organizations' security efforts.
• Readers' Choice - CYBRA Corporation's MarkMagic 5; Profound Logic Software's RPG-Alive
• The Essential Guide to Backup and Recovery - Most disaster recovery plans (DRPs) focus on technology recovery, but is that enough? This Essential Guide outlines the steps to include in your DRP to ensure that your business’s critical data will be available when you need it most.