June 2007

• Industry Observer - Learn by Example; Business Intelligence Update; Making Telecommuting Work; It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time . . .; Evaluating Government IT Systems and more.
• The Essential Guide to Supporting a High Availability Environment - The world of high availability (HA) is changing, and several major announcements show the importance people now attach to the HA marketplace. If you are considering an HA solution, you should do your homework before plunging into a project and buying a product.
• Using Materialized Query Tables - V5R3 of i5/OS offers a new table type to the Universal Database on i5/OS called a materialized query table (MQT). An MQT is just like any other table, but it has an embedded SQL SELECT statement included with its definition.
• 15 Browser UI Design Essentials - Web 2.0 technologies are a boon to web application developers. Alas, too often end users find “modern” web applications confusing, inconsistent, and frustrating. Rediscover the essential art of effective user interface design in your development practice.
• Ordering Microsoft Dishes - In a restaurant, you never know how hot (spicy) your food will be until you taste it. In that respect, Viridian and Longhorn are similar to restaurant dishes, and after their release, Microsoft’s next job will be to entice organizations to take a taste.
• 25 Years of Application Development - Take a look back at a brief history of application development in the System i world.
• Feedback - 6 More Things to Add to DB2 on the i5; other Must-Know for Debugging in WDSc; PHP and DB2 Connect; 4 Almost Foolproof Tests?
• Compliance Encryption: A System i Signature - Signing documents adds legitimacy and legality. Unfortunately, there still isn’t a way to use a pen over e-mail. Enter the System i and its electronic signature capabilities. Use APIs to create and validate digital signatures.
• Hot New Products -
• Dr. I Doctor - Dr. I Doctor solves a mail delivery failure with Workstation Collaboration Server e-mail delivery, and describes how to set up a VPN mesh to solve a multipoint VPN problem.
• 5 More Tips for Integrating Java with System i Resources - Many System i developers think that integrating Java with the System i is a complex task that should be avoided at all costs. But by using these five tips, you'll find that such an endeavor really isn't that difficult.
• What’s Hot for the System i - Despite a series of lackluster financial quarters for the System i, IBM may actually gain a significant number of new customers in 2007.
• f.y.iSystem - Helping Folks Secure Changes Agrees Just Fine with Carol Woodbury; IBM Packs More Into IP Telephony; IBM's VIP Program Will Kick Butt and Take Names; IBM's 1Q07 Solid, System i Down; IBM Working on 80,000-User IP Telephony Deal?; Kronos to be Acquired for $1.8 Billion; PowerTech Security Study Reveals Internal Weaknesses; Oracle Delivers 1,250 JDE World Enhancements
• IBM Announcements -
• Connect Your VB and RPG Applications with Data Queues - Data queues are among the easiest-to-use and fastest application data transfer mechanisms available on the System i. Discover how you can use them to pass data between your RPG and VB applications — with subsecond response time.
• Why Encrypt? - As increasingly spectacular security breaches occur at well-known companies, IT departments are turning to data encryption to ensure that their customers are protected. Learn what regulations affect you and how you can begin protecting your own data.
• PowerTech Heads Off That Slip of the Finger - The Shaw Group, an IT outsourcing company in Louisiana, used manual queries and nightly job runs to track user activity. When auditors complained that wasn’t good enough, Shaw found a better way in The PowerTech Group’s ComplianceMonitor.
• In Security We Trust - Some of the latest security solutions for the System i are making password controls, e-mail protection, and data encryption so much more convenient that it’s practically breaking the law not to use them.
• What Is Your SOX Auditor Looking For? - When evaluating SOX compliance, your auditor is looking for one thing: Do you have the proper controls in place to protect your financial reporting systems from corruption and abuse?
• Bounce Back: Resilient Business Computing - There is no more important work for IT than to ensure that business computing systems are resilient and protected. This short list shows some major mistakes at System i sites around the world and how to avoid such errors.
• Clean Up Files in an IFS Directory - With this nifty CLNID utility, you can delete IFS files in a specified directory that are older than a specified number of days.
• Deploying PHP Open-Source Web Applications to the System i - Thanks to PHP, System i users have access to a multitude of free open-source tools. This article lists a few of the more popular applications and provides tips on getting them up and running.
• SkyView Provides Republic Indemnity with Policy Peace of Mind - With the help of SkyView Partners' Policy Minder product, workers' compensation insurer Republic Indemnity Company of America is handling its SOX reporting requirements more efficiently.
• Security and Compliance Go Hand in Hand with Bsafe - Bsafe Information Systems’ Bsafe/Enterprise Security is one of several security solutions that help with security-policy compliance monitoring as well as more standard system- and data-protection features.
• Killer Club Tech - Display JVM Jobs; No Java Allowed!; Just What Are Limited Capabilities? LMTCPB(*YES); Sending a Message from a Trigger to a Program;
• Monitoring Live Metrics in IBM Director - Using IBM Director's rich functionality, you can monitor your i5/OS system with ease. As a first step in your monitoring and automation practice, you need to create custom views and set thresholds. This article shows you how.
• Easy Web Services with Apache Axis - Looking for an alternative to WSDc’s web services support? Easy to install and use, Apache Axis is a great way to create and consume simple and standard web services.