June 2008

• Remembering Al Barsa, Jr. - The System i and COMMON communities lost a great friend and champion with Al Barsa, Jr.'s untimely death. Al would be the first one to urge folks to move on to embrace the challenges ahead.
• Pain in the "aaS" - The "as a Service" tagline started out innocently enough with Software as a Service (SaaS), but have we moved into the realm of the absurd with the current overuse of the "aaS" label?
• The i Has It: IBM Powers On - i for you and i for me: IBM’s power spin looks to be a bullish maneuver. Now it needs a leader who says, "Hey, this is the best. Here’s why. Follow me."
• Where Are the "Machines" in IBM? - Is IBM moving ever closer to becoming a non-hardware company? A quick look at IBM's financial statements tells the story.
• Home, Sweet Home with EZContentManager - Welcome to the comfortable living room of EZCM, a System i-compatible document management solution that enables users to control a plethora of needed documents from any web browser.
• Boutique Languages: Fast Solutions to Real-World Problems - Full-scale programming languages such as Java, RPG, and Cobol are sometimes too large and ponderous for agile software development. When you need to develop software to meet an immediate need, specialized “boutique” languages are often an excellent choice.
• Beyond RPG: To PHP or Not to PHP - If you’re looking for a language that can bridge the gap between System i–specific code and web-enabled user interfaces written in the standard web languages, consider adding PHP to your development portfolio.
• CL Latest and Greatest - CL has enjoyed an influx of new features in every release since V5R3. V6R1 is no exception — from copybooks to object name validation, CL continues to grow in functionality.
• WDSc Cool Free Plug-ins - Because WDSc is built with Eclipse at its core, its customization has endless possibilities. What’s more, many plug-ins are available that can enrich your WDSc experience. This article explores a few of your possible choices.
• A Whole New Level of DB2 for i5/OS Query Optimization - The Internet provides pages of query rewrite tricks. But the new and improved SQE in DB2 for i5/OS offers an extraordinary set of query rewrite techniques and strategies without the need for the same level of administration and direction.
• Become a System i-vangelist: Promote What You Love - The System i is the best business computer on the market. Yet IBM doesn’t proclaim its greatness from the mountaintops. No problem. You can do it.
• Using RSE in Any Development Setup - Discover how to use the Remote System Explorer and i5/OS projects in four common setups. You’ll find that you can continue using the same development setup you have in place today, while taking advantage of the many rich features of the modern tools.
• All About Filters in RSE - When the amount of i5 objects on your system becomes too large and impossible to manager, never fear RSE has the perfect solution: filters. Learn how to utilize RSE to manage those cumbersome lists of objects by learning how to create, manage, and edit filters. For even more organization, learn to create and use filter pools.
• Subsystems and Memory Pools - To efficiently use your server, you’ll need to consider running similar types of jobs together in subsystems and allocating enough memory to each job. Here’s how.
• String Lengths, Bits Testing, and Time Values - In this installment of the series, you learn how to determine the length of a null-terminated character strings using the strlen API, test specific bits within a field, and work with time values.
• Dr. I Doctor (July 2008) - Dr. I Doctor explains the latest spam plagues and compares Fibre Channel and iSCSI for storage virtualization.
• IBM Announcements -
• f.y.iSystem -
• Hot New Products -
• Tech Corner -
• Industry Observer (June 2008) - Who Wants Yesterday’s Paper? * Making the Most of Disk Storage * H-1B Visa Debate Continues * Eclipse + PHP = Zend Studio