Treat Yourself - IBM · PDF fileTreat Yourself New capabilities in DB2 UDB for i5/OS make it a leading choice Page 20 ... Of SAP and i 24 IBM System i5 and POWER5+: Simplifies your

ASEAN/SA & ANZ EDITIONISSUE # 55 JUNE 2006i5 Business Systems

Treat YourselfNew capabilities in DB2 UDB for i5/OS make it a leading choice Page 20

Treat YourselfNew capabilities in DB2 UDB for i5/OS make it a leading choice Page 20

IBM i5/OS V5R4Showcases Many SQL

EnhancementsPage 28

Integrating BladeCenterand xSeries on System i5

using iSCSIPage 10

IBM i5/OS V5R4Showcases Many SQL

EnhancementsPage 28

Integrating BladeCenterand xSeries on System i5

using iSCSIPage 10 Manhattan Associates

and IBM Solution Growswith Super Cheap Auto’s

Booming BusinessPage 40

Manhattan Associatesand IBM Solution Growswith Super Cheap Auto’s

Booming BusinessPage 40

Editor's Corner

Fierce strikers of the world are ready to samba this June.Together with the spirit of sportsmanship and the thrill ofbeing watched by millions, it will be glorious summer.

While football action is happening over in Germany, here inAsia is our equally exciting IBM System i Asia Pacific StrategicPlanning Conference 2006. Held at the Royal Orchid SheratonHotel & Towers, Bangkok, Thailand, this annual affair seesworldwide experts and executives from the System i divisioncongregating with delegates to discuss and plan their ITinfrastructure to meet business needs. Although not watched bymillions, we will follow up to it with a post-mortem report afterthe event in the following issue.

With so much installed for everyone in June, I am proud topresent you this month's ASEAN/SA and ANZ edition, with richarticles for everyone's platter. Thus, our Cover Story this month isaptly entitled “Something for Everyone!” Read about it on page 20.

This month's Feature Story (page 28) covers SQLenhancements with i5/OS V5R4, whilst Trends (page 14) shedssome light to integrating business processes and data. We havealso the privilege to share with you FE Global Electronics PteLtd’s testimonial on IBM System i5 and how the platformmade a difference in simplifying IT and building confidence inthe company.

Keeping the momentum, this month's content alsoencompasses PHP, iSCSI, and SAP product news. Look out forour case study on Manhattan Associates on page 40. On a lighternote, find our what the TurboGorilla has in store for you on page38 and in the CTC Corner (page 46) read how the card industry issecuring credit cards. Last but not least, we end with ENDPGMwhere if you need professional assistance to resolve technicalissues, log on to Midrange.com. System i professionals are readyto render help in this forum. Read more on pg 48.

Stock up your snacks, take control of the TV remote andhold on to your System i5 Magazine (during game intervals) andOle! Ole! Ole!

Till then, cheers!

The Editor ([email protected])

2 J U N E 2 0 0 6 I B M S Y S T E M S M A G A Z I N E , A S E A N / S A & A N Z E D I T I O N

# 5 5 • J U N E 2 0 0 6

I N S I D E

C O V E R S T O R Y

Something For Everyone n 20DB2 UDB for i5/OS V5R4 offers many new

capabilities. By Jim Flanagan, cover illustration by

Jeffrey Brown

F E A T U R E

Riding the Wave n 28SQL enhancements abound in i5/OS V5R4.

By Linda Swan and Sue Romano

C O L U M N S

Editor’s Corner n 2

Product NewsOpening the PHP possibilities n 6

Integrating BladeCenter and xSeries

on System i5 using iSCSI n 10

Page 20 Page 28


I N S I D E

C O L U M N S

Trends n 14WebSphere Business Integration ServerExpress V4.4 Can Help Integrate BusinessProcesses and Data

Of SAP and i n 24IBM System i5 and POWER5+: Simplifies your SAP

Spotlight n 38This Gorilla Can Help Get a Monkey Off Your Back: PC-Engine fromTurboGorilla-Software

Case Study n 40Manhattan Associates: IBM SolutionGrows with Super Cheap Auto’s Booming Business

Customer’s Testimonial n 44FE Global Deploys IBM System i5 as a Catalyst for Growth

CTC Corner n 46PCI Standards Driving Need for CTC Services

ENDPGM n 48Helping System i Professionals is Midrange.com Moderator David Gibbs’Reward

The above results are from the opinion poll that was part of the US Edition’s March issue of themagazine's i5 EXTRA online newsletter.

Note: The EXTRA Poll is not scientific and reflects the opinions of only those Internet userswho have chosen to participate. The results cannot be assumed to represent the opinions ofInternet users in general, nor the public as a whole. The EXTRA Poll is not responsible forcontent, functionality or the opinions expressed therein.

i5 Business Systems edition

With V5R4, IBMintroduced manynew functions

for DB2* UDB* for i5/OS*.

In your opinion, what’s the most

useful new function?

Poll Position

Free-form RPGprecompiler

support

34.41 %

Additional SQL

capabilities

24.73 %

Performanceenhancements

24.73 %Improved

performancetooling

12.90 %Increased limits

2.15 %

System i5 users sound off

This publication could contain technical inaccuracies or typographical errors. Also, illustrations contained herein mayshow prototype equipment. Your system configuration may differ slightly. This publication contain small programs thatare furnished by IBM as simple examples to provide an illustration. These examples have not been thoroughly testedunder all conditions. IBM, therefore, cannot guarantee or imply reliability, serviceability, or function of theseprograms. All programs contained herein are provided to you “as is” implied warranties of merchantability and fitnessfor a particular purpose are expressly disclaimed. All rights reserved. Names of products and services marked with* may be trademarks of their respective companies. This IBM Systems Magazine ASEAN/SA & ANZ Edition isproduced for IBM by Thumb-Print Studio.Page 14


What’s new in the marketplace

Product News

Opening the PHP Possibilities

IBM and Zend unveil PHP capabilities specifically for the System i customer

BY LYNN BEHNKE

AT THIS YEAR’S SPRING COMMON, IBM* and Zendformally announced a multiyear agreement to deliverselected Zend PHP products for i5/OS*. PHP (PHPHypertext Preprocessor) is a popular open-sourcescripting language designed for Web applicationdevelopment and enables very simple scripting. PHPis widely used for content management, customer-relationship management, database access, e-commerce, forums, blogs, Wikis and other Web-basedapplications. Zend products to be enabled on IBMi5/OS V5R4 include:• Zend Core for i5/OS—a fully tested and enhanced

version of the open-source PHP runtimeenvironment

• Zend Platform for i5/OS—an integrated softwareplatform for PHP to support the reliability,scalability, monitoring and interoperabilityrequirements of business-critical PHP applications

• Zend Studio Professional for i5/OS—an integrateddevelopment environment for building anddebugging PHP applications

• Zend Guard—provides code protection and licensemanagement tools for ISVs

IBM Systems Magazine, i5 Business Systems editionrecently sat down with IBM System i* ProductManager, Craig Johnson, who was involved in thePHP project. Johnson sheds light on the PHPannouncement and explains its significance to Systemi customers.

Q: Why is PHP important to System i customers?A: PHP is important to System i customers, includingIT decision makers and developers, because it givesthem an easy, cost-effective and rapid way to deployWeb applications. PHP on i5/OS provides anintegrated and open Web-application deploymentenvironment that can be especially beneficial to

customers who want to accelerate the innovation oftheir business. Some of the key benefits PHP offers toour System i customers are:• An open, easy-to-use Web-applications

environment that has the support of a largecommunity of users, a community with more than10,000 PHP-based applications and components.

• An easy-to-use development approach that can helpSystem i customers speed their deployment of Webapplications. The PHP approach to applicationsdevelopment is a natural fit for System i customersand developers.

• The Zend PHP solution on i5/OS will help protectcustomer investments by supporting easyintegration of PHP applications with existing DB2*Universal Database (UDB) and RPG, COBOL, andother business applications on i5/OS.

Also, with millions of PHP developers in the worldtoday, PHP on i5/OS provides System i customersaccess to an immense pool of skilled resources forWeb-enablement projects.

Q: IBM announced PHP on i5/OS at COMMON inMay. How has the System i customer responsebeen? A: Great. We have numerous customers who are verymuch interested in PHP and have already downloadedthe early access release. In fact, support of PHP oni5/OS was expressed as a customer requirement atboth the COMMON Americas Advisory Council andthe COMMON Europe Advisory Council. There’sgrowing interest in developing Web-basedapplications using open and easy-to-use technologieslike PHP. We encourage our customers to try it withthe early access release, available today online(https://www.zend.com/core/oem_registration.php?access_code=IBMi5OS).


We’re also encouraging customers and solution developers tojoin the PHP community in the ongoing discussion of ZendCore for i5/OS by participating in the Zend Forum(www.zend.com/products/zend_core/zend_core_for_i5 andselect “Discussion Forum”).

Q: System i customers can get started with an early accessrelease of PHP for i5/OS now, but when will formal versionsbe available?A: The fully tested versions of Zend Core for i5/OS and ZendStudio Professional for i5/OS are planned to be available theend of July.

Q: Why did IBM choose Zend to provide PHP?A: Zend has been an industry leader in developing PHP as anopen solution for deploying Web applications. The founders ofZend have been key contributors to the PHP language since1997, and Zend has been the leading supplier of PHP productsand solutions for the last six years. Today Zend products andsolutions are being used by more than 15,000 companiesworldwide, and the Zend Engine (the PHP kernel) is beingutilized on more than 22 million Web sites.

Q: Why is i5/OS an ideal platform on which to run PHPapplications? A: i5/OS provides a leading integrated environment forbusiness applications. The i5/OS environment includesintegrated database, security, networking, virus protection,system management and storage capabilities. Because of itsintegration, an i5/OS platform supports PHP solutions with:• Enterprise scalability in a single operating environment on 1-

way to 64-way POWER5™ processors that offer industry-leading performance.

• Security and virus resistance by design, virtually eliminatingthe need to add new security patches. Additionally, the i5/OSresiliency capabilities include integrity protection, networkintrusion detection and built-in auditing.

• Availability and reliability. i5/OS integrates essentialplatform components with problem reporting, failuredetection, switchover, redundancy, self-managing storageand clustering to deliver industry-leading availability andreliability. These components are developed, integrated andtested to help ensure that all of the capabilities work togetherand work reliably.

• Direct and easy access by PHP applications to other businessapplications and data running on i5/OS.

• Low cost of ownership. i5/OS has a proven track record ofdelivering a low cost of ownership for applicationdeployments.

Q: What i5/OS release supports the Zend PHP solution?A: The Zend solution requires i5/OS V5R4.

Q: Will PHP applications have access to DB2 UDB on i5/OS?How about RPG and COBOL programs? A: Yes to both questions. IBM and Zend are working to enablePHP applications to easily access and use data in DB2 UDB oni5/OS, and to call RPG and COBOL OPM and ILE applicationson i5/OS. This support is planned to be available in Zend Corefor i5/OS.

Q: Are there PHP scripts available to use?A: Yes, there are thousands of PHP scripts available on PHP-related Web sites. The scripts can be used as-is or as thestarting point for Web projects. Jump on the Web and you’llfind PHP scripts at www.hotscripts.com, www.phpjunkyard.com/, www.phpfreaks.com/ and http://phpfreebies.com/.

Q: How does PHP relate to Java*? A: Java is a general-purpose programming language used for awide range of application types. PHP is a specializedprogramming language focused on Web and Web-servicesdevelopment. Even though there can be overlap, Java isgenerally used more for transaction-based systems andembedded applications, while PHP is generally used more forWeb applications. For Web applications, PHP can be a simplelanguage to learn and, given the availability of thousands ofopen components, PHP can allow for quick prototyping anddeployment. The two languages can be easily mixed inenvironments where Java back-end applications have PHPWeb-based front-ends.

Q: Where can customers and developers go for moreinformation?A: System i customers and solution developers can learn moreabout the IBM and Zend PHP announcement atwww.ibm.com/systems/i/software/php/. For more on PHP, visitwww.zend.com or www.php.net. For an overview of keyfeatures of i5/OS, visit www.ibm.com/servers/eserver/iseries/software/os/i5os.html. And, customers andothers can ask questions of the PHP community by selecting“Discussion Forum” at www.zend.com/products/zend_core/zend_core_for_i5.

Lynn Behnke is a project leader in the Rochester Center ofIBM’s International Technical Support Organization. TheRochester Center is the primary development center for Systemi Redbooks. Lynn can be reached at [email protected].

The information on this page has been provided by Zend. IBMis not in a position to verify the accuracy of the information orany claims made by third parties. Subject to any rights whichmay not be excluded or limited, IBM makes no representationsor warranties regarding non-IBM products or services.

FRESH

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Let Artis help you take full advantage of both the new POWER5+ processors, and the enhanced features of the V5R4 Operating System, without a significant investment. Our expert team of trained and certifi ed System i5 specialists are determined to extract maximum performance from your infrastructure. Partner with Artis and get maximum value from your System i5 investment.

Time for a fresh approach to your business performance? Join the growing list of companies who have taken advantage of our System i5 Health Check and System i5 Operating System Upgrade services to maximise their system performance and reap the full benefi ts of V5R4.

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Integrating BladeCenter* andxSeries* on System i5 using iSCSIBY PHIL AINSWORTH

THE iSCSI ARCHITECTURE on System i5* isdifferent than the previous integrationarchitecture based around the IntegratedxSeries Server (IXS) and Integrated xSeriesAdapter (IXA), although there are manycommon features and functions. IXSs andIXAs are connected to the iSeries* or Systemi5 over the internal bus in the case of theIXS, or the external HSL bus in the case ofthe IXA. In the case of iSCSI, BladeCenterand xSeries servers connect to the System i5over an iSCSI network. Therefore, the bigdifference between the iSCSI architecture andIXS/IXA architecture is the mode ofcommunication between the hosting i5/OSpartition and the hosted Blade or xSeriesserver. Functionally, however, the twoarchitectures are almost identical.

It is important to realize that both the IXS/IXA architectureand the iSCSI architecture can coexist on the same System i5machine. Therefore, a customer who has already invested inIXS/IXA on System i5 hardware can retain the IXS/IXAhardware and install iSCSI-connected servers alongside theexisting servers. Also, customers with pre-System i5 hardwarecan migrate their IXS/IXA hardware to System i5 and investin iSCSI-connected servers when they require additionalWindows* capability.

iSCSI connectivity of BladeCenter and xSeries servers toSystem i5 is supported on models 520, 550, 570 and 595running V5R4 only.

OVERVIEW At its heart, the iSeries and System i5 integration architecture,whether it is based on IXS and IXA or the new iSCSIarchitecture, provides a SAN capability to connected Windowsservers. This is a similar capability to that provided bytraditional SANs, but with some architectural, functional andmanage-ment benefits that differentiate the System i SANfrom traditional SANs.

The new iSCSI-based SAN architecture, as implemented onSystem i5, is represented in Figure 1 (above). The two mostobvious architectural features of the System i5 iSCSI SANimplementation are the use of single level storage, and industrystandard iSCSI networking.

Single level storage is the revolutionaryand unique storage management architecturethat has always been available on the Systemi5 and its predecessors. This capability takesthe same ease of management that AS/400*,iSeries and System i5 users have alwaystaken for granted, and makes it available tothe SAN world.

Using the iSCSI protocol for the transportof SCSI data is an established industrystandard. This is in contrast to HSL which isused with the IXS/IXA architecture and isunique to System i. iSCSI makes available toSystem i5 users technology that is commonlyavailable in the marketplace, and industrystandards that will be enhanced over time.

The many benefits of the previousIXS/IXA integration architecture are still available with thenew iSCSI implementation, however, the iSCSI architectureprovides some important new advantages including:• The flexibility, scalability and low cost associated with an

industry standard such as iSCSI• The capability of connecting IBM BladeCenter servers to the

System i5 SAN• Less rigid limits on the number of servers that can be

connected to the System i5 SAN compared with IXS and IXA• The ability to install Windows on an iSCSI-connected server

from a remote locationThe benefits that are available with IXS and IXA, and are alsoavailable with iSCSI, include:• Graphical management of the System i5 SAN environment

using iSeries Navigator:- Remote startup and shutdown of Windows servers- Windows disk management- Windows user management

• Extremely flexible storage management including:- Virtualized disk drives for Windows ranging in size from 1

MB to 1 TB- Up to 60 TB of disk storage per Windows server- Up to 64 virtual disks per Windows server- High performance disk I/O using System i storage

management- The ability to enlarge Windows disk drives, including the

C: drive

System i5 iSCSI SAN architectureFig 1

Product News


- The ability to logically move disk drives between Windowsservers

- The ability to create Windows disk drives remotely and linkthem to an active server

• Enhanced backup options including:- The ability to back up Windows files to System i tape drives- The ability to incorporate Windows backups into System i

backups- The ability to perform a fast backup of a complete

Windows disk drive- The ability to perform a file level backup of Windows files

using i5/OS commands- The incorporation of Windows Volume Shadow Copy

Service into a file level backup- The ability to back up Windows drives to disk for fast

restore and online access• High availability options including:

- Hot spare hardware- Hot spare Windows system drive- Microsoft Cluster Service support (not yet available for iSCSI)- Enhanced Windows reliability using tested IBM hardware

and drivers• Innovative and unique capabilities such as:

- The virtualization of server hardware and instances ofWindows which provides:

• Server consolidation because less hardware is required • “Dormant” instances of Windows which can be used for

testing

- User profile and password synchronisation between Systemi and Windows

- 1GB internal Ethernet network linking Windows serversand System i partitions

iSCSI OVERVIEWHere we compare the previous HSL-based IXS/IXA integrationarchitecture with the new iSCSI architecture.

The previous HSL-based IXS/IXA SAN architecture, shownin Figure 2 (left), enabled xSeries* servers to be connected toiSeries and System i5 in two ways:

• Over the internal bus of the iSeries in the case of IXS• Over a HSL connection in the case of IXA

Although very fast, this architecture imposes strict limits onthe number of IXS and IXA servers that can be connected tothe iSeries. IXS servers require special PCI slots in the iSeriessystem unit and I/O towers. Therefore, to increase the numberof IXSs, you may need to acquire an additional I/O tower,which is expensive. Also, connectivity of xSeries serversexternally to iSeries is restricted by the number of HSL loopssupported on each iSeries model. Another drawback of theIXS/IXA architecture is that BladeCenter connectivity over HSLis not supported, which also restricts the flexibility of thisimplementation. Despite these restrictions many customershave installed the IXS/IXA integration technology for themany benefits it provides. (see Figure 2, left)

The new industry standard iSCSI-based SAN implementation,as shown in Figure 3 (below) and Figure 4 (below), reduces theprevious limitations on the number of servers that can beconnected to System i5, and provides full BladeCenterconnectivity. Therefore it is better able to meet the SANrequirements of System i5 customers.

The key hardware features of the iSCSI SAN architecture onSystem i5 are:• The iSCSI network, which connects the hosting System i5

partition to the hosted BladeCenter or xSeries servers, is aswitched 1GB Ethernet network. Whether you are connectinga BladeCenter or xSeries server to System i5, all iSCSIconnections must go through a switch. In the case of xSeries,this must be an external 1GB switch as shown in Figure 3(below). In the case of BladeCenter, the switch can be a 1GB

HSL-connected xSeries serversFigure 2

iSCSI-connected xSeries serverFigure 3

iSCSI-connected BladeCenter serverFigure 4

(continued on page 36)

Industry signals to keep you in the know

Trends

Integrating BusinessProcesses and Data?WebSphere Business Integration Server Express V4.4 can help

BY BODEN RUSSELL AND KATHRYN LAMONT


ILL

US

TR

AT

ION

BY

RO

Y W

IEM

AN

N

B usiness process and data integration areamong the greatest challenges facing smalland medium businesses (SMBs) in today’s

marketplace. External pressures from industrystandards, supplier mandates and governmentregulations require an IT infrastructure that’s robustyet compliant. Internal forces—cost reduction,increased productivity and improved customerservice—demand IT infrastructures that meet overallbusiness objectives. Integration is further complicatedby the fact that most existing infrastructures consistof applications not designed to work together.

IBM* WebSphere* Business Integration ServerExpress (Server Express), which is targeted at the SMBmarketplace, provides capabilities to implement,deploy and manage integration solutions. ServerExpress provides an integrated developmentenvironment and run-time platform for buildingintegration solutions. It allows integration ofapplications and data with business processes. Theproduct is designed with robustness and flexibility inmind and thus supports growth from the simplest tothe most complex solutions.

This article provides an overview of the most recentrelease of IBM WebSphere Business Integration ServerExpress for i5/OS* V4.4. We’ll introduce the maincomponents of the product and provide a high-levelview of how the pieces work together to create theoverall integration solution. Additional references arealso provided to help you learn more about theproduct (see the “References” sidebar on page 19).

The BasicsServer Express integrates applications and data usinga hub-and-spoke architecture rather than a point-to-point implementation (see Figure 1, page 16). The

hub-and-spoke architecture helps reduce the cost and effortrequired to integrate a process. Additionally, once anapplication is plugged into the hub, it can leverage any otherapplications participating. The InterChange Server Express(ICS) acts as the hub and provides the common business logicacross all applications. Connectors are the spokes in thisarchitecture and integrate applications with the ICS. Thisarchitecture allows for a simplified and reusable solution. Theproduct comes with many pre-packaged connectors, helpingreduce time to market and overall implementation costs.

Server Express also includes a comprehensive set ofgraphical development and administration tools, called ToolsetExpress. Both the development and administration tools run ona Windows* PC and interact with a remote ICS. A subset of thetool suite can be installed to i5/OS as Web applications thatcan be accessed via a browser. This flexibility allowsdevelopment and administration of integration solutions frommultiple points to suit your needs.

The product runs on OS/400* V5R2 and i5/OS V5R3 andV5R4 (except the PC-based toolset) and has two editions:Express and Express Plus. Server Express Plus allows thepurchasing/installation of additional pre-packagedcollaborations and application connectors. Express Plus alsocontains an additional tool—the Process Designer—for creatingand manipulating business-process logic. Since the Expressversion doesn’t allow manipulation of business-process logic,it’s often incorporated as part of a solution with pre-built logicby vendors. The solution can be contained completely on onesystem or spread across several systems. This allows for the useof remote components and provides flexibility to thesolution’s development.

Design-Time Components Throughout the remainder of this article we’ll use the terms“component” and “artifact.” A component generally refers to aportion of the product that can be installed or run as an entity.Examples include the ICS, connectors, Web-based toolset, etc.An artifact refers to an object created for an integrationsolution using the Toolset Express. Examples include businessobjects (BOs), collaborations, maps, business rules,relationships, etc.

The Toolset Express consists of administration anddevelopment tools that are installed to the local workstation(i.e., Windows XP or Windows 2003). Administration toolsinclude tools for managing process flows, starting andstopping components on i5/OS, viewing logs, etc. Console, atool specific to i5/OS, is part of the administrative tools andgives the user the ability to create/start/stop instances,


Figure 1

Art

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Figure 2

Connector

Console FlowManager

Log Viewer

System Manager

Relationship Manager

Test Connector

Business Object

Designer Express

Connector Configurator

Express

Map Designer Express

Relationship Designer Express

Process Designer Express

Administration Development

BusinessObject

BusinessObject Relationship Business

ObjectConnector Map Relationship Collaboration

Template Connector

BusinessRule

Connector

InterChangeServer

Map

Relationship

CollaborationObject

InterChange Server

ODA


connectors and object-discovery agents (ODAs) from his/herlocal workstation. The development toolset contains a tool foreach major artifact. Finally, the toolset includes a tool to helpfamiliarize first-time users of the product and verify the install.Figure 2 (page 16) shows all of the tools included in the ToolsetExpress and shows which artifact/component that toolimplements or develops.

Server Express provides the option to install a subset of thetoolset as Web-based applications. These applications, calledWeb-based tools, install to WebSphere Application Server (v5.1.1 or v 6.0) on i5/OS and provide many of the capabilities ofthe administrative toolset on the PC. The Web-based tools useHTTP/HTTPS and are accessible from any Web browser.

Run-Time ComponentsThe ICS, a key run-time component of the product, is the “hub”in the hub-and-spoke architecture. The ICS is a multithreadedJava* technology-based event broker with capabilities to

execute business processes and supporting logic. The serveralso provides platform transparency to its run-timecomponents—artifacts that make up a solution can be importedand exported between ICSs. The server and artifacts are objectoriented (OO), which allows us to reap OO benefits (e.g., reusewhen designing and implementing solutions with ServerExpress). The ICS also provides a public Java* API called theServer Access Interface that applications use to create andinvoke objects within the ICS.

Each ICS is self-contained and individually configurable,which allows the i5/OS platform to support multiple ICSinstances. Multiple ICS instances are only supported on i5/OSand must be run according to your license agreement. A keybenefit of this feature is that development and productionServer Express environments can be isolated and maintainedseparately. This can reduce risk, decrease time to market andincrease uptime of the production solution.

BOs are both events and data structures used to passinformation between applications in Server Express. Each BOrepresents a specific “entity” (i.e., a customer or an order), andmay contain children BOs to form a hierarchical structure.Hierarchical BOs provide reuse and allow a designer to developBOs from the bottom up or the top down. For example, a BOrepresenting a person would contain data like first name, lastname, birth date and occupation; while an address BO wouldcontain street name, city, state and ZIP. Since BOs canreference other BOs, the original person BO could also containa reference to the address BO for better data organization. BOsalso contain an attribute called a “verb,” which specifies theevent type associated with the BO. Examples of common verbsinclude: create, retrieve, update and delete.

Server Express has two types of BOs: application-specificbusiness objects (ASBOs) and generic business objects (GBOs).Each application will have its own ASBOs, which representdata entities the application wants to share with the ICS.ASBOs are necessary since two applications may share acommon entity (i.e., customer), but the entity has a differentstructure in each application. Another example is that oneapplication could represent a person with a full name andbirthday, while a second application represents the sameperson with first name, last name and occupation type data.Each data representation would be a separate ASBO.

A GBO is a convergence of all ASBOs for a specific entityand contains the data shared across all applications using thisspecific entity. So in the previous person example, the GBOwould contain all of the fields (full name, birthday andoccupation) in the structure decided by the integrationdeveloper. GBOs are used by collaborations in the ICS.Connectors use ASBOs when getting/putting data into theapplication’s datastore.

Connectors, the “spokes” of the hub-and-spoke architecture,provide the means to exchange data with an application or

Figure 3

Native Connectors

Non-Native Connectors

Application

Application

Lotus Domino

Email

COM

Exchange

JD Edwards One World

mySAP.com SAPR/3 v3.x and 4.x

Oracle Applications

eMatrix

i2

PeopleSoft 8.x

Siebel eBusiness Applications

HTTP

Healthcare

iSeries

JDBC

JMS

JText

SWIFT

TCPIP

WebServices

WebSphere Commerce

WebSphere MQ

XML

Technology

Technology

J U N E 2 0 0 6 I B M S Y S T E M S M A G A Z I N E , A S E A N / S A & A N Z E D I T I O N 19

technology. Connectors are often classified as “application” or“technology.” Technology connectors are installed with thebase product and allow integration with your applications viatechnologies such as JDBC, Java Message Service (JMS), Webservices, i5/OS data queues, text files, etc. If the technologyyour application uses has a connector, then the correspondingconnector can interface your application into the ICS.Application adapters contain logic to access the datastore ofexisting applications such as SAP, JD Edwards/OneWorld andOracle. Figure 3 (opposite page) includes the full list ofconnectors supported by Server Express. Leveraging one of thepre- packaged connectors can reduce time-to-market; howevercustom-created connectors are an option.

Connectors consist of two components—an agent and acontroller. An agent is a separate process (i.e., startedseparately from the ICS) and can execute on the same machineor remotely from the ICS. The agent is responsible fortransforming data from its native format in the application ortechnology to an ASBO and vice versa. The actual datatransformation is performed by a separate component called adata handler. A connector controller, which runs inside the ICS,is responsible for sending/receiving BOs to and from itscorresponding agent and delivering the BOs to collaborations(via a publish-subscribe mechanism). Additionally, thecontroller invokes a map artifact to transform the BOs to andfrom ASBOs/GBOs. Communication between an agent andcontroller is supported using JMS or Interface DefinitionLanguage (IDL); JMS being the choice for production solutions.

When we speak of connectors on i5/OS, we also use theterms native versus non-native. Native implies the connector’sagent can run on i5/OS; non-native means the agent doesn’trun on i5/OS. If a non-native connector is needed in an i5/OSplatform-based solution, the non-native connector agent can

run on Windows or Linux* as supported by Server Express. Thecontroller will still run in the ICS on i5/OS. This allowsprocessing logic to reside in the ICS on i5/OS, which caninterface with applications on other platforms.

Additionally, some connectors are installed with an ODA,which is a separate process that can generate BOs based on aspecific technology or format. For example, the XML ODA cangenerate BOs for use in Server Express solutions based on XMLschema or Document Type Definitions (DTDs), substantiallydecreasing BO implementation time.

Business-process logic is implemented as a “collaboration” inServer Express. Two artifacts are associated with acollaboration: a collaboration template and a collaborationinstance. The template contains the processing logic, variables,accepted BOs, etc. They’re designed using Unified ModelingLanguage (UML) diagrams with the Process Designer tool. Acollaboration instance is created to bind a specific instance ofa collaboration to other collaborations or connectors. In OOterms, the template is like a class definition, and an instance islike a specific instance of the class.

Collaborations are used for many operations in business-process logic ranging from simply moving data from oneconnector to another to a complex scenario spanning multiplesystems and applications. Common uses for collaborations arefilteration, data retrieval, verb handling/manipulation, errorhandling, e-mail notification, and synchronous orasynchronous calls to connectors or other collaborations.Collaborations are dynamically configurable at runtime viaproperties that can be set on a per-collaboration-instance basis.And since collaborations are based on OO principals, theyprovide reuse.

A Complete Toolset Server Express provides a flexible and robust toolset andruntime to support the whole lifecycle of your integrationsolutions. Development tools allow you to design and testintegration solutions, and once satisfied put them intoproduction. Administration and management tools allow youto monitor and manage your integration solutions in realtime.With the Server Express run-time components supported oni5/OS, you can integrate solutions on your platform of choice.The following is a brief summary on how to get started withthe product:1. Determine which technologies and applications will be

integrated with the solution to decide which connectorsto use.

2. Determine if any pre-packaged collaboration packs can be(continued on page 36)

WebSphere* Business Integration Server Expressdocumentation on the IBM* Information Center:www.publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wbihelp/v6rxmx/topic/com.ibm.wbise.doc/welcome_wbise.htm

WebSphere Business Integration Server Express suggesteddevelopment model and process on the IBM InformationCenter: www.publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wbihelp/v6rxmx/t o p i c / c o m . i b m . w b i s e _ a d m i n i s t r a t i o n . d o c / d o c /system_implementation/imp44mst23.htm

References

Server Express provides a flexible and robust toolset and runtime to support

the whole lifecycle of your integration solutions.



ILLU

STR

ATIO

N B

Y J

EFFR

EY B

RO

WN

IBM* DB2* Universal Database* (UDB) for i5/OS*

debuts with a variety of enhancements for V5R4.

This article provides a look at many of these new

capabilities, which include completion of SQL

standards, application-portability enhancements,

Structured Query Engine (SQE)-performance

enhancements and database tools. With so many choices,

you’re bound to find something to suit your tastes.

SQL Standard Database

V5R4 delivers one of the first major databases to satisfy

all of the core components of the 2003 SQL Standard,

showing the commitment of i5/OS to open standards,

including support for the ANSI timestamp format. These

open standards lay the groundwork for open interfaces

that can be used by application providers to produce

more function-filled applications.

something for

everyone

SQL standards, application-portability, SQE-performance and

database tool enhanced with V5R4version of DB2 UDB for i5/OS

BY JIM FLANAGAN


Several database limits have also been raised. Previously,SQL programmers had been limited to 30 characters forcolumn names. Now, they can define column names up to 128characters. Also, query-generating programs and programmerscan build more sophisticated business logic into their SQLstatements because of the new 1,000 table references limit.They can also generate SQL statements up to 2 MB in length.

Journaling received several enhancements as well,including raising the maximum number of objectsjournaled to a single journal to 10,000,000.

Application Portability and Modernization One of the most exciting enhancements is new supportin the RPG precompiler for embeddingSQL statements in free format. Now RPGapplications can more cleanly integrate SQLwith their current native database access.

In the data-warehousing area, DB2 UDBfor i5/OS expands its capabilities insupporting data-warehouse workloads inV5R4 by delivering additional SQL to supportonline analytical processing (OLAP) functions,which include RANK, DENSE_RANK and ROW_NUMBER. These ranking and unique rownumber functions help a user more easilyprocess a query’s result set. Also support hasbeen added for Recursive Common TableExpressions, which provide more efficientprocessing of hierarchical data by allowingrecursive access to a table.

Alter Procedure has been added to ease theversioning and maintenance of code deliveredthrough stored procedures. This allows programmersto change the application logic within the procedurewithout dropping the procedure. Also enhanced inV5R4 is the engine used to process assignmentstatements in SQL procedures, functions and triggers,which may result in improved performance.

The database also extended its XA support to DistributedRelational Database Architecture (DRDA) allowing ISVs to takeadvantage of distributed transactions through DRDA-baseddrivers such as the DB2 Universal JDBC driver within DB2Connect Unlimited Edition for iSeries* systems.

Additional SQL support includes expanded fullselect support,which allows you to put a fullselect statement anywhere anexpression can be specified. This function and the addition ofrow value expressions support provide improved portabilityacross the DB2 family as well as from other databases.

Performance Enhancements SQE has added the capability to run SQL statements thatcontain a LIKE predicate, access large object (LOB) columns or

use substring scalar functions. Sensitive cursor requests arealso now supported. These enhancements enable more SQLstatements to be run using SQE, taking advantage of thenewest optimization techniques.

Another significant addition to SQE is the ability to createand maintain temporary indexes. These temporary indexescan be shared across jobs, and are created, shared and

removed from the system at the discretion of theSQE query engine.

You can now add an attribute namedVOLATILE to your CREATE TABLE and ALTER

TABLE statement to give a hint to the optimizeras to the variability of the number rows expectedin this table.

SQE can now take advantage of MaterializedQuery Tables (MQTs) when evaluating optimizationplans and thereby improve performance based ongetting the query results from the MQT insteadof always going to the underlying tables.Improvements to MQT support, as well as the

overall performance improvements to the database,have resulted in continued leadership in benchmarkssuch as the SAP BW benchmark.

On Demand Performance Center Tools If you’re responsible for SQL performance

tuning of your environment, you’ll wantto examine the set of tools in the On

Demand Performance Center. The DB2 On Demand Performance Center,

which is part of iSeries* Navigator, offerssignificant advances in analyzing and tuning SQLperformance characteristics of your system. Manyfeatures are wrapped up in this center, so we’ll only

briefly tour each one:• Automatic Index Advisor• “Always on” plan cache

• Start Monitor wizard and filtering• Summary and analysis of SQL Performance Monitor• Compare SQL Performance Monitors• Show Indexes and Show MQTs

Let’s examine some performance situations and how thecomponents within the DB2 On Demand Performance Centermight help you with them.

Automatic Index Advisor—The first situation you mightfind yourself in is that eternal question: Could the optimizerdo a more efficient job if it had more insight/advice intowhat the queries think are the important columns in theproduction tables? Prior to V5R4, you could get thisinformation from the optimizer by either starting an SQLPerformance Monitor or running a specific query through the

Visual Explain tool. With V5R4 you no longer have to doeither of these. The optimizer automatically records anyindexes it would like to have to help satisfy a query. Notonly that, but it can summarize the index advice no matterwhich applications generate the queries so that multipleindex advice is combined for you.

“Always on” plan cache—Say you get called about anapplication-performance problem, and you think it may beSQL-query related. Since it’s after the fact, it’s often too late todiagnose the original problem. What if you had a way to goback in time and see what the optimizer thought washappening? Now in V5R4, you can with the “alwayson” SQL Plan Cache tool. With this new tool you canchoose to analyze SQL query statements either in thepast or present without turning on any kind ofmonitor. Want to know the top 10 longest-runningqueries on the system? Let the tool’s filteringcapability find them for you. Not only that, butthen run the Visual Explain tool from the same dialog.When you find the problem query, use the savefeature to save it to a plan cache snapshot.Now you’ve captured a query environmentfor just that query so that you cananalyze and tune its performance later.

Start Monitor wizard and filtering—When your analysis is more focusedfrom an entire application viewpoint,you want to use a tool to evaluatethe SQL performance from abroader view. V5R4 includes newand improved pre-/post-filteringcapabilities within the SQLPerformance Monitor tool.Beginning in V5R4, an SQL-detailed monitor is started with awizard. In addition, several newpre-filtering capabilities are providedbefore you start a monitor. You can easily subset the amountof monitor data captured, thereby reducing the amount ofoverhead needed to capture the data. If you don’t know whichapplications access a certain table, but you care about thattable’s performance, no problem. Just set the filter for queriesthat access this table. Now only SQL statements that refer tothat table are captured.

Summary and analysis of SQL Performance Monitor—Another addition to the SQL Performance Monitor tooladdresses where to start analyzing an application’sperformance data. The summarization of SQL PerformanceMonitor data has been greatly improved in V5R4. Once you

have the data collected, you can view a summary screen to seeif there are any hotspot areas to concentrate on for thismonitor. Also, you have drill-down and post-filteringcapabilities to further reduce the data to just the specificstatements for the table you’re interested in. Once you havethe data collected, you can subset it for each of theapplications that accessed the table into their own data filesand then send them to the application developers for analysis.

Compare SQL performance monitors—How about thesituation where you wished you had a way to compare the

before/after picture of your SQL application’s performanceafter you changed something? The detailed monitor

compare tool is just for you. So now after yourapplication programmers assure you they’veimproved the performance of theirqueries/applications, you can capture anotherSQL performance monitor and do a side-by-side

comparison, complete with Visual Explain picturesof the before and after statements.

Show Indexes and Show MQTs—Nowthat you have your application tuned andfeel comfortable with your indexingstrategy, how can you see if there aresome indexes that the optimizer isn’tusing? You can turn to the Show

Indexes tool. Right-click on a table andyou can view all of the indexes,keyed logical files (LFs), keyedphysical files (PFs) and constraintsdefined over a given table/PF.Additionally, the tool displays usage

statistics for each index to help you seeif the index has ever been used by SQL. AV5R4 enhancement to this tool is the last-

used date, which will reflect the last timethe table was accessed by native read/writes.

You can use this Show Indexes capability in conjunction withthe new Index Advisor to create the indexes recommended bythe optimizer and then look to ensure your index was used.

Show MQTs function was added in V5R4 to do the samefunctionality for MQTs. The Show MQTs function will showusage statistics to help determine that the MQTs are beingused where you intended.

Additional Tools How about that call you occasionally get where some of yourapplications are running slower, and you determine that theindexes used by the queries in the applications are rebuilding?In V5R4 you have the ability to see the indexes that are being


(continued on page 36)


IBM System i5 and POWER5+:Simplifies your SAPBY WALTER LANG

Benefits for SAP customers in a nutshell

Of SAP and i

Executive OverviewThe IBM System i5 is a powerful, easy-to-use andcost-effective IT system for the mySAP Business Suite.It helps to simplify IT landscapes, while requiring justa small IT staff to manage even complexSAP solution environments at low cost ofoperation. i5 is an ideal platform for SAPcustomers who are looking for easyuseability, high performance, solidreliability and care-free operation of theirSAP solution landscape.

IBM System i5 supports the completerange of the mySAP Business Suite, either natively, orin combination with integrated Linux- and/or MSWindows-environments. Based on IBM's latest 64bitPOWER5+ processor technology, it offers smoothscalability options for 2-tier and 3-tier SAPlandscapes. Single i5 servers can scale from 1 to 64processors, meaning from dozens to thousands of(standard) users in terms of SAP capacity. With over2500 SAP Installations, System i5 has establisheditself as one of SAP's strategic HW/OS-platforms.

Its i5/OS operating system (follow-on to OS/400)and its integrated DB2 UDB database provides a trulyintegrated IT-platform, addressing customer needs forcost-optimized IT operation. It allows highlyautomized system management with autonomicstorage administration, flexible adaptability toworkload changes via dynamic logical partitioning(LPAR), and Capacity on Demand (CUoD).

Multi-platform support for AIX and Linuxenvironments and tight integration of Intel-basedservers or blades offer ideal ways for SAP customersto consolidate their solution landscape onto a singleserver. A new Virtualization Engine (VE) can help SAPcustomers to set up virtual IT landscapes, and to betterexploit their existing IT resources.

i5 servers provide multiple substantial benefits forSAP customers, ranging from top performance,enhanced i5/OS functionality, high level virtualization,extreme reliability and easy upgradeability. All these

benefits combined offer excellent investmentprotection and substantially lower TCA and TCO. Thenew IBM POWER5 technology maximizes the ROI ofthe mySAP Business Suite (see page 26).

The i5/OS operating systemstrengthens i5's capabilities towards IBM'svision of Autonomic Computing andlikewise towards SAP's initiative forAdaptive Computing. The traditional 'SAP-on- iSeries' values like ease-of-use, highavailability, and fast applicationdeployment are maintained and even

further increased.Seen from an SAP customer perspective, the i5

technology provides substantial benefits:• The new POWER5+ technology offers more than

doubled SAP capacity per processor (vs. POWER4technology)

• System i5 offers excellent price/performance;especially the IBM System i5 Solution Edition formySAPTM ERP, which minimizes the initialhardware investment for SAP customers

• New virtualization functions in i5/OS allow evenbetter exploitation of available IT equipment, andrequire less hardware to run a given SAP workload.

• Multi-Platform support enables SAP customer tosimplify their IT landscapes and to achieve anextreme level of server consolidation andapplication harmonization with reduced effort forsystem management.

• The integrated DB2 UDB database comes free-of-charge as an integral part of the i5/OS operatingsystem, which saves SAP customers the customarysubstantial cost for a database license.

• IBM System i helps to simplify IT landscapes, andrequires just a small IT staff to manage even complexSAP solution environments at low cost of operation.

• Increased system availability allows non-disruptiveIT operation, and a high level of applicationavailability.

• i5 maximizes the ROI of the mySAP Business Suite.


IBM POWER5+ and mySAP Business SolutionsIBM's current range of System i5 and the V5R4 version of thei5/OS operating system are based on IBM's POWER5+ processortechnology. They provide numerous technical advancementswhich enable SAP customers to draw substantial benefits andto increase the ROI of their IT investment. 1. Enhanced performance with next generation IBM POWER5+

64bit processors2. Enriched functionality in i5/OS and DB2 UDB3. Increased reliability and availability4. High level virtualization of computing resources5. Multiplatform support for AIX 5L, MS Windows and Linux

Applications 6. High investment protection through seamless upgradeability7. Substantially lower TCA and TCO

1) Outstanding SAP Performance with i520, i550, i570 andi595 servers

Smaller systems with more SAPS! IBM POWER5+ technologyis the result of a complete architectural change, creating anextremely efficient superscalar processor complex. SMTtechnology with an increased clockrate of 2.2GHz, resp.1.9GHz, give the IBM System i5 a massive performance boost,which is fully available and ready to use for SAP customers.

SMT (simultaneous multi-threading) allows instructions oftwo different threads to be executed in a single processor cycle.To put it simply, SMT enables an i5 processor to perform morethan one transaction simultaneously, thus achieving a higherthroughput of overall workload compared to non-SMTenvironments.

The result is outstanding performance, as proven in recentSAP benchmarks( SAP certification #2005011 and #2004073,see www.sap.com/benchmark )

2) Enriched Functionality in i5/OS and DB2 UDB Flexible On-Demand features, multi-platform support, betterand faster SQL functions: i5/OS V5R4 is officially SAP-certified and brings numerous useful advancements for SAPcustomers:• Extended LPAR technology (based on IBM POWER

Hypervisor) extends i5's Multi-Platform capabilities to runmultiple OS environments (i5/OS, AIX 5L, LINUX) on asingle i5 server

• Enhanced support of integrated xSeries servers running MSWindows and/or LINUX

• Extended options* for Capacity on Demand (CoD) andAutomated processor balancing* for quick activation of spareHW capacity and better sharing of computing resources

• The IBM ‘Virtualization Engine' (VE) with extensive HW/SWvirtualization capabilities for maximum exploitation of theavailable IT resources, even across IT platforms

• Most of the i5/OS functionalities provide direct and useful

benefits for SAP customers., in terms of ease-of-use andhighly flexible mySAP landscaping. i5/OS V5R4 is availableas ‘Standard Edition' (as included in the IBM System i5Solution Edition for mySAPTM ERP) which is sufficient torun SAP solutions, or as ‘Enterprise Edition' which offersuseful additional functions to help manage mySAP solutionlandscapes.

3) DB2 UDB database - integrated in i5/OS, with extendedfunctions and new capabilities

DB2 UBD on i5 provides latest database technology in fullcompliance with current SQL and XML standards. It isespecially designed for data-analysis/-mining and businesswarehousing tasks.

New functionality for enhanced SQL support (e.g. ‘Star JoinRecognition', ‘Result set caching', ‘Preview Materialized QueryTable', real-time Index Advisor, enhanced SQL performancemonitor) allow speedy execution of complex data warehousingoperations, and help SAP customers achieve better and fasterresults from their mySAP BW systems.

Built-in features for ‘autonomic' database managementprovide extreme ease-of-use. DB2 on i5 is widely self-managing, requires just minimal manual attention, and freesthe IT staff of most tedious DB management task likemonitoring of file-extensions, table spaces and diskspace .

4) Increased reliability and availabilityBetter protection and higher uptime for SAP SolutionLandscapes: POWER5+ based systems bring on numerousavailability improvements for non-disruptive IT operations. Ontop of the existing ‘High Availability' options, like IASP(independent ASPs) and database mirroring, i5 technology nowprovides interesting additional options for SAP customers toprotect their mySAP solution landscape, and to reach an evenhigher level of business resilience system protection:• New features like ‘Rapid Checkpoint' to enable increased

database performance and recovery• Increased availability of System i5 of close to 100%• Cross Site Mirroring (XSM) to provide extreme H/A options

to protect mySAP solution landscape from failure or outage• Enhanced features for business resilience and continuous

operation offer On-Demand capabilities to help SAPcustomers maximize their over-all IT-asset utilization.

5) High level virtualization of computing resourcesExploit your IT resources, and do more with less! A new levelof IT resource virtualization is delivered along with a full setof tools, enabling SAP customers to set-up and run virtual ITlandscapes safely and easily. Virtualization allows SAPcustomer to better exploit their existing IT resources, and tolower their cost of operation .

Core component is the IBM VE (‘virtualization engine')


which provides functions and tools to design, manage andcontrol virtual IT landscapes, consisting of different ITplatforms and operating systems. Integrated components likethe IBM Enterprise Workload Manager (‘EWLM'), IBM‘Director' and IBM ‘Navigator', IBM HMC (HardwareManagement Console) and IBM BRMS (IBM Backup/RecoveryManagement System) provide • cross platform end-to-end view of goal oriented performance

management for enterprise applications • centralized management and monitoring for multiple

operating environments• Web access to manage Web applications• easy management of multiple clustered system and multiple-

partitioned environments for i5/OS, Linux, AIX 5L and MSWindows based servers.

6) Multi-platform support for AIX5L, MS Windows andLinux Applications

Consolidate multiple applications and servers on i5: System i5supports extended “multiplatform support” i5/OS, AIX 5L, andLinux (SuSe, Redhat) running parallel in concurrent LPARs. Thisfurther enhances System i5's ability to consolidate applicationsfrom OS origins onto a single server environment. To put itsimply: System i5 offer multiple IT landscapes on a single box.

System i5 multi-platform support delivers an integratedmanagement environment with services such as partitioning,hardware virtualization, and workload management for i5/OS,AIX, and Linux environments on an IBM eServer.

This opens excellent consolidation opportunities for SAPcustomers. Next to the integration of xSeries servers for MS-Windows based SAP components, System i5 also allows todeploy AIX- or Linux-based SAP components (e.g. SAP APOLiveCache) in a single server environment. Customers can alsobenefit from the ongoing ‘Autonomic Computing' initiative,designed for common, self-managed technologies across IBMeServer products.

7) High investment protection through seamlessupgradeability

Easy moving from old to new technology! IBM's POWER5+announcement includes the customary investment protectionfor pre-generation POWER4/5 iSeries. SAP customers havecomfortable options for easy and cost-effective upgrading ofolder POWER4/5 iSeries to the new POWER5+ based System i5.Their original investment is protected, which reduces theamount of new the investment required.

POWER5 technology remains available and is furthersupported for a foreseeable future. iS/OS V5R4 can be installedand used on pre-POWER5 iSeries, and most of its functions(except those that require POWER5+ hardware) can be utilizedon those models.

8) Substantially lower TCA and TCOMore SAPS for less money! i5 Technology offers potential costsavings, and can help SAP customers to substantially lowertheir IT cost, both in terms of 'TCA' (cost of acquisition), aswell as ‘TCO' (cost of ownership). Excellent value is providedby the IBM System i5 Solution Edition for mySAPTM ERP.

A recent TCO study on SAP customers ( by ITG, Dec. 2005)confirms a clear double-digit TCO advantage for iSeries overcompetitive UNIX- or Windows-based platforms.

• IBM POWER5+ technology offers doubled SAP capacity per processor, and four times the maximum capacity of the previousPOWER4 server generation.

• The new System i5 is offered at a lower price/performance level, which brings down the initial hardware investment for mySAPsolution landscapes. Excellent value is provided by the IBM System i5 Solution Edition for mySAPTM ERP.

• The integrated DB2 UDB database comes free of charge with the i5/OS operating system, and saves SAP customers thecustomary substantial cost for a database license. New virtualization functions in i5/OS allow even better exploitation ofavailable IT equipment , and require less hardware to run a given SAP workload

• The enhanced multiplatform support enables SAP customer to simplify their IT landscapes and to achieve an extreme level ofserver- and application-consolidation with reduced effort for system management.

• IBM System i5 requires just a small IT staff to manage even complex SAP solution environments at low cost of operation.Increased system availability allows non-disruptive operations and a high level of application availability, and maximizes theROI of the mySAP Business Suite.

Three-year IT Costs Summary

Company A

Sun Fire

Integrity

System i

Sun Fire

Integrity

System i

Sun Fire

Integrity

System i

$ Thousands1,000 2,000 3,000

6,667.7

6,129.9

3,305.9

4,890.7

4,638.9

2,605.5

3,275.2

3,432.4

2,076.3

4,000 5,000 6,000 7,000

HardwareMaintenanceSoftwarePersonnel

8,0000

Company B

Company C

International Technology Group, Los Altos, California

Summary: System i5 benefits for SAP customers

Walter Lang is from the IBM SAP International Competence Center in Walldorf, Germany.


Getting answers to your information-based needs as efficiently as possible is

important to you and your business. SQL is the industry-standard language for

these inquires and the more powerful the underlying database engine, the more

capabilities you have. To that end, IBM* i5/OS* V5R4 has the functions you need to write more

powerful queries and expand or improve upon your existing SQL application.

Each release of i5/OS brings additional enhancements in all of the major focus areas of database technology: SQLcompliance, application portability, query optimization, scaling, availability and recovery, and administrative tools.V5R4 is no exception. For more information, see this month’s cover story, “Something For Everyone,” on page 20.

With the V5R4 announcement, the SQL support in i5/OS makes DB2* Universal Database* (UDB) for i5/OS the firstmajor database to be fully compliant with both ISO and ANSI 2003 SQL core language standards. In addition to liftingsome SQL limits (see Table 1, page 34) and providing language features giving you more control over your executionenvironment, V5R4 SQL also gives you new capabilities like recursive queries, expanded fullselect support, row valueexpression support in predicates, the ability to enumerate and rank results with online analytical processing (OLAP)functions, and enhancements to materialized query table (MQT) support.

riding the

waveSQL enhancements abound

in i5/OS V5R4

BY LINDA SWAN AND SUE ROMANO


riding the

wave


Recursive Queries Programmers have been using recursion for decades tofacilitate elegant and efficient solutions that would otherwisebe tedious to implement. Prior to V5R4M0, if you hadhierarchical data in your tables and you wanted to navigaterecursively, you had to implement the recursive access in yourapplication with the aid of temporary tables or othermechanisms. SQL now includes a new feature called RecursiveCommon Table Expressions (RCTE), which allows the queryengine to recursively serve up your data with a simple SQLSELECT request.

Common Table Expressions (CTE) are a hybrid of a view anda nested table expression. They’re defined using a WITHclause and given a name that can then be referenced multipletimes in a query just as a table or view is referenced.

Before discussing RCTE syntax, let’s clarify the kinds of datathat a recursive query is best at accessing. Essentially your datamust be inherently hierarchical—data where a relationship (let’scall it a parent-child relationship) exists between one row andanother of the table. Prime examples are bill-of-materials data,parts catalogs, organization data, and transportation orreservation data. Figure 1 (above) shows a parts table whereeach part consists of subparts, which leads to subparts of thesubparts, and so on down to a basic unit part. The data inFigure 1 (sorted by PART to facilitate our example) can berepresented in a hierarchical diagram (see Figure 2, above).

Using RCTE, you can implement a query to find all of thesubparts of a particular part, say “0003,” and recursivelycompute the total number of those subparts used. CodeSample 1 (page 32) shows the recursive query; its results areshown in Figure 3 (below). An RCTE—a common tableexpression that adheres to simple rules—must follow aparticular structure:• Results columns from the RCTE must be explicitly named on

the WITH clause.

• A UNION ALL must separate the initialization fullselect (inred), sometimes called the seed, from the iterative fullselect(in blue).

• The iterative fullselect must contain a reference to the RCTEname in the FROM clause as a source for the recursion (inthis case, RecPartsList parent). This fullselect determines theCTE is recursive.

• A join predicate(s) (in this case parent.subpart=child.part)must reflect the parent-child relationship between therecursive values sourced from the RCTE (RecPartsList) andthe table being joined to (partlist). An incorrect join predicatecould result in incorrect results or a non-ending query.

• Aggregate functions, GROUP BY or HAVING clause can’t bespecified in the iterative fullselect. These requests imply anability to gather all results at that particular point in thequery. This isn’t possible with recursion.

• The RCTE can’t be referenced in a subquery of a fullselectdefining the RCTE.

• Once the RCTE is defined via the WITH clause it can bereferenced in the main query (in green), anywhere a table is

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4

0000 (part)

0003, 2 (subpart, quantity)

0007, 10006, 5

0001, 5

0004, 3 0005, 8

0008, 5 0009, 60010, 4 0011, 3 0012, 2 0013, 9 0014, 1

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referenced and can be further joined to, aggregated on,ordered by, etc.

The aforementioned example shows navigating down thehierarchy to the children. Similarly, you can navigate up thehierarchy if the question to be answered is: what parts wouldbe impacted if the part “0009” was in short supply? CodeSample 2 (below) shows the recursive query that gives theanswer in Figure 4 (page 30).

Hierarchical data can be recursively accessed in two ways.Breadth-first recursion visits all of the children before visitingthe grandchildren of a given value (in this example, part).Depth-first visits one child and all of its descendents beforevisiting the next child. By implementation default, the RCTEsupport in the System i platform accesses thedata breadth first. If your application isdependent on whether the results are output inbreadth- or depth-first order, an optionalSEARCH clause on the RCTE definition willenforce the requirement. For example, a reportthat reflects an organizational flow may want tosee the organization chart by depth-first,descendent order. (Note: The associated sort is byrelationship and not by value.)

Recursion that isn’t properly constrained can get out ofcontrol. If your data is cyclic, either by design or accident,your recursive query might never end. An optional CYCLEclause, again specific to RCTE, can be used to stop a repeatingrecursive cycle once one is found. This clause can also be usedto find cyclic data, marking the resulting row(s) that wouldstart a repeat of a cycle. This information is used to correctcyclic data if such data wasn’t intended to be in your tables.

The query in Code Sample 3 (opposite page) illustrates the

SEARCH and CYCLE syntax and is left as an exercise for youto try. After you’ve verified the depth-first sort, add a row thatwill cause a repeating cycle and see what happens.

Finally, recursive queries can be as complex as needed. Youcan have multiple initialization fullselects seed your recursionas well as multiple iterative fullselects referencing the sameRCTE as further sources for the recursion. These fullselectsmust have a UNION ALL operator separating them. Multiplefullselects are useful if there’s more than one source table tojoin to recursively. Because they share that same RCTE, therecursive values coming from one table can seed new recursivejoin values from another table.

More information and examples on how to use RCTEs andthe optional SEARCH and CYCLE clause can be found in theSQL Programmer’s Guide and the Database Performance andQuery Optimization books (http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/iseries/v5r4/index.jsp). (Note: RCTE is restricted toqueries supported by the Structured Query Engine, or SQE,optimizer.)

Expanded Fullselect SupportWith V5R4M0, you can now use a fullselect anywhere a subselect is allowed. A fullselect is a component of a selectstatement that can contain a UNION, EXCEPT or INTERSECTclause. Sometimes a UNION is needed to look at all the pertinent data.

Suppose you keep historical data for each year in a separatetable. To find the customer for a certain order, all of the ordertables can be searched to find the one that contains thesupplied value. Remember that the result of the subquery foran equal condition can only return one result row, so thistechnique requires that the order number exist in only one ofthe tables or an error will be returned (see Code Sample 4,

Figure 6

Figure 5

Code Sample 1WITH RecPartsList (part,subpart,totalquantity) ASÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ(SELECT seed.part, seed.subpart, seed.quantity FROM partlist seedÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊWHERE seed.part = ‘0003’ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ UNION ALLÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊSELECT child.part, child.subpart, child.quantityÊ*parent.totalquantityÊFROM RecPartsList parent, partlist childWHEREparent.subpart=child.part)ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊSELECT subpart,ÊtotalquantityÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊFROM RecPartsList ORDER BY subpart

Code Sample 2WITH RecPartsList (part,subpart,quantity) ASÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ(SELECT seed.part, seed.subpart, seed.quantityÊÊFROM partlist seedÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊWHERE seed.subpart = ‘0009’ÊÊUNION ALLÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊSELECT parent.part, parent.subpart, parent.quantityÊÊFROM RecPartsList child, partlist parentÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊWHERE child.part = parent.subpart)ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊSELECT part FROM RecPartsList;


below). Now, suppose you want to find all of the customersthat ordered a certain item. Since the item could be found inmultiple orders from many years, the IN predicate must be used(see Code Sample 5, below). This expanded fullselect support isrestricted to queries supported by the SQE optimizer.

Row Expressions in Predicates Predicate comparisons have been extended to allow a list ofvalues (called a row expression) to be compared to another list ofvalues. A list of values can also be compared to a row fullselect.In the simplest form, two lists can be compared for equality:

SELECT * FROM t1 WHERE (c1, c2, SUBSTR(c3,1,2) )=

(10, c4, ‘SQ’)

This is identical to writing:

SELECT * FROM t1 WHERE c1 = 10 AND c2 = c4 AND

SUBSTR(c3,1,2) = ‘SQ’

A row expression can also be used to compare a list ofvalues against the result of a subquery. In this example, ascalar subquery:

SELECT * FROM t1 WHERE (c1, c2, SUBSTR(c3,1,1) ) =

(SELECT a, b, c FROM mytable WHERE d=t1.c4)

Note that all three values in the list must match the threevalues returned from the subquery for the equal predicatecondition to be met (for not equal, at least one pair of valuesmust be not equal). This is logically the same as requesting thefollowing:

SELECT * FROM t1 WHERE c1=(SELECT a FROM mytable

WHERE d=t1.c4) ANDc2=(SELECT b FROM mytable

WHERE d=t1.c4) AND SUBSTR(c3,1,1) = (SELECT

c FROM mytable WHERE d=t1.c4)

However, using a row expression predicate is more efficientsince the subquery is only defined once.

Comparing a row expression to a subquery result is allowedfor the equal (=) and not equal (<>) comparisons of a basicpredicate, for the =SOME, =ANY, and <>ALL quantifiedpredicates, and for the IN and NOT IN predicates.

A few restrictions are imposed on these new constructs.Obviously, both sides of the comparison must contain the samenumber of values. You must also explicitly list the returnvalues in the select list of the subquery; SELECT * isn’t allowed.For an IN or NOT IN predicate, the row expression list can’thave an untyped parameter marker. A parameter marker mustbe used within an expression or cast to a result data type. If therow expression is used in a HAVING clause and one of thevalues in the row expression list matches a group byexpression, the row expression isn’t allowed.

OLAP OLAP functions provide the ability to enumerate and rank dataas a scalar value in query results. The ROW_NUMBER functioncan be used for assigning numbers to the rows in the result set.RANK and DENSE_RANK can be used for assigning aprecedence or rank to each row in the result set relative toother rows in the result set. The difference between RANK andDENSE_RANK is that RANK leaves gaps in the numberingsequence to reflect multiple rows of the same rank whereasDENSE_RANK doesn’t.

Let’s look at an example using all three OLAP functions. Inorder to rank data, a relationship must exist within the databeing ranked, higher to lower or vice versa. This requires asort over that data. You might want to rank test scores,generated sales or employee salaries from highest to lowest,whereas golf scores would be ranked lowest to highest. CodeSample 6 (page 35) shows a query ranking the total sales ofeach salesperson, highest to lowest and then ordering bysalesperson with highest ranking. Dense rank and row numberare also included to show syntax and difference in results.Note that the sum of total sales must be computed by thedatabase for each salesperson before the rank, dense rank androw numbering occurs. Figure 5 (opposite page) shows thesales table and Figure 6 (opposite page) reflects the results.

Code Sample 3WITH RecPartsList (part,subpart,quantity) AS (SELECT seed.part, seed.subpart, seed.quantity FROM partlist seed WHERE seed.part = ‘0000’ UNION ALL SELECT child.part, child.subpart, child.quantity FROM RecPartsList parent, partlist child WHERE parent.subpart = child.part)SEARCH DEPTH FIRST BY subpart SET seqcol CYCLE subpart SET cyclic TO ‘1’DEFAULT‘0'USING Cycle_Path SELECT part, subpart, quantity, cyclic FROM RecPartsList ORDER BY seqcol7

Code Sample 4SELECT * FROM customer x WHERE x.cust_id = (SELECT a.cust_id FROM orders_2004 aWHERE a.order_id = :order UNION ALLSELECT b.cust_id FROM orders_2005 bWHERE b.order_id = :order UNION ALLSELECT c.cust_id FROM orders_2006 cWHERE c.order_id = :order)

Code Sample 5SELECT * FROM customer x WHERE x.cust_id IN (SELECT a.cust_id FROM orders_2004 aWHERE a.item_id = :item UNION ALLSELECT b.cust_id FROM orders_2005 bWHERE b.item_id = :item UNION ALLSELECT c.cust_id FROM orders_2006 cWHERE c.item_id = :item)

A RANK or DENSE_RANK function must specify what theranking is based on the OVER clause. It also specifies how it’sto be ranked (ascending or descending) via the ORDER BYclause within the OVER clause. For ROW_NUMBER the ORDERBY clause is optional. In this example the enumeration isordered by the salesperson’s name. To guarantee the resultsare actually displayed by ranking, add another ORDER BYclause in the main query. In this example multiple sorts arerequired. Whenever possible the optimizer attempts to utilizethe sort results for as many OLAP requests as possible. So, inthis case the RANK and DENSE_RANK share the same sort,whereas the ROW_NUMBER requires a different sort. (Note:Mary and Robert share the same total sales so their ranking isthe same. Also no gaps exist in the numbering in the denserank column whereas the rank column contains a gap.)

In addition to the value being ranked, you can also partitionthe ranking (essentially reset the ranking or numberingprocess) by using a PARTITION BY clause. You often seerankings within an age range or for a particular geographicregion. Code Sample 7 (opposite page) shows an example ofranking the total sales of each salesperson, highest to lowest,where the ranking is established within each sales division(see Figure 7, above). (Note: OLAP functions are restricted toqueries supported by the SQE optimizer.)

MQT Enhancements An enhancement to the SQE optimizer to use MQTs was madeavailable in a PTF in V5R3M0. Using Materialized QueryTables (MQTs) can provide significant query performanceimprovements by pre-computing the results of somefrequently used queries and storing those results in an MQT.An MQT is created using the CREATE TABLE xx AS SELECT …syntax but with special options on how to create and use thetable. SELECT is used to populate and periodically maintainthe table based on the user’s initiative.

Once MQTs have been defined and populated, the SQE queryoptimizer, when given permission through a query options file(QAQQINI), will use advanced MQT matching technology tochoose to substitute an already predetermined MQT result tohelp satisfy an existing query request. This substitution, alongwith the application of additional predicates, groupings, joinsand the other query projections needed to complete theoriginal query, can simplify and improve the performance ofthe original query’s execution.

For details on the benefits of MQTs, see the August 2005article, “Intelligently Capturing Data” (www. ibmsystemsmag.com/i5/aug05/coverstory).

With V5R4M0, the MQT support is part of the base release.Additional MQT matching support has been added. This includesthe ability to substitute more than one matching MQT to helpsatisfy a query request, as well as improvements in MQTmatching to accommodate greater predicate coverage, supportfor UNIONs, partitioned tables, referential integrity, RCTEs, OLAPexpressions and more. In short, with V5R4M0 the capability ofsubstituting one or more MQTs has been greatly enhanced.Guidance on the use of MQTs and their performance benefits canbe found in the Database Performance and Query Optimization(http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/ iseries/v5r4/index.jsp)book in the Information Center.

And More In addition to these larger enhancements, other smaller itemsalso merit mentioning. They include:• Hex literals can now contain embedded blanks to help

improve readability. Rather than containing only valid hexcharacters, blanks can be entered in the data to separate hexcharacters or groups of hex characters. All blanks areremoved from the literal before it’s used as a value in anSQL statement. For example, X‘C1 C2 C3’ and UX‘0041004200430044 0045’ are both allowable hex strings.

• New built-in functions were introduced. Some of them aredescribed briefly here. For details, see the SQL Reference(http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/iseries/v5r4/index.jsp).

• The triple DES encryption algorithm is now supported with


Figure 7

Table 1SQL Limit Old Limit New Limit

Longest column name 30 128

Maximum parameters on SQL stored procedure 256 1,024

Longest index key 2,000 32,768

Most tables referenced in an SQL 256 1,000 statement

Longest SQL statement (in bytes) 65,355 2,097,152

Total length of ORDER BY 10,000 32,766

Maximum simultaneous CLI 80,000 160,000 handles allocated


the ENCRYPT_TDES function. This provides yet another wayof encrypting stored data.

• The GENERATE_UNIQUE function provides a uniquecharacter string value. It’s derived from a combination of atimestamp and the system serial number.

• You can have your SQL statement return its ownSQLSTATE by using the RAISE_ERROR function.

• The date functions ADD_MONTHS, LAST_DAY, NEXT_DAY,and VARCHAR_FORMAT (and its synonym function,TO_CHAR) have been added to help simplify datemanipulations.

• A table can now be created or altered to have the VOLATILEattribute. This is a hint to the optimizer that the number ofrows in the table may fluctuate with regularity.

• The ALTER PROCEDURE statement has been added. Thisstatement allows you to alter the routine body of an SQL

procedure or some of the procedure options for anytype of procedure without losing any authorities thatmight be defined for the existing procedure.Previously you would have had to drop the procedure,re-create it and then add back authorities.

• The overhead of processing several different types ofstatement within SQL procedures, user-definedfunctions and triggers (e.g., SET i=j+1;), has beenconsiderably reduced, thereby improving theperformance and resource requirements for manySQL routines, functions and triggers.

• The degree of parallelism used for symmetric multi-processing(SMP) has been formalized as an SQL special register,CURRENT DEGREE. It can be examined by selecting the specialregister and set using the SET CURRENT DEGREE statement.

Seeing is Believing There’s an old saying that says “seeing is believing.” If you takea look at the V5R4 SQL enhancements, you’ll see they provideyou with more control, function and capabilities than everbefore. The ability to meet your information-based needs usingSQL has never looked better.

Linda Swan is a senior software engineer at IBM inRochester, Minn., and works on the SQE optimizer team. Lindacan be reached at [email protected].

Sue Romano is a software engineer at IBM in Rochester,Minn., and works on the SQL parser. Sue can be reached [email protected].

Code Sample 6SELECT salesperson, RANK() OVER( ORDER BY sum(totalsale) DESC) asranking , DENSERANK() OVER( ORDER BY sum(totalsale) DESC) asrank_dense , ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY salesperson) asnumber_row FROM sales GROUP BY salespersonORDER BY ranking

Code Sample 7SELECT salesdiv, salesperson, RANK() OVER( PARTITION BY salesdivORDER BY SUM(totalsale) DESC) as salesrank FROM sales GROUP BY salesdiv, salesperson ORDER BY salesdiv,salesrank ASC

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purchased and utilized and/or extended for the solution ifusing Express Plus.

3. Install Server Express (Plus) components to i5/OS and thePC (if installing the Toolset Express). Additionally purchaseand install the adapter or collaboration capacity packs fori5/OS. (Note: All components are installed by a singleLaunchpad application to both your i5/OS system and PC.)

4. Consider the development model for Server Express solutionspresented on the IBM Information Center, and use the ToolsetExpress to create, deploy and test the integration solution.

5. Manage and monitor the solution using the PC-based toolsetand/or the Web toolset.

6. Customize or add to your solution as needed and repeat theprevious steps as necessary.

The More You Know Although we barely scratched the surface of the capabilities of

Server Express, this article should provide enough informationfor you to determine whether the product will help solve yourintegration problems. We encourage you to read more about theproduct on the IBM Web site and explore the links provided inthe “References” sidebar. A follow-on article explaining how toinstall Server Express will appear in a future issue.

Boden Russell is a software engineer with IBM Systems andTechnology Group. He’s active in the porting, testing anddevelopment of WebSphere Business Integration products forthe System i* platform. Boden can be reached [email protected] Lamont works on the middleware product, IBMWebSphere Business Integration Server Express for System i.She joined the IBM Rochester team in 2004. Kathryn can bereached at [email protected].

rebuilt and manage them similar to the Edit Rebuild Access Path(EDTRBDAP) CL command. The real value of this tool is theability to now see the reasons the index was being rebuilt andwhat caused the index to become invalidated in the first place.

The Predictive Query Governor now supports an exitprogram, which allows you further control over which queriesgo through to the query engine based on an estimated runtimeor temporary storage-usage threshold.

Health Center allows you to view the size limits oftables/PFs database-wide or within specific schemas to seehow close you are to approaching the limit. Other size limitscan be viewed as well. Another tab within the Health Centershows the design limits (e.g., the maximum number ofcolumns a table can have in DB2 and how many areapproaching that limit). An overview table provides counts forthe number of database objects (e.g., schemas, tables, views,etc.) you have in a given schema or for the entire database.

iSeries Navigator also added a wizard on top of the Copy To

Import File (CPYTOIMPF) and Copy From Import File(CPYFRMIMPF) commands to help make them more userfriendly for importing data into your database. New menuoptions are also provided for prompting the Copy File (CPYF),Initialize Physical File Member (INZPFM) and Clear PhysicalFile Menu (CLRPFM) commands on a table.

Treat Yourself That completes our description of DB2 UDB for i5/OSfunctions in V5R4. With all of these new capabilities you cansee that DB2 UDB for i5/OS is a solid, if not leading, databaseto consider for any application. Pick your favorite selections.

Jim Flanagan works in database development for DB2 UDB fori5/OS. He is the team leader for the iSeries Navigator–Databaseteam. Jim can be reached at [email protected].

(from page 23)

(from page 19)

switch module (or modules) in the BladeCenter itself, asshown in Figure 4 (page 12).

• Only IBM BladeCenters and xSeries servers are supported.For a list of supported models go to website:http://www.ibm.com/systems/i/systemx/iscsi/servermodels/

• xSeries servers require at least one IBM iSCSI networkadapter (up to four).

• Each Blade server requires an IBM iSCSI network adapter.• One or more iSCSI network adapters are required in the

System i5.

For detailed information about hosting Windows servers onSystem i5 using iSCSI, go to the following website:http://www.ibm.com/systems/i/systemx/iscsi/

Phil Ainsworth recently participated in a residency in theRochester Center of IBM's International Technical SupportOrganization and worked on a redbook which describes theintegration of BladeCenter and xSeries servers with System i5using iSCSI.

(from page 12)

NASHVILLE, Tenn., COLLABORATE '06, Apr. 26 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Oracle today announced that it plans toprovide continued enhancements to Oracle’s JDEdwards World and JD Edwards EnterpriseOneapplications running on IBM’s “all-in-one” System ibusiness computing solution (formerly iSeries). Thisannouncement follows yesterday’s news of“Applications Unlimited,” Oracle’s plan to providecontinual development enhancements to the currentOracle Applications and is part of Oracle’s strategy toprovide more visibility into product roadmaps, and helpcustomers derive continual success from theirapplication investments.

The continued development of the JD Edwardsproducts on the IBM System i combined with Oracle’sLifetime Support Policy signals Oracle’s plans toprotect the investments of JD Edwards customers andallows them to upgrade, if they choose to, at their ownpace. The JD Edwards software has been available onthe IBM platform for almost 30 years, and with over4,500 customers globally, there is tremendous interest in this product combination from both new and existing customers. For details on the Oracle Lifetime Support Policy, please visithttp://www.oracle.com/support/premier/lifetime-support-policy.html .

Commitment to IBM System i Today’s announcement is another step in Oracle’scontinued support of IBM for JD Edwards customers.Oracle also recently announced an expanded investmentto jointly deliver with IBM JD Edwards solutions to theSMB (Small and Midsize Businesses) market throughIBM’s reseller channel. The investment will support go-to-market activities for Oracle's JD EdwardsEnterpriseOne and JD Edwards World software productswith Oracle and IBM sales teams and value-addedresellers (VARs).

“The System i market is growing, and we seetremendous opportunity for new customers running JDEdwards World and EnterpriseOne on IBM System i,”said Oracle Vice President and General Manager, JDEdwards EnterpriseOne Lenley Hensarling.

“We strongly welcome Oracle’s plans to support theJD Edwards applications on the IBM System i platformbeyond 2013,” said IBM System i General ManagerMark Shearer. “Our mutual installed base as well as

prospective clients can continue to invest withconfidence and know that they have the flexibility tomove forward based on their business requirements.We intend to continue our close collaboration withOracle to deliver solutions that help our clients simplifytheir IT and drive business innovation.”

Continued Innovation This week, Oracle announced a new version of JDEdwards EnterpriseOne and is expected to release amajor new version of JD Edwards World in 2007. Thesereleases are planned to support the most currentversion of i5/OS, the flagship operating system for IBM

System i, and the IBM DB2 data server. “Oracle and IBM are committed to the long-term

success of our joint customers,” said Oracle SeniorVice President of Applications Development JohnWookey. “By continuing to support JD Edwardssolutions running on IBM beyond 2013, we are giving

our customers the flexibility to choose if and when theyupgrade to Oracle Fusion Applications.”

About IBM System iThe IBM System i is a tightly integrated businesssystem including hardware, middleware, storage andsecurity. The “all-in-one” System i platform embracesopen standards and masks the complexity of IToperations so clients can simplify their IT environmentand reinvest those savings in business innovation.

About Oracle Applications Oracle Applications, including the Oracle E-BusinessSuite, PeopleSoft Enterprise, JD EdwardsEnterpriseOne, JD Edwards World and Siebel BusinessApplications, enable information-driven businessprocesses that connect and automate an organization.Developed to deliver business insight, adaptiveindustry processes and a superior ownershipexperience, Oracle Applications enable efficientmanagement of all core business functions, such ascustomer interactions, financial management, humanresources and supply chain management.

About Oracle Oracle is the world’s largest enterprise softwarecompany. For more information about Oracle, visit ourWeb site at http://www.oracle.com/ .

CONTACT: Karen Tillman, +1-805-544-4452, or [email protected], or Carol Sato, +1-650-633-5551,or [email protected], both of Oracle

Copyright © 2006 PR Newswire Association LLC. All Rights Reserved. Trademarks: Oracle, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, and Siebel are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may betrademarks of their respective owners. This document is for informational purposes only and may not be incorporated into a contract or agreement. The development release and timing of future products releases remains atOracle’s sole discretion. Updates and enhancements are provided in accordance with Oracle's Technical Support Policies at http://www.oracle.com/support/collateral/oracle-technical-support-policies.pdf

www.oracle.com


S ometimes it’s the little things that make a bigdifference. For instance, I recently ran into alittle piece of software that provides an

interesting interface between a Windows* desktop anda System i* box. I’m not going to call this a missinglink, but I think Darwin would be proud about theintelligent design behind what I found.

Imagine being able to bring up a link to a PC-based document and open it right from your 5250emulation session. This is to say, open a Worddocument, Excel spreadsheet, etc., right from youri5/OS* session. In many cases this could be promptedfrom your interactive session. Or, you could retrievethe address of a company or delivery truck and witha keystroke, call up a Google Earth session and havethe requested address displayed right there. Evenbetter, you can see it as a satellite view from spaceand zoom down to street level. Oh, by the way, whatif the product also did a nice quick job of convertingspooled files to PDFs?

This month, I examine a product that helps you dojust that—the PC-Engine from TurboGorilla-Software(www.turbogorilla-software.com).

InstallationInstallation occurs in two parts. One side runs on theSystem i platform and one side on your desktop.The installation process is fairly straightforward. Ifyou’ve done save file FTPs before, this is a nobrainer. The documentation is accurate and easy tofollow to get the items installed and the demo levelof the product up and running on both the serverand the client. Currently, this product only works

with Microsoft* Internet Explorer on the client side’sWeb interface. I found this out the hard way when Iwas trying to use Mozilla and life wasn’t happeningfor me. But, a quick call to tech support provided theanswer and TurboGorilla is now doing seriousresearch and development to interface with the otherpopular browsers.

Ease of UseGiven that you get some nice sample source code tocut and paste from, as well as some fairly easy-to-follow samples and Web-based videos to watch, usingthis isn’t difficult. Keep in mind that this is a nichemarket product that’s quickly growing and improving.

DocumentationPC-Engine documentation comes in several forms.TurboGorilla provides samples and sample sourcecode, along with written documents that you candownload and print. Sample coding, interface-calling examples and Web-based video examples arealso available. I wish the documentation was all inone place. While I realize the documentation is earlydesign in a product development, you have to hunt—

Spotlight Profile

Product: PC-Engine

Company: TurboGorilla-Software

Version: 3.1.0

URL: www.turbogorilla-software.com

Overall Rating: 3.835

This Gorilla Can Help Geta Monkey off Your BackBY DON RIMA

Insider’s software critique

Spotlight

TurboGorilla’s support staff is responsive and

knowledgeable about the product, Windows desktop and i5/OS.


Category Points Weighting Overall Score

Certifiability 4.00 .100 0.400Installation 3.90 .150 0.585Ease of Use 3.90 .150 0.585Documentation 3.30 .150 0.495Functionality 3.90 .150 0.585Usefulness 4.00 .150 0.600Support 3.90 .150 0.585

Total 26.90 3.835

The Rima Report

ILLU

STR

ATIO

N B

Y R

ICH

AR

D C

LA

RK

KICK THE TIRES: Well, the first 30 days are free. After that, I think you’ll probably decide to keep it around.

(Points given are on a scale of 0 to 4, with 4 being the highest. Each category is assigned its own weightingfrom the total of 100 percent.)

TurboGorilla2006 HONOR ROLL

sometimes in several places—for what you need. Iunderstand that consolidation into an easier-to-useformat is underway. But, what I worked with wasample enough to get me up and running.

CertifiabilityEverything I played with worked as I expected it to.

Functionality/UsefulnessOK, what does it do for me? This is basically easiershown than written, in this case. So, a quick trip toTurboGorilla’s Web site is warranted. It’s hard for meto explain in an article how I can go from a greenscreen, which has some information on it (e.g., anaddress, document name or spreadsheet name) andwith a selection option, bring that up on my screen aspart of my System i application. And in some cases,the real object names may be unknown to the users.Seeing this in action is impressive. In short, you’rebringing base Windows application capabilities toyour green-screen applications that are running underPC emulation, which, in effect, interfaced and calledfrom your System i applications. Don’t expect to doeverything right now; this is a new product andgroup, but their potential is amazing.

SupportTurboGorilla’s support staff is responsive andknowledgeable about the product, Windows desktopand i5/OS.

What I’d Like to See in the Next Release• Real-time spooled to PDF conversion with PDF

file routing—something I could put at the end ofa call that does all of the conversions and filerouting for me as embedded code.

• Some easier-to-follow, more consolidateddocumentation; it’s all basically there, it’s just notin one place.

• Support for browsers in addition to InternetExplorer.

• Release the 5250 session for concurrentfunctions (i.e., bring up the Windows functionsin a new window).

SummaryI have many uses for this, and I know many otherfolks that do as well. This is the beginning of atrend of keying one environment off of another—sort of akin to application, operating system andoperating-environment interfaces that offers someinteresting future potential. Right now the productis new, but I think that you’ l l see futureenhancements that bring the synergy of theplatforms closer together for more and betterapplication development and interface.

Don Rima has more than 20 years of experiencewith IBM* midrange systems. For the past 10years, he has owned a consulting group. Don canbe reached at [email protected].


THE LAST DECADE has seen the profile of supply chainand logistics lift in Australian business. For the firsttime in history, we are beginning to see logistics anddistribution functions represented in the Boardroom,and vigorous reviews of supply chain processes andoperations are being driven across a range ofindustries not only to cut costs, but to deliver greaterbusiness value.

One of the key trends which has been driving thisnew awareness of the supply chain function is thechanging nature of the supply chain itself. Thelogistical operations of most companies are becomingincreasingly complex – more so than has everpreviously been the case. Not only are there the usualpressures on the supply chain to reduce costs whileimproving service performance, there are newconcerns with regards to transport efficiencies due torising diesel prices. Imports from Asia add a newdimension of uncertainty to the entire process, as lackof visibility into which goods are on their way, whenthey will arrive and what state they will be in causesuntold difficulties not only in the warehouse, butthroughout the entire organization.

At the heart of the problem lies the capability of astandard ERP’s supply chain modules to deal withthis increased pressure and complexity. The newsupply chain challenges require dramaticenhancements to existing software to effectivelyservice the organization, but these have not beenforthcoming from all ERP vendors. However, thereare best-of-breed Supply Chain Solutions providerswho are actively developing on the System iplatform, and many companies are finding that thecombination of a world class ERP with a best-of-breed supply chain solution lends them a strongcompetitive advantage in an aggressive marketplace.

The case study below details the example ofAustralian retailer Super Cheap Auto, who partneredwith IBM’s System i team and leading supply chainsolutions provider Manhattan Associates to implementManhattan Associates’ Warehouse Management forSystem i. Using a standard SAP interface, the

Manhattan Associates/IBM Solution Growswith Super Cheap Auto’s Booming Business

A look at customers’ success and achievements

Case Study


Manhattan Associates/IBM solution has allowed SuperCheap Auto to grow dramatically without missing abeat—indeed, the solution has effortlessly handled thequadrupling of stock volumes in the past four years.

Manhattan Associates are one of the few warehousemanagement solution providers who are still activelydeveloping on System i – indeed, the latest releaserecently became available on May 26.

ChallengeAfter opening a $15 million warehouse in Brisbane in2001, Super Cheap Auto recognized that its existingwarehouse management system had run “out ofsteam”. The company sought a strategic solution thatcould grow with the business.

Business SolutionWorking with IBM premier business partner,Manhattan Associates, Super Cheap Autoimplemented a Warehouse Management solutionrunning on the IBM System i5.

Key Business Benefits• Manhattan Associates and IBM deployed the entire

solution in just 10 weeks.• Manhattan Associates’ Warehouse Management

solution has handled the quadrupling of stockvolumes in the past four years.

• The Manhattan Associates/IBM solution provides astrategic solution that can grow rapidly with SuperCheap Auto.

• Super Cheap Auto can now focus on the day-to-dayoperations of running the business, rather thanrunning its technology.

About Super Cheap AutoSuper Cheap Auto is a publicly listed Australiancompany, which has reported 36.5 per cent compoundannual growth over the last 3 years.

Founded in 1974 as a car parts and mail orderbusiness, the company now employs more than3600 people in over 200 stores across Australia

and New Zealand.Super Cheap Auto is renowned for its aggressively-

priced, quality offerings, and its extensive range ofmore than 10,000 products including tools, interiorand exterior car accessories, spare parts, power toolsand gardening equipment. It has recently furtherexpanded into the growing boating, camping andfishing market with a new chain called BCF.

Super Cheap Auto’s successstems from its dynamic in-store retail merchandisingstrategy, extensive productrange, outstanding customerservice initiatives and its“superstore” warehouse-shopping environment, whichaverages at 800 sq. m.

Achieving its highest-everannual turnover of $470million in the last financialyear, Super Cheap Auto isconfident it will hit $530million turnover in 2005/06.With an annual turnoverapproaching $500 million, Super Cheap Auto is agrowing and powerful force in retailing auto andleisure in Australia.

The Business ProblemAfter outgrowing three successive Brisbaneheadquarters in 25 years, Super Cheap Autoestablished its latest HQ at a 17,515 sq. m. NationalDistribution Centre at Lawnton.

The new warehouse was essential to support thecompany’s significant growth, which currentlyincludes up to 30 stores per year.

However, during the commissioning of the newfacility, the existing warehouse management solution(WMS) “ran out of steam”.

Super Cheap Auto Managing Director Peter Birtlessaid the company was unable to fulfill replenishmentorders from the new warehouse.

The goals of Super Cheap Auto were to set new highs in reliability,

availability and serviceability of the chosen platform, while decreasing the

cost of server downtime and the total cost of ownership

About Manhattan Associates, Inc.Manhattan Associates® is a leadingsupply chain solutions provider. Thecompany’s supply chain planning, supplychain execution, business intelligenceand business process platformcapabilities enable its more than 1200customers worldwide to enhanceprofitability, performance and competitiveadvantage. For more information, pleasevisit www.manh.com.au or contact ourAustralia/ New Zealand headquarters on02 9452 3200.


“We had a crying need for an improved warehousemanagement system,” he said.

“We’d built this big shed and we didn’t haveproduct flows across that shed. Without a newwarehouse management system, we were just burningdollars in labor costs and also opportunity costs interms of missed sales because we couldn’t pick theproducts we needed.”

The SolutionThe goals of Super Cheap Auto were to set newhighs in reliability, availability and serviceability ofthe chosen platform, while decreasing the cost ofserver downtime and the total cost of ownership hadto be factored.

Mr. Birtles said functionality was the key driver forselecting Manhattan Associates’ WarehouseManagement solution. “Our growth is so strong thatwe wanted products in place that can grow as quicklyas we can,” he said.

“We looked at an assessment of its install base, itsretail install base and the capability for the productto be supported within Australia,” he said.

“With the company’s rapid implementationprogram, we had the system up and running betweenJuly and September 2001. We had a functionalproduct from day one.”

Mr. Birtles said the System i platform was selectedfor its reliability. “We were comfortable with thisserver environment,” he said.

“We’re very happy with it , it is very lowmaintenance. Some of the self-tuning features arevery good. We have now deployed additionalSystem i5 at our Distribution Centre in Perth and weare in the process of buying one to put in Perth andNew Zealand.”

“The new System i5 practicallyruns itself, keeping our

administrative and repair costs to a minimum thanksto the self-managing and self-healing features thatcorrect problems before they cause systemdowntime.”

Super Cheap Auto chose Manhattan Associates’Warehouse Management Solution running on Systemi5 because it offered a depth of functionality and theability to grow with the company over the long term.In 2004, the system was expanded to incorporate anewer model i 520 and the latest version of ManhattanAssociates’ Warehouse Management for System i.

The Business BenefitsManaging the Super Cheap Auto warehouse is amajor logistics exercise. Since it was implementedfour years ago, the Manhattan Associates solutionhas handled stock value that has increased from $15million to $100 million.

Steve Tewkesbury, Super Cheap Auto’s SupplyChain Manager, says “Manhattan Associates’Warehouse Management solution has passed eachinstall with flying colours, and the system has shownus that it can handle our growth and any otherchanges easily and seamlessly.”

Mr. Birtles said the Manhattan solution had met thecompany’s requirements. “It provides us with a depthof functionality that meets our changing businessneeds,” he said.

“It’s relatively simple to use and it is quitestraightforward to configure.”

The implementation of the Manhattan solution onthe IBM System i5 has enabled Super Cheap Auto tofocus on the day-to-day operations of running thebusiness, rather than running its technology.

The ClientEstablished in 1990, FE Global Electronics Pte Ltd isone of the leading electronic components distributorsin the pan-Asia region. With more than 45 regionaloffices and more than 750 talented staffworldwide, FE Global strives to cover greatergrounds, staying at the forefront of newtechnologies and bringing greater value.

FE Global is a trusted partner for some ofthe world’s most reputable principals andglobal clients from a wide spectrum ofindustries – information technology,consumer electronics to tele-communications. Not contented withjust providing products, FE Global has expanded itsofferings to include a range of value-added servicesfrom material management solutions to design anddevelopment.

FE Global now has 80 major suppliers and 1000active customers.

Critical decision for a better futureWith its expanded services, FE Global experienced asignificant increase in business and a commensurateincrease in information processing, management andarchiving needs. FE Global needed an informationinfrastructure that would provide effectivecommunications across the company and offices inthe region to help the management make the bestpossible business decisions.

To remain competitive in the electronics distributionindustry, FE Global needed to consolidate its new SAPenterprise resource planning (ERP) solution to lower ITsupport costs and efficiently manage its operations.

The key to the ERP solution is a software which isable to support multiple languages, especially

Chinese, to sustain business operations inChina and Taiwan.

FE Global required a centralizedenvironment, with business transactionsand activities consolidated into a central

database that will help to speed up businessperformance and analysis. Due to theuse of various currencies across theregion by the business operations, FE

Global was faced with the challenge of managing theindividual inventory management systems moreefficiently and effectively.

The company also expected the new operation toaid in better management of the accounts receivableto improve cash flow in running the business.


A look at customers’ success and achievements

Customer’s Testimonial

FE Global Deploys IBM System i5 as a Catalyst for Growth

“Whether it is growing customer base, greater communication needs or adding

new business applications, we are confident that IBM System i5 can grow with

our demands.”

- Tay Hung Chuan, senior IT manager, FE Global Electronics Pte Ltd

i5 – the logical choiceAfter a strategic assessment of their needs andworking closely with IBM Premier Business PartnerS & I Systems, FE Global decided to implement itscore Enterprise Resource Planning solution – SAP,on System i5 with DB2/400 database system, takingadvantage of its high reliability and low total costof ownership. S & I’s extensive knowledge of IBMproducts, helped FE Global in sizing the hardware.

“We had experience with the power and reliabilityof the IBM AS/400 systems [the predecessors toSystem i5] and we were impressed with the price andperformance potential of System i5,” says Tay HungChuan, senior IT manager, FE Global Electronics PteLtd. “One of the key selling points of System i5 wasthe ability to run multiple partitioned solutions onthe same system.”

With the outstanding processing capacity, logicalpartition (LPAR) resource virtualization and intuitivemanagement tools of System i5, FE Global is able togain power and capacity it needed to run its corebusiness applications. At the same time, the companyalso has the scalability to improve its business processesby continually adding new applications to the sameserver – thereby keeping the hardware cost down whichcontribute to a lower total cost of ownership (TCO).

FE Global also takes advantage of the switch disksand Independent Auxiliary Storage Pool (iASP)technology in i5 servers to maintain high availability.The iASP clustering allows two i5 servers to share thesame disk pool of resources and it helps to provide ahigher uptime than one single footprint.

“In the event of a failure on the primary system,the backup partition can very quickly restartproduction, automatically taking additionalresources from the test partition,” comments Tay.

The key to business continuityBesides reducing TCO, improving uptime and ensuringbusiness continuity was just as critical to FE Globe’sdecision to consolidate its data center architecture.

According to Tay, the consolidated serverarchitecture on i5 has simplified the FE Global datecenter architecture, making it simpler to manage andmuch easier to scale. “The configuration of our twoIBM System i5 520 also gives us confidence that ouremployees and customers will have access to theinformation they need 24x7,” he says.

Another reason which has also significantlycontributed to the purchase of the i5 servers is theease of maintenance and support of the systems byknowledgeable expertise.

Trusted partnersFE Global worked with S & I Systems, an IBM PremierBusiness Partner, to design and deploy the newinfrastructure for SAP. Tay comments, “We wereconvinced very early on that the new solution wouldbe from IBM, since our experience with the System i5platform has always been excellent. S & I Systemshelped setup the LPAR, iASP and the servers, anddemonstrated the value they bring as an IBM PremierBusiness Partner – we received support from IBMexpert developers very quickly too.”

“S & I’s knowledge of the iASP technology wasparticularly important in helping us to get the estfrom the new solution.”

A reliable and scalable system for continued growthThe powerful System i5 provides FE Global thereliability and scalability needed to expand workloadswithout requiring the addition of hardware or IT staff.And because the system offers multiple growth andupgrades, FE Global can expand its solution as itsbusiness needs grow.

“The i5 server is oriented towards growth,”comments Tay. “Whether it is growing customer base,greater communication needs or adding new businessapplications, we are confident that System i5 cangrow with our demands.”After using the server for oneand a half years, Tay remarks, “Till to date, I can’tthink of any reason why I am not satisfied withSystem i5 .”



W hile the CTC has been helping customersimplement cryptography in theirapplications for several years, the

introduction of the Payment Card Industry (PCI) DataSecurity Standard has increased the number of requeststhe CTC is receiving. (For more information on the PCIstandard, see the sidebar, “What is PCI?,” on page 47).

The RequestsThe most common requests involve encrypting credit-card numbers that are stored on the system using theencryption and key-management capabilities of theIBM Cryptographic Coprocessors.

Encrypting fields in a database table requireschanges to the field definitions and applications that

use those fields. The first step in this process is todetermine whether the existing field should bechanged or if a new field should be added. Oneeffective technique that the CTC staff has used ismasking the existing field so it meets the PCI standardand adding a new field that contains the encryptedinformation. Since both of the approved encryptionalgorithms are block ciphers, the encrypted data mustbe a multiple of a fixed number of bytes, which meansthat the new field will probably be longer than theexisting field. For example, for Triple DES, analgorithm supported by the IBM CryptographicCoprocessors, the block size is 8 bytes. Therefore, anencrypted 10-character field would be a minimum of16 bytes. (Note: Triple DES meets the PCI standard.)The next step is to determine which programs need toencrypt or decrypt the data. This set of programs ismodified by adding function calls to decrypt the dataafter it’s read and encrypt the data before it’s written.

Although many of the requests the CTC receives arefor encrypting database fields only, recently it’s beengetting involved in projects that require integrationwith the point-of-sale (POS) products provided by IBMRetail Store Solutions. These customers need toencrypt credit-card information contained in the IBM4690 POS System transaction log (TLOG), which isperiodically transferred to a System i* application thatprocesses and stores the data. The requirements forthese projects include:• Encryption of some information in the TLOG• Secure key management including:~ Regular key changes originated by the System i

platform~ Secure key exchange with POS systems~ Logging of key changes~ Capability to process data encrypted with older

keys in TLOG records• Encryption and decryption functions

Securing Credit-CardInformation

PCI standards driving need for CTC services BY RICH DIEDRICH

IBM’s technical team to the rescue

CTC Corner


~ Easily integrated into existing RPG applications~ Data from POS using shared keys~ Local data using keys only available on System i

platform• Encryption of credit-card authorization requests~ Different authorization servers~ Key management by the System i platform

Key ManagementThe solutions for key management were built aroundthe capabilities of the 4758 and 4764 CryptographicCoprocessors on the System i platform. For moreinformation on the coprocessors, see the sidebar,“Cryptographic Coprocessors” (below). The CTCdesigned a secure key-exchange protocol with theRetail Store Solutions development team and wrote anOS/400* command and ILE RPG command-processingprogram that implemented the exchange protocol.

Since a key exchange could occur at different timesthan TLOG processing, a TLOG could contain dataencrypted under multiple keys, so the TLOG entry wasexpanded to include the key version number inaddition to the encrypted data.

After the TLOG processing program decrypted thecredit-card information with the correct version of thestore key, the data was re-encrypted before it wasstored using a key that was only available on theSystem i platform. The completed solution included:• Commands for key creation and key-change logging~ Generate and exchange keys with store~ Generate keys for local data

• RPG functions to encrypt and decrypt data~ Handle key version data stored in TLOG record

The features of the key-management solution were:• Each store had unique keys

~ The current version of the TLOG key~ The current version of a key used for credit-

cardauthorizations• The current version of a key used for key

exchange~ The key version was stored with the POS

data~ After data from the POS system was

processed, it was stored under a key thatwas only available on the System i platform

~ All key changes were logged~ A consistent mapping between store

number, key type and key version wasdefined and maintained

CTC HallmarkWhile many features of these POS projects aresimilar (so the CTC could reuse some of itscode), the differences in the credit-cardauthorization processes and communicationmechanisms meant that each project required acustomized solution. That combination ofreusable asset code and customization is ahallmark of the CTC.

Rich Diedrich is a senior technical staffmember with the IBM CTC in Rochester, Minn.He’s worked with customers on a variety ofapplication communication, modernization andencryption projects. Rich can be reached [email protected].

THE PAYMENT CARD INDUSTRY (PCI) Data Security Standard is a

set of requirements developed by the payment-card industry for

companies that process credit-card information. In addition to

network security and access-control requirements, it also

requires the encryption of stored credit-card information. This

requirement dictates the allowed encryption algorithms (Triple

DES or AES-256) and specifies that strong key-management

techniques be implemented.

—R.D.

What is PCI?

ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT ASPECTS of any solution involving

cryptography is secure key management. The IBM* 4758 and

4764 Cryptographic Coprocessors provide strong key

management by storing a master key in secure hardware and

using that key to encrypt the keys that are actually used to

encrypt the data. The encrypted keys are stored in a standard

DB2* file, so they can be backed up with standard operations.

However, the backup files can’t be used without the correct

master key. The master key can be entered in parts by different

people, so that no individual has the actual key value.

A similar capability has been introduced in i5/OS* V5R4

through the Cryptographic Services APIs. Master keys that are

stored securely by the operating system can be used to encrypt

the operational keys stored in a key store file.

—R.D.

Cryptographic Coprocessors

An eclectic take on the i5 world

Neil Tardy is a contributing writer to IBM Systems Magazine, i5Business Systems edition. Neil can be reached [email protected].


ENDPGM

or thousands of System i* professionals, Midrange.comis an indispensable part of daily life. This is especiallyso for David Gibbs, who established and maintains the

Web site and what has become a web of mailing lists.Gibbs admits that he has no idea how much time he devotes

to Midrange.com. But he’s seldom far removed from it.“I don’t keep track, but it’s not an insignificant amount of

time. My wife could probably tell you,” he says with achuckle.

Nearly 6,000 unique subscribers inhabit Midrange.com.(Gibbs reports that the number has remained fairly steady overtime.) The largest of its 24 public mailing lists, the general-purpose Midrange-L and the RPG400-L, each have more than1,100 subscribers, while smaller lists cover System itechnology-related topics ranging from Java* to systemsecurity to the industry job market.

Through its various lists, the Midrange.com community isdesigned for a single purpose—to provide a forum where Systemi professionals can help each other resolve technical issues.

“The thing that I love most is to see a good technicalconversation go by and then toward the end of the day, there’sa message saying, ‘Guys, thanks, that solved the problem.

We’re working perfectly now.’ That’s happened a number oftimes and it really makes me feel good,” Gibbs says. “Ithappens enough so that I know I’m doing something that’shelping people.”

Jon Paris, an IBM* Systems Magazine, i5 Business Systemsedition technical editor, credits Gibbs foremost for makingMidrange.com a no-charge service. As such, it’s often the onlyplace for some System i users to get the answers they need.

“Midrange.com has allowed one- and two-person shops toachieve remarkable things because it gives them access tosome of the industry’s best minds inside and outside of IBM,”says Paris, a longtime subscriber.

Midrange.com has never been fancy. Gibbs started with abulletin-board system (BBS) running on his Compaq PortableII “luggable.” A mailing list grew from that.

These days, Gibbs runs much of the operation from hisbasement, where he has two Linux* technology-based mailservers that run the software and host the mailing-list archivesat Midrange.com. A couple years ago, the Netshare400 groupdonated an AS/400* Model 170 to Midrange.com. That systemhosts the main Web site.

To Gibbs, the daily maintenance of Midrange.com is fairlytrivial—he says it doesn’t leak into his day job (he’s a seniorsoftware engineer at the Chicago-area affiliate of MKS Inc., aprovider of enterprise technology management solutions).Perhaps his biggest challenge is keeping up with theconversations. Though subscribers sometimes log as many as200 posts in a day, Gibbs says he tries to read every message.

Gibbs looks to shepherd in subscribers who wander awayfrom the topic—for instance, occasionally a discussion of, say,ERP packages breaks out on the RPG list. On very rareoccasions he’s had to step in and tell some overwroughtposters to tone down the rhetoric.

“Because Midrange.com is a relatively small communitycompared to some of the wider Internet lists, we can play alittle fast and loose with the mailing-list guidelines. But I’vegot some hard rules: You’ve got to be civil, and you’ve got tobe a professional,” he says.

What’s more common is the need for Gibbs to simply pointout that everything’s fine.

“Some days, when there are only a handful of messages, I’llhear from people saying, ‘I haven’t gotten any messages today.Is the list broken?’ ” he notes. “And I’ll say, ‘No, it’s just quiet.’”

Keeping theCommunityCommunicatingHelping System i professionals isMidrange.com moderator David Gibbs’reward BY NEIL TARDY

F

David Gibbs, a senior software engineer atMKS Inc., keeps the peace at Midrange.com.

PHOTO BY MATT CARR

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