Explore current methods of interconnecting SQL Server to the IBM i in batch or real time.

Written by Michael Sansoterra

Astronomers tell us that many galaxies are colliding, which can cause quite an upheaval. "Collision" is a good word to describe how some shops feel about intermingling the System i (AS/400, iSeries…) with other technologies. SQL Server and DB2 are both large product families, and there are many integration options to consider. IT personnel want to know: Do we invest in learning the tools that IBM and Microsoft supply, or should we buy a third-party package to ease the integration pains?

IBM responds to Oracle's Exadata 2 database appliance with DB2 pureScale clustering feature.

Written by Chris Smith

I remember once I was on my high school cross country team. Only a limited number of runners were going to be chosen to travel across state to compete against another school. At lunch, the coach read the names of those who were going to compete in the meet. My name was not among them, and I was shocked. I knew I was not among the top runners, but I still was proud of what I could do and felt I was a serious team contributor. I didn't appreciate being left off the list. The list of database stars among the IBM team has just been read, and, sadly, DB2 for i is not on the list.

By Gene Cobb

If you have been following recent IT industry trends, you may have noticed that there has been a lot of activity in the area of Business Intelligence (BI). Mergers, major acquisitions, and announcements have dominated the headlines in the past year. IBM has been quite active in this area as well. The recent acquisition of Cognos and the announcement of the Dynamic Data Warehouse Initiative are evidence of this. But IBM's i5/OS investment in and commitment to BI has not just been recent; it has been a point of emphasis in the last several releases, going back to V4R1. Consider some of the following database enhancements that have been built into the operating system over the last decade and beyond:

Achieve an impressive ROI using i-based reporting and BI software to connect users to the latest Web 2.0 technology.

Written by Bill Langston

Editor's Note: This article is a distillation of the Webcast "Migrating from IBM Query/400?" which is available free from the MC Press Webcast Center. It also covers information from the white paper "Replacing Query/400: Understanding Your Options," also available free from the MC Press White Paper Center.

Recent IBM announcements and acquisitions in the business intelligence (BI) market might lead you to think your company must be one of the few not yet embracing predictive analytics, data warehousing, or cloud computing for BI. In reality, most mid-size companies today rely on a mix of queries, reports, file transfers, temporary databases, and spreadsheets to help them make business decisions and share information.

Economic uncertainty is putting more emphasis on making smarter business decisions. Business intelligence tools, which can help, offer more choices than ever for System i shops.

Written by John Ghrist

One of the most important areas in which computing is being applied to business activity is in the realm of business intelligence (BI). From humble beginnings such as merely displaying an enterprise's financial results, BI has grown to become an exciting array of products and methods for analyzing business data and for making decisions about an enterprise's future directions, a process generally referred to as business performance management.

More than just a replacement for Query/400, DB2 Web Query is business intelligence light.

Written by Chris Smith

In one of the sessions on DB2 Web Query at the OCEAN User Group's Technical Conference this week, the speaker, Doug Mack, asked for a show of hands of those users who had installed the product and those who had actually started to use it. I looked around to see the results: installed DB2 Web Query--quite a few hands; used it--not so many.

Organize and secure your documents, and create a GUI to perform text searches on them.

Written by Gene Cobb

In my previous article "OmniFind, Part I: Add Sizzle to Your SQL with OmniFind Text Search Server for DB2 for i," I introduced IBM OmniFind Text Search Server for DB2 for i , a new IBM i 6.1 product that provides the ability to perform both basic and sophisticated text searching against your DB2 for i data. In this article, I show you how to integrate this exciting new product with DB2 Web Query, the strategic IBM i query and reporting tool.