Necessity is the mother of invention. And so, many System i shops will find themselves inventing new applications to perform necessary business functions. This practice is not limited to end-users, but includes vendors using the AS400 to develop applications and provide support for businesses running i. First Option Inc. is one such shop. In “spare time,” the company developed a java-based monitoring application that collects key health indicators of an AS400. Released in April 2008, the iSeries Watchdog application’s evolution and development story is shared here in a Q&A with First Option president, Paul Fuller.

Could you describe the specific circumstances of the internal problem that your company was having that led to the development of the Watchdog program?

We have service level agreements (SLAs) that require our iSeries box to be up 24 x 7 x 365, and we need to ensure that if there is a problem we address it immediately. There are financial penalties if we do not resolve problems in a specific period of time. Prior to Watchdog, the systems were checked manually. This presented two problems: 1) Operators were involved in the manual checking rather than other billable activities — resulting in reduced revenue. 2) The manual method was not scalable (i.e., more boxes mean more people). We looked at the existing packages on the market and they were too expensive. We had a very basic need and we did not want to purchase additional products in order to make the monitoring software run. We are a software development shop, so why not build it ourselves!

Why Java? Was this the immediate solution, or did it just happen to work well? Did you consider other options?

Java was the immediate solution for the front end interface. We had in-house expertise and it is platform independent. Using Java also allowed us to work with open source tools. We had not worked with Java Persistence API (JPA), Spring or LDAP on the iSeries but had been reading a lot about them in the Trades. Since we are a Java/RPG shop, we wanted to try out some new technologies and frameworks. So, this was a perfect opportunity to solve an internal need and further develop our consulting skill set.

For the back end, the programs that gather key health indicators are RPG service programs. In terms of data access, we let the iSeries do what it does best, crunch data. Additionally, the type of information we needed to gather was iSeries-specific so it did not make a lot of sense to use Java because it was already tied to the platform.

How long did it take to develop the Watchdog program?

We started in November 2007 of last year. The application was developed on nights and weekends so we did not finish it until March 2008. Had we been working on it full-time, it probably would have taken a couple of months.

What problems did you encounter along the way? (Were there work-arounds or problems that you had to deal with?)

We did have a few problems. We wanted to use a tool to generate JPA entities from SQL tables. The tool needed to run on the latest version of Eclipse so we had to abandon WebSphere development studio client (WDSC) and go with Eclipse in order to use the tool. We also used the IBM Interrogated application server released in January of 2008. There was not a lot of documentation and/or knowledge regarding this product. So, we had to engage IBM in order to resolve some of these problems. The LDAP web based interface was not available on WebSphere 6.1 so we had to find an alternate tool to create schemas and enter test data.

There are similar products available — why didn’t you invest in one of the competitor’s products instead of spending the time and energy developing your own?

There are definitely some very good products on the market that have some of the same functionality. As I mentioned above, we thought the products were too expensive and did not like the front end. The interface to the user was either green screen or a very difficult to read dashboard. Also, you had to purchase the software that had a traditional price based model — the larger the model and processing group, the more expensive the software. We would have had to purchase software maintenance in addition to the upfront cost. Some of the products also required purchasing additional third-party products in order from them to work.

What size company is Watchdog preferable for?

We are providing this software as a service (SaaS). We will establish a secured connection to the customer, install a client on their iSeries which will gather the monitoring data and configure the alert system as well as provide the Web Services to send the data to a First Option Inc. server. We charge a monthly fee that includes rental of the client software and the graphical front end. The rental fee is not based on the iSeries model or processor group and you do not have to buy software maintenance.

We think this will appeal to small- to medium-sized businesses that require a solid monitoring system for a price that makes business sense. We can also bundle a remote monitoring service that will respond and resolve problems on the iSeries. This allows small- to medium-sized businesses to focus on their core business not running a System Operations Group.

I started in the software development business writing code on a S36. The most overwhelming change over the past 20 years is the number of options available to develop and deploy software. From the creation of the development environment to the deployment of the application on a production server, there are a number of products to install and integrate. It’s easy to get lost in the technology and lose focus on the business need. It is extremely important to engage an experienced development team who understands that the requirement is always a superior software product to support your business need.

System i security vendor Raz-Lee Security Inc. announced Monday support for SSL enforcement in iSecurity Firewall, a move Raz-Lee says constitutes a major improvement in Firewall. Although many sites allow Telnet access without SSL, they often insist that ODBC access use SSL capabilities. Often times though, different types of equipment in company’s branch offices include differing levels of SSL support, giving rise to the need for security tools.

Shmuel Zailer, CEO of Raz-Lee Security said that previously “the only way to implement user to port rules was to use the OS/400 Port Restriction capabilities [which often] resulted in unacceptable performance degradation.”

Additionally, Zailer said that ” OS/400 Port Restriction does not have simulation capabilities and its logging file is not part of the standard log files provided by OS/400.” The activity log file produced is part of iSecurity Firewall’s standard log file and simulation mode is available prior to “live” implementation, preventing what may be serious networking errors.

We recently asked users to review Innovative Systems’ iSeries database utility F.R.O.G. Here is one of the responses we received.

---

I saw this utility and downloaded it. It is better than WRKDBF and DBU. The best thing I like is the Windows component added to this utility.In this era of windows, green screen is becoming obsolete and people like windows based applications and utilities. So FROG is the answer to all users using green screen based utilities for files.

I would give 5 out of 5 to the developers.

Keep up the good work. Thanks.

–A.B.

We recently asked users to review Innovative Systems’ iSeries database utility F.R.O.G. Here is one of the responses we received.

---

Did not like it.

It kept giving me decimal data errors, so I unstalled it.

–R.H.

We recently asked users to review Innovative Systems’ iSeries database utility F.R.O.G. Here is one of the responses we received.

---

I’ve been using FROG for iSeries for almost 2 years now. It is an excellent tool and has been upgraded a couple times. Jonas’ tech support has always been very responsive.

I wrote to the editors of System i News about this shareware in response to an article they wrote about iSeries freeware. My response was published.

Bottom line, I hope others readers saw my response and gave the product a try. We’ve found it to be very useful in certain situations.–M.M.

A recent article from IT Jungle highlights an online analytical processing (OLAP) software suite from InfoManager, a little known but widely used System i software vendor. According to IT Jungle, InfoManager has been re-working its core of business intelligence software that can manage data and metadata across platforms. It also provides multidimensional ways of viewing BI data that transcends the traditional dashboard interface.

InfoManager plans to release WebAdvisor 3.0, a Java re-written Web -based client interface later this summer.

Business Computer Design International Inc. (BCD) has announced the availability of a beta version of WebSmart PHP, which helps IBM System i developers to create PHP applications to run on i5/OS or other platforms such as Windows, Linux and Unix.

You can check out the details at the WebSmart PHP site, but basically BCD is making the software available to anyone who wants to evaluate it for 30 days.

BCD made the initial WebSmart PHP announcement at the COMMON conference this spring. The software includes more than 50 templates to help guide developers into creating the PHP application they need, and can support DB2 and MySQL databases. Licenses will start at $4,250 for two developer seats with additional seats costing $1,950; an unlimited site license for a single System i will also be available for $13,500.

Creditz, which creates digital rewards cards for consumers, has signed a $1.1 million deal with IBM that includes the purchase of IBM System i servers.

The iSeries hardware is just a portion of the deal, which also includes the purchase of WebSphere and DB2 software as well as managed services hosted in IBM’s Toronto data center. Here’s the rundown on what Creditz does, from the IBM press release:

The Creditz service gives consumers a digital currency card that allows consumers to make payments for anything from a postage stamp to a luxury car. With each payment, users earnCreditz that can be spent on whatever consumers want. For those who collect frequent flyer and retail buyer points, Creditz allows them to aggregate and exchange points for everyday shopping, dining, paying bills, retirement funds or making donations to nonprofit organizations.

Chris Maxcer at the System i Network has a column about how the IBM System i is good for Creditz because of the platform’s reputation for security and reliability. Although the best part from the link is a comment from a reader who compares the System i to Cinderella:

It has been told tales are a metaphor of real life. Has anyone ever noticed the likeness between the AS400 story and Cinderella’s tale? You have a step-mother (the mainframe) and you have stepsisters (p and x servers). You could even see the coach metamorphosed from the pumpkin (RPG?).

Will it ever be a happy end?

By now I see many many princes (faithful users) but none of them seems able to find the golden slipper.

Wow. I mean, that’s just funny.

In this detailed article, Timothy Prickett Morgan from IT Jungle compares System i price and performance to Unix boxes from IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems.

I suggest reading the story if you want all the dirty details, including tables with all the specs. But the bottom line conclusions by Morgan are these:

• System i entry boxes should have the Power6 chip sooner rather than later.
• i5/OS is too expensive.
• DB2 on the System i is too expensive.

Morgan said System i lags on price-performance more because of the software than the hardware.

David Vasta suggests having a site dedicated to the creation and sharing of open source applications on the IBM System i. He points to an existing site, OpenSource4iSeries.com, which frankly doesn’t look like it’s been active for a while.

Perhaps there is room within the iSociety for this type of discussion? The group has a fairly active forum, and if a discussion was started on open source applications that started to grow in popularity, perhaps a special page on the site could be dedicated to it. I’m not sure.