i ViewCategory: Education
Posted on February 7, 2025 by Teresa Moy
During this webcast presented by IBM i Champion and RPGPGM.com founder, Simon Hutchinson, you'll learn how to:
Posted on January 23, 2025 by Bill Langston
IBM i software developers, operators, and system administrators deserve a lot of respect. Their mostly invisible efforts literally enable businesses around the world to process trillions of dollars of economic output each year. However, IBM i and the integrated Db2 on i database make up a very specialized enterprise computing environment. IBM i doesn’t run on ubiquitous personal devices like phones, laptops, and tablet computers; it runs exclusively on IBM POWER servers. In other words, you aren’t likely to find a lot of useful IBM i education on YouTube or tips on social media. Read more 
Posted on June 26, 2024 by Teresa Moy
NGS-IQ can help you support a wide range of IBM i and business users who need to see and analyze operational data. Read more
Posted on June 18, 2024 by Bill Langston
The reporting and analytics software marketplace is mature. Historically, business intelligence software vendors designed their solutions to address every step of the data extraction, transformation, and presentation process. As a result, many applications became increasingly complicated and challenging to deploy. Read more
Posted on March 22, 2024 by Teresa Moy
IBM’s decision to drop DB2 Web Query caught customers by surprise. But as IBM said in their announcement letter, there are alternative solutions. We invite you to learn about ours: NGS-IQ. Read more
Posted on January 24, 2024 by Bill Langston
APIs have become the industry standard for trading partners and customers to share the data they need to efficiently collaborate and provide better service. The people who use your ERP software need access to the data APIs can provide. We believe that NGS-IQ and RPG API Express present an optimal solution for IBM i customers. Read more
Posted on August 25, 2023 by Teresa Moy
We often hear from NGS-IQ customers who want to develop dashboards. When we inquire about their needs, we quickly find that not everyone uses the term "dashboard" to mean the same thing. Read more
Posted on May 30, 2023 by Teresa Moy
Watch this presentation and learn how NGS-IQ can simplify and automate the cleansing, transformation, and delivery of accurate, timely data to Power BI. Read more
Posted on April 21, 2023 by Teresa Moy
Check out our webcast from April 13, where you'll learn when to use a new field or record selection to add run-time prompts to queries; how to work with inconsistent data values to support accurate file joins, sorts, and summaries... Read more
Posted on March 3, 2023 by Teresa Moy
Check out our webcast from February 15, where you'll get an overview of NGS-IQ and see how it connects Microsoft Excel, SharePoint, and Web users to Db2 on i. Read more
Posted on December 14, 2022 by Teresa Moy
Check out our webcast from December 8, where we discuss queries that text, the Query Reference File command, and accessing data from external sites to produce bar codes and other objects. Read more
Posted on December 7, 2022 by Teresa Moy
If you use NGS-IQ, please register to attend our next customer webinar. It will be held on December 8, 2022, and recorded for on-demand viewing afterwards. Read more
Posted on August 18, 2022 by Bill Langston
WebRunner is built into NGS-IQ, but maybe you haven't had time to get familiar with IQ Client's HTML formatting features. Read more
Posted on June 28, 2022 by Bill Langston
Technically, a Microsoft 365 user can connect to Db2 on i through the IBM Access Client Solutions (ACS) ODBC driver. But in practice, few Microsoft 365 users understand their company’s Db2 on i database well enough to join tables, select columns, and format the data they need. Read more
Posted on May 9, 2022 by Teresa Moy
Check out our webcast from April 27, where we discuss using Qport Access' Transfer to Host feature and more solutions. Read more
Posted on January 10, 2022 by Bill Langston
IBM i is a unique and proven enterprise computing platform. IBM announces software, operating system releases, technology refreshes, and new hardware periodically, but often the specific information you need to complete a task or explain a concept effectively isn’t in those announcement letters. Read more
Posted on September 29, 2021 by Bill Langston
Since the earliest days of OS/400, job scheduling has been practiced in IBM i environments, its functionality improving in recent releases. And while you have a great collection of built-in job scheduling features at your disposal, you can do even more if you license the IBM i Advanced Job Scheduler or a third-party utility. Read more
Posted on June 21, 2021 by Teresa Moy
Many IBM i IT professionals don’t use Excel but provide technical support to business users who do. These users need timely data they can analyze in Excel to present to their staff or customers. Read more
Posted on April 13, 2021 by Bill Langston
You're here in search of answers, and many files you have,
You join them up, you pick some fields, and then you click a tab. Read more
Posted on January 25, 2021 by Bill Langston
IT Managers, IBM i programmers, and operators often express frustration over the challenge of supporting non-technical software users. Many shops succeed thanks to only one or two non-IT staff members who learn quickly and informally. They become the office “power users.”
What? You don’t think you have any of those kinds of people? We say grow your own. Read more
Posted on April 23, 2019 by Bill Langston
We periodically hear from companies running IBM i software applications who are concerned about their future ability to support IBM i. With their in-house expert or small IBM i team nearing retirement age, the pool of technical knowledge is gradually shrinking. Read more
Posted on September 5, 2018 by Teresa Moy
While some vendors are addressing business resiliency, covering solutions from disaster recovery to encryption, they often overlook or ignore this somewhat mundane but critical aspect that can have a large impact on a company’s future success – “turnover preparedness.” Read more
Posted on August 14, 2018 by Bill Langston
Every time NGS product specialists spend time with new users, we encourage them to call our technical support hotline or use our online incident reporting system when they have questions. We spend a lot of time training non-technical, business users of our query, reporting, and financial software, and many of them tell us they never knew they had those options. Yes—they, and you, do.
Just as frequently, we discover people whose encounters with other vendors have caused them to develop a disabling condition we’ll call “software support phobia” (SSP). Read more
Posted on July 11, 2017 by Bill Langston
NGS customers who are current on maintenance can take advantage of a variety of valuable, free, and educational offerings. These offerings include online tutoring sessions, share and learn Webinars, on demand videos, and even onsite product reviews with NGS product specialists traveling in your area. Most of these offerings only require an hour or two of your time. I hope you or your coworkers have taken advantage of some of these services and found them very helpful. Read more
Posted on September 15, 2016 by Bill Langston
Are you an NGS-IQ query developer who hasn’t had time to get familiar with our Web reporting features? You’ve probably seen us demonstrate WebRunner and IQ Client’s HTML design features, but up to now, your company has left Web software development and support in the hands of a separate person or team that views your IBM i environment as an uncharted island, best avoided. Read more
Posted on August 23, 2016 by David Gillman
The item file is seemingly a simple file. Use the item number the same way as on sales orders along with the human readable description and maybe a few other fields such as color, weight, and so on. Throw in a few department or categories, too, to make summarizing easier and more meaningful to businesspeople. Read more
Posted on July 11, 2016 by David Gillman
In my last blog entry, I misspoke. I said there were two main entities – customers and orders – on which sales departments base their reporting. While true, the real world is a little less clear. Read more
Posted on May 25, 2016 by David Gillman
For a long, long time NGS has worked with customers who have sales related data tied up in their ERP system without easy ways to access and summarize it. Their CRM system (using that term loosely for many companies) does not interface well with the ERP data. Read more
Posted on January 12, 2016 by Teresa Moy
Here we are again, the start of another year, and the start of another 365 days of new year’s resolutions which we may or may not keep. What’s at the top of that well-intentioned list? For most of us, it’s exercising more and eating healthy. Read more
Posted on November 17, 2015 by Bill Langston
We regularly hear customers say they need and want ongoing education but can’t leave their office to attend a conference, user group meeting, or training class. This problem might be due to job duties, budget, or family obligations. We certainly understand. Read more
Posted on November 10, 2015 by David Gillman
New terms come up all the time for IT people. A really interesting new one is “Data Science” and its corresponding job title, “Data Scientist.”
A month ago, I did a video on data science, based on my background, education, and work in this area. There is not much in the video about the IBM i, but it is still one IBM i IT people should view. Read more
Posted on October 27, 2015 by David Gillman
Most IT people have to interact with people from some other department in the company. And for most IT people writing reports from IBM i data, this interaction probably happens on a higher than average basis. Writing reports and creating views of data useful to business people requires communicating with others in relevant departments. Read more
Posted on October 20, 2015 by Bill Langston
NGS devotes considerable resources to sending product specialists into the field to meet face to face with our customers. We initiated this effort, which we call our “Customer Success” program, several years ago to proactively connect with new users who have often never received training and with long-time users who are increasingly wearing multiple hats and spending less time keeping up with new releases. Read more
Posted on September 24, 2015 by Bill Langston
From time to time, nearly all of us resist or postpone developing new skills and learning how to take advantage of new technology. This can be especially true as we age, even among information technology professionals who have had long and successful careers in an ever changing environment. Read more
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