Twittering from the IBM i?

I’ve been on Twitter since January 2009 (LeahRosin), and have tried to use the social networking site to gain and share information on the IT areas that I cover for TechTarget, as well as emerging technology, breaking IT news, and some personal interests and hobbies.

Thus it was with much interest that I read a press release I received from Kisco System’s Rich Loeber, announcing SNDTWEET, a new Twitter interface designed specifically for System i. My first thought was: Don’t most System i shops also have non IBM i workstations that employees use? But, my thinking was limited by how I happen to use Twitter. Rich is suggesting that Twitter may be a useful system monitoring tool.

• You can add the SNDTWEET to your CL programs to send out notifications when the program is done or when error situations are encountered.
• You can set up a program to monitor your system operator message queue. If a message is sent that requires a response, your monitoring program can react by sending a Tweet to put your following users on notice that there is a problem.
• You may have a situation where you want to “watch” file update activity for a critical file or for a file that should not normally be updated. You could implement a file trigger program for the watched file and then have that trigger program submit a Tweet when update activity (or delete activity, etc) takes place.

Well, that sounds way more useful than learning that fellow AS/400 enthusiast Mike Wills’ “4-yo loves AniMatch.” (To be fair, Wills frequently offers more useful information than that. I was digging to find a silly AS/400 user tweet.) In truth, despite the “Oprah Twitter bump,” there aren’t a lot of System i users on Twitter yet. Some of you may agree with Aaron Bartell’s recent blog post (a Twittering chair) and may not have found a real use-case for it yet.

But perhaps this Twittering thing will catch on, and you will set up your System i to tell you how it’s doing. What do you think?

More System i Tweeps
David Gibbs
Mark Fontecchio