Re-Adopt Authority Utility
by Patrick Botz

Adopted authority is a great way to avoid giving users direct access to data. However, there are a couple of challenges with changing an existing application to rely on adopted authority. First, adopted authority is not propagated to submitted jobs. Second, adopted authority must be removed whenever a command line is provided for the end user. Third, in a production environment it is difficult to find which programs must adopt authority without breaking production users. READ MORE >

Date Field Odds and Ends
Hey, Competent Professional:

Thirty years ago we stored dates and times in alphanumeric and numeric fields, because we didn't have date, time, and timestamp data types. Many shops still store dates in alpha and numeric fields, some of them because they still run applications that date back to those dates, others because they've never bothered to learn to use the new data types. Here are three tips for working with date fields. I hope you enjoy them. Feel free to add to the discussion. READ MORE >