Linoma Gets Graphical With Journal Entries

January 25, 2017 Alex Woodie

Prolific is one word that describes the IBM i platform’s aptitude at writing journal entries. The volumes are truly astounding. But searching through this machine-generated data using a green screen is a tedious task that’s better for inducing eyestrain than generating results. That’s why Linoma Software is proffering up a new graphical interface for working with journal entries in Surveyor/400.

Surveyor/400 is a handy multi-tool that does a little bit of everything for programmers, administrators, and end-users alike. The Java-based product lets users explore IBM i through a Windows Explorer-like interface; query DB2 for i data with a File Editor; copy database file layouts to Excel; and manage objects residing in different LPARs.

Now Linoma, which was acquired last year by HelpSystems, has added one more trick to Surveyor/400: viewing and working with journal entries within a graphical user interface (GUI). The announcement was made in late 2016.

Linoma added the journal functionality because it has traditionally been difficult to get this information through the native green-screen interface. Administrators and programmers who needed insight into the activities of IBM i journaling–which is used primarily for high availability and auditing purposes–previously wrote commands to sort journals for database records added, deleted, or changed.

Linoma opted for a “spreadsheet-like” experience for this functionality. Each database field in each journal entry is displayed in columns within the Surveyor/400 File Editor. This makes it easier to see exactly what was changed in each database record, the company says.

Surveyor/400 now allows users to view and work with changes to IBM i journal entries through the File Editor GUI

This approach also enables users to filter and sort journal entries in Surveyor/400, such as by date, time, user profile, or the actual database field contents. This is particularly helpful when viewing what a particular user changed in a file over a certain time period for a given customer, the company says. What’s more, columns can be rearranged or hidden to create custom viewing layouts that can be saved and reused, it adds.

“Our customers are really excited that they can now work with journals on the IBM i through an intuitive visual interface,” says Bob Luebbe, co-founder and chief software architect at the Omaha, Nebraska-based company. “With this added functionality, Surveyor/400 continues to demonstrate it’s the Swiss Army Knife of productivity tools for the IBM i.”

The new journal viewer feature can be launched from either the IBM Rational Developer for i (RDi) development environment, or directly from Surveyor/400 running on a client.

Surveyor/400 version 4.2 also brings two new custom commands, STRJRN and ENDJRN, as well as an easy way to delete temporary journal save files. Several SQL enhancements were also delivered, including support for SQL double data types, improved window sizing for large functions, and support for NCHAR, NVARCHAR, and DECFLOAT data types in the SQL generator.

This is the first major release of the product since version 4.1, which was released in April 2015. Version 4.0 debuted in September 2013. For more information see www.linomasoftware.com.

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