Timothy Prickett Morgan
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Refacing Your Database, Part 1
April 5, 2016 Paul Tuohy
… Read moreNote: The code accompanying this article is available for download here.
In this group of three articles, I will discuss a technique for refacing a traditional DDS defined database as an SQL DDL defined database. There will be no recreation of files or recompilation of programs, and it is not as much hard work as you think it might be.
The stored procedures, functions, programs, and commands used in these articles are available in the library SQLFACE, which can be downloaded here.
Before I get into the nitty gritty of refacing databases, I would just like to say
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Enable or Disable Code at Run Time
April 5, 2016 Ted Holt
… Read moreIf you program in RPG or C, you should know how to use compiler directives to enable or disable source code at compile time. IBM i programmers should also know how to enable or disable executable code at run time, and why they would want to do such a thing.
Let’s talk about the why first.
One good reason to enable or disable code is for trouble-shooting. You might find it valuable to include commands to:
- Display the job log
- Dump program variables
- Copy QTEMP files to another library
- Build spooled files (like of the type I showed how to
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X Marks The Spot
April 4, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreJust because IBM sold off its System x X86 server business to Lenovo Group does not mean magically that X86 servers are no longer relevant to Power Systems customers. As far as we can tell, Big Blue’s exit from this business has had no measurable impact on the use of X86 iron at IBM i shops, although the brand of machines that IBM i customers might choose in their next X86 upgrade cycle might change if they had not already been using gear from Hewlett-Packard Enterprise or Dell, the dominant suppliers of X86 gear in the datacenter.
Last week,
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Finders, Keepers: Long Lost RSE Keyboard Shortcuts
March 29, 2016 Susan Gantner
… Read moreIf you have read many of my past Four Hundred Guru tips, you’ll remember that I write a lot about RSE (a.k.a. RDi) and particularly I write a lot about keyboard shortcuts. I’ve even created my own card with my favorite keyboard shortcuts. This tip is to confess that I’ve recently realized that I’ve been missing out on a set of shortcuts that I should have been using and including on my shortcut cards all along.
I published a tip about a year ago about Playing with Blocks and I included an edited version of that tip on the back
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Ease the Burden of Overloading
March 29, 2016 Ted Holt
… Read moreA while back I said that function overloading is marvelous. I haven’t changed my mind. The same is true of overloaded stored procedures. The only negatives to overloading are a couple of annoyances that the system requires to maintain order. Fortunately, those annoyances are easily circumvented. Here’s what and how.
Assume a table of items. Each item is identified by a five-digit ID code for internal use only. Customers use an alternate catalog ID to refer to items.
create table Items ( ID dec (5,0), Catalog_ID char(6), MaterialThisLevel dec (5,2), LaborThisLevel dec (5,2), OverheadThisLevel dec (5,2), MaterialLowerLevels dec (5,2), LaborLowerLevels -
Installing PHP on Your Laptop
March 29, 2016 Chris Ringer
… Read moreIn my introductory article I walked you through a crash course in PHP. Now I will show you how obtain a free PHP development environment on your laptop in two easy installations of XAMPP and Netbeans. This allows you the freedom to configure PHP and test your scripts as you choose without affecting a production website or needing management approval.
However, if you need to manage PHP scripts on an IBM i, you will want to alternatively explore using Zend Studio. This full-featured IDE integrates directly with the IBM i and allows you to write and
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The Value Of Things That Don’t Change–And Those That Must
March 28, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreThe wide expectation is that IBM will announce the next iteration of the IBM i operating system, up until now known as iNext and now thought to be IBM i 7.3, at its TechU conference in Atlanta, Georgia, on April 12. That is a week ahead of when COMMON is hosting a webinar with IBM i chief architect Steve Will to talk about new features in the platform, so the cat is out of the bag.
The word we hear on the street is that there will be significant enhancements to the database and to the security systems of the
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Generating An Insert Script From Existing Data
March 15, 2016 Paul Tuohy
… Read moreI was recently presented with an interesting conundrum. Can you generate an INSERT statement for data that currently exists in a table?
For example, let’s say a table contained the following data:
EMPID NAME GRADE BIRTHDATE JOINEDDATE SALARY 00001 Test AA 1956-05-14 2001-10-10 0.00 00002 Test2 - Has Null AA null null null
Could I generate the corresponding insert statement similar to the following:
insert into TESTSTUFF/TESTEMP (EMPID, NAME, GRADE, BIRTHDATE, JOINEDDATE, SALARY) values ('00001', 'Test', 'AA', '1956-05-14', '2001-10-10', .00), ('00002', 'Test2 - Has Null', 'AA', NULL, NULL, NULL);The original request was to generate an insert script for all
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Dealing With A MIN/MAX Quirk
March 15, 2016 Ted Holt
… Read moreThe MIN and MAX functions have been a part of SQL since the beginning. A database-kind-of-guy-or-gal would think that anything so established would be stable to the point of boredom, but a database-kind-of-guy-or-gal would be wrong. MIN and MAX don’t even work the same way in all implementations of SQL, and to top it off, they have a quirk that I come upon occasionally.
MIN and MAX began as aggregate functions. As such, they locate the minimum and maximum non-null values within a column across a set of rows. On this, everyone in the database world is in agreement. The
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Getting Started With IBM i And .Net XMLSERVICE Connectivity
March 15, 2016 Richard Schoen
… Read moreIn my last article I introduced you to XMLSERVICE for accessing IBM i data and discussed why you might want to consider using the XMLSERVICE .Net wrapper API to connect to and utilize live IBM i data from your .Net applications. In this article, I will cover an overview of XMLSERVICE and the .Net wrapper API I created for .Net developers to use IBM i data without needing to install IBM i access. You will also get a chance to do your first connectivity test to the IBM i using the XMLSERVICE for .Net API.
Getting Started
For this session