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.

Alternative public authority, as described in my previous tip, addresses the last issue. This tip addresses the first issue.

To describe the tip, I’ll

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.

Hey, Ted:

In the old days, when dates were stored in numeric or alpha fields, we used invalid date

IBM i NetServer is a handy server. With very little configuration, it allows i/OS machines to provide file and print-sharing services for Windows-based PC clients. Unfortunately, NetServer has an image problem. Many people think they can only control NetServer through iSeries Navigator and that there isn’t a green-screen interface for NetServer. They are wrong. There are green-screen NetServer commands, and you may already have them installed on your machine.

Here’s a quick overview of what i5/OS NetServer is, and how you can start, stop, configure, and control it through 5250 green-screen commands.

What is IBM i NetServer?

Originally called iSeries