Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here.

In the last issue of the year, I like to do something fun. In 2008, I found my way through mazes. In 2007, I solved the peg game and talked about some other unusual things. This year I’ve done something fun that I think you’ll find to be a little more practical.

We use SQL a lot in my shop for ad-hoc queries. One annoyance is that the various and sundry SQL clients we use don’t display the numbers the way we want to see them.

The year’s almost up, believe it or not. What’s even harder for me to believe is that we’ve been putting out this newsletter for almost 10 years. It’s been wonderful to hear how you’ve benefited from Four Hundred Guru. Let’s end 2010 with some feedback from readers of this august publication.

–Ted

Hey, Ted:

Thank you very, very, very, very much for the extremely helpful tip showing how to edit spool files. Under big time pressure, I couldn’t fully test mandatory payroll changes before payroll ran them. In the middle of the check it would jump to the

I have a recurring problem with file locks on my system, where critical jobs are stuck in lock waiting status (LCKW) waiting for an object before crashing on a file allocation error. How can I tell which object the job is waiting for before it crashes and which user has that object locked? I’m running i5/OS V5R4M5.

–Brett

There are two ways to figure out which locked object a job is waiting for. One way to locate it is by using i5/OS green screen commands; the other is by using iSeries Navigator (OpsNav). Here’s the drill for locating your locked