I am a VB.NET programmer and am looking to retrieve a list of all users and their expiration dates on our AS/400 system. I stumbled across the cwbx library and have been able to connect to our system, but not much else from there.

Can you suggest how this info can be retrieved from VB.NET? Thanks.

–Elliot

Hi, Elliot:

The easiest way to retrieve this user info is to use the i/OS Display User Profile (DSPUSRPRF) command and dump the results to a table (also known as an outfile):

DSPUSRPRF USRPRF(*ALL) OUTPUT(*OUTFILE) OUTFILE(QTEMP/LSTUSRPRFP)

The above command (assuming you have the

Supposedly computer programming is a logical science. One would think, then, that computer programmers would be logical thinkers. It is not so. Let me provide a few examples of illogical thinking taken from real production programs. Then I will show a simple, low-tech way to deal with logical expressions so that they don’t end up illogical.

Let’s start with this example taken from fixed-format RPG specs. I suggest you find the bad logic yourself before reading my comments.

TYPE          IFNE      'A'
TYPE          IFEQ      'S'
XCODE         CABNE     'S'           CONTIN
              ENDIF
TYPE          IFEQ      *BLANK
XCODE         CABEQ     'S'           CONTIN
              ENDIF
              ENDIF

This code

In an earlier column, I discussed how to use email addressing to send text message alerts to Power i administrators when a problem occurs. This week, I’ll discuss how to enhance that solution by providing redundancy for i OS text messaging, so that urgent messages can always be delivered regardless of whether or not your email system is running.

The Coverage Plan, Phase I

In my previous article, I outlined a monitoring plan for using cell phones, email, and text messages to alert administrators when critical iSeries, System i, and Power i events occur. This plan consisted of