• Wow! I Could Have Had Long Column Names!

  November 16, 2011 Ted Holt

  Sometimes I find out that something useful has been available to me for a long time, but I didn’t know about it. Then I feel like a moron. Today I’m telling you that a certain DB2 for i feature has been around for decades, and you’re probably not using it. However, there’s no need to feel like a moron. The feature of which I speak is the database ALIAS. As you well know, DB2 for i, in its native architecture, permits database column (field) names of up to 10 characters. That’s certainly better than the six-character limit for identifiers in

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• Putting Your i System in Semi-Restricted State

  November 16, 2011 Hey, Joe

  We need to put one of our i partitions in restricted state where no applications are running. However, we also need TCP/IP to be up while the system is down, so that we can download PTFs and some software upgrades while our third-party packages aren’t in use. Is there a way to put our system in a semi-restricted state where we can only use our system console and TCP/IP communications? –Mike Yes, there is. And it’s relatively easy to accomplish. Here’s the drill. First, make sure all your users are off the system. Then, make sure that all your batch

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• Add Powerful Generic Processing to Your Applications

  November 9, 2011 Ted Holt

  Each month I perform a ritual by which I attempt to placate the gods Sarbanes and Oxley. One task involves repeatedly selecting a certain menu option, filling the entry fields with different values each time. What an annoyance. Fortunately there are ways to eliminate repetition programmatically, and the use of generic names is one such way. A generic name is one that ends with the asterisk wild-card. Many CL commands accept generic parameters. I have written about this before. But when you want to run a certain command over a group of objects, and the command does not allow a

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• Meet JSON

  November 9, 2011 Alex Roytman

  If you have done Web application development with any modern toolset or technology lately, you have undoubtedly run across a trusty friend of mine: JSON (pronounced Jason). In recent years, JSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, has become the data interchange format of choice for Web applications. It has allowed many Web frameworks to flourish and has tremendously simplified my own job of creating IBM i web applications and frameworks. That’s why I decided to write a series of articles on JSON, in which I will explain the what, the why, and the how of JSON in detail. Let’s get going!

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• Admin Alert: When You Can’t Answer Record Lock Errors

  November 9, 2011 Joe Hertvik

  Recently, a client had a problem with Power i record allocation messages. When a program crashed with an RPG1218 record lock inquiry message, the system didn’t ask for a message reply. Instead, it automatically answered the message with a “D” to dump program data and end the job. The client didn’t want this to happen. He’d rather answer the message himself and retry the allocation. Here’s what happened and how it applies to all i OS shops. A Common Problem The first thing to understand is that this is a fairly common i OS situation. It isn’t magic or a

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• Adobe Flash Builder for the iSeries Programmer, Part 3

  November 4, 2011 Shannon O'Donnell

  NOTE: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. In my previous articles in this series, I showed you how to use Flash Builder to create a customer information GUI. You learned how to add visual components such as input text boxes, drop down lists, and even a tab navigator control. In this article, I will show you how to make your GUI into a server client that talks to Websphere Application Server Express running on your iSeries, and I will show you how to exchange data with the iSeries DB2/400 database. I will also demonstrate how

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• Debugging Authority Failures, Part 3

  November 2, 2011 Patrick Botz

  Authority failures are the result of attempts (i.e., actions) to access objects to which a user profile is not authorized. Several IBM i features, such as job logs and QHIST, contain some authority failure information. However, the system audit journal has all the information you need, and the OS provides easy-to-use tools to help you quickly find it. These tools are the audit configuration system values, the CPYAUDJRNE command, and the STRSQL command. Audit System Values To begin auditing authority failures, configure three system values: QAUDCTL, QAUDLVL, and QAUDLVL2. QAUDCTL is an on/off switch for auditing specific objects, specific user

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• Adaptable Data Areas

  November 2, 2011 Ted Holt

  If you’ve worked in IT for more than 15 minutes, you’ve undoubtedly been asked, “How hard would it be to. . . ?” The people who depend on the systems we support are constantly thinking of new and better ways to make information systems more closely resemble the reality of business. Every little thing you can do to ease the effort to modify software is worth doing. Here are two extremely simple ways to reduce the amount of effort required to change the length of a character data area. Consider a data area, FacInfo (Facility Info), that contains one item

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• Admin Alert: What To Do with Vendor Profiles During an Audit, PLUS Two Other Great Features

  November 2, 2011 Joe Hertvik

  System auditors generally don’t like i OS vendor-supplied profiles. You know, those user profiles that vendors require for software installation, ownership, or running special jobs. Some vendors even require you to give these profiles security officer (*SECOFR) or security administrator (*SECADM) authority. This can create audit points because auditors generally don’t like excessive security officer-enabled profiles on the system. Here are two strategies for handling this situation. What Is a Vendor-Supplied User Profile? A vendor-supplied user profile is any profile that exists on your i OS system in order to load software objects, or run vendor programs. It may also

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• 10 Facts You Should Know about Special Values

  October 26, 2011 Ted Holt

  Imagine not being allowed to code *FIRST in the MBR parameter of the Override with Database File (OVRDBF) command. Horrible thought, isn’t it? Special values make commands more sensible and easy to use. Here are 10 facts every IBM i developer should know in order to effectively use special values in his own commands. 1. Special values are character strings that are incompatible with validity checking rules. In this example, BATCH requires a three-digit number, and *ALL does not fit that description. PARM KWD(BATCH) + TYPE(*DEC) LEN(3 0) + DFT(*ALL) + REL(*GT 0) + SPCVAL((*ALL -1)) + PROMPT('Batch number')</all> 2.

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