• Best Options for Post-i 6.1.1 Upgrade Backups

  April 20, 2011 Hey, Joe

  We’re performing an i/OS 6.1.1 upgrade this weekend. My boss wants to perform a full system backup after we get done. However, full system backups take six-hours to run in my shop. I have a very tight upgrade window, and the machine can only be down for 18 hours. What’s my best option for backing up a newly upgraded operating system? –Wil There are two overriding goals in tight operating system upgrade scenarios: 1) Protect your work so that you don’t have to perform an i 6.1.1 upgrade a second time if the machine crashes; and 2) Get the machine

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• A View of a View of a View

  April 13, 2011 Ted Holt

  One of the traits of a good database is that users are not forced to perceive the structure of the data as it is stored in the tables, but are free to perceive the data in ways that are meaningful to them. Today I share an SQL technique that achieves that goal. (No, you can’t do this with logical files.) Alternate Reality Before I illustrate the technique, let’s be sure we understand this idea of allowing the user to perceive the data as he wants to. Suppose a table (physical file) of invoices includes the date that an invoice is

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• SQL Bar Charts

  April 13, 2011 Hey, Ted

  A while back I had a problem that appears to be quite common, but just rare enough that it’s a little challenging when it hits you. Often in our roles as database administrators we need to determine various figures, such as how many key values in a table are used up in case we need to extend the field. Or sometimes we just to provide a statistical representation of data. What I needed was to produce a histogram using SQL. Let’s say you have an array of sample statistics and you want to break them into groups of an arbitrary

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• Admin Alert: The Four Faces of Software Vendors During a Hardware Upgrade

  April 13, 2011 Joe Hertvik

  For an upcoming hardware upgrade, I recently contacted all of our third-party software vendors to determine if they were going to increase our fees for running their software on a different machine. My mission was to determine: 1) Whether each vendor would charge us for changing hardware; and 2) Would there be an increase in their yearly software maintenance fees? The results were intriguing and an interesting window on the i/OS software world. The Other Costs of a Hardware Upgrade Hardware upgrades aren’t just about a new box. You also must ensure that your existing software will run on that

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• Taking RSE to Task

  April 6, 2011 Paul Tuohy

  Recently, I have been working on a modernization project with a client. Part of this project has involved me scanning and analyzing a number of legacy programs looking for patterns, commonalities, and such. In this article, I want to highlight a feature of RSE (Remote System Explorer) that has proved very helpful in the above process: Tasks and Bookmarks. Tasks and bookmarks provide an easy mechanism for defining tasks and, if required, placing a corresponding “marker” in a source member. In the past, you might have done this by printing off a source listing, highlighting some lines of code with

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• Today’s Horoscope

  April 6, 2011 Ashley Phix

  Today is April 6, 2011. Venus is in Cancer and Mars is in Leukemia. The sun is ascending faster than the U.S. national debt, and descending faster than the value of the U.S. dollar. The moon is a harsh mistress. See what the stars have to say to you today. Aries (March 21 – April 19): Work to improve the quality of comments in source code. What? is good, but Why? is even more important. Taurus (April 20 – May 20): Master an unfamiliar feature of SQL today. Gemini (May 21 – June 20): Instead of cloning a program, consider

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• Admin Alert: Must Your Rack Be IBM Black?

  April 6, 2011 Joe Hertvik

  Nothing is more ubiquitous in Power i shops than IBM 7014 black racks and Power Distribution Units (PDUs) that house and power most i/OS systems. Starting around $4,000 list for a base rack, most IBM shops routinely buy IBM racks and PDUs because they are standard for a Power i system. But do you realize there’s another option for racking your Power i system that could save you money? How Much Does That Black Rack Really Cost? IBM 7014 racks and Power Distribution Units (PDUs) are so common in iSeries, System i, and Power i shops that no one thinks

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• Duplicating an Entire Table or a Subset of a Table Using SQL

  March 23, 2011 Skip Marchesani

  In my previous article Duplicating CPFY Function Using SQL, I presented three questions that are frequently asked regarding SQL that are interrelated: Can SQL be used to duplicate the function found in the native CPFY (COPY FILE) command? Can SQL be used to duplicate a table similar to the function found in the native CRTDUPOBJ (CREATE DUPLICATE OBJECT) command? Can a field reference file be used as the source for column definitions with the CREATE TABLE SQL statement? I said the answer to all three questions was a qualified YES and introduced the concept of using the INSERT INTO

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• No Truncate Table? No Problem!

  March 23, 2011 Hey, Ted

  I am working on a project using DB2 for i, but my experience is with other database management systems. I can’t find the SQL TRUNCATE TABLE statement. Does DB2 cover this functionality some other way? –Brad Even in 7.1, the latest release, IBM does not implement the TRUNCATE TABLE statement. However, since this statement is included in other DB2 products, as well as in Informix, I expect we’ll see it eventually as part of our world. For the benefit of readers who are not familiar with TRUNCATE TABLE, this statement removes all rows of a table (records of a physical

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• Automatically Deleting Spooled Files through Expiration Dates

  March 23, 2011 Hey, Joe

  Last year, I stumbled on a cool method for automatically deleting spooled files. When you create a spooled file, you can set the number of days that you want to keep that file on your system. Then once a night, you can submit a job that runs the Delete Expired Spooled Files (DLTEXPSPLF) command that will automatically delete expired spooled files. You should try it. –Peter After working with the Power i and its antecedents for almost 30 years, I always find it interesting when somebody shows me something valuable that I haven’t used before. DLTEXPSPLF is a simple command

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