FHG Volume: 12 Archives

Admin Alert: Auditing Your IBM i Software Maintenance Bills

December 12, 2012 Joe Hertvik

Dealing with IBM i third-party maintenance can be a pain. You buy a software package once, but wind up paying yearly maintenance bills for the life of the application, paying 15 percent or more of the original purchase price per year. And the vendor may increase the cost on a yearly basis. This week, I’ll discuss software maintenance fees and give you some tips on keeping your maintenance costs down.

Basic IBM i Maintenance

Third-party software maintenance is a necessary but expensive proposition for IBM i vendors. Software vendors need to charge yearly maintenance to provide cash flow for creating

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BASS: Build A Spreadsheet

December 12, 2012 Ted Holt

Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. This code was updated on 12/22/14.

Everybody needs a project–something to putter with in order to relieve stress and deal with the vicissitudes of life. I would like to tell you about a project that I’ve been working on for the past few months. I only wrote it for the fun of it, but it has already come in handy.

It seems that not a week goes by without someone asking me to stop providing them a report as a PDF and give it to them in Excel

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End-Of-Year Odds And Ends

December 12, 2012 Ted Holt

Dear Esteemed Colleagues:

We made it through another year! Thanks to you, along with our writers and advertisers, this august publication is 11 years old! Who’da thunk it? Let’s wind up 2012 with various and sundry items that you sent my way.

–Ted

Hey, Ted:

I am using SQL to query an index, similar to what I do for a logical file. The system is responding with error SQL7011 (SOMEINDEX in SOMELIB not table, view, or physical file.) Could you please shed some light on why it is happening?

–Jabir

What you’re trying to do makes sense from

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Admin Alert: Strategically Using Power Systems’ Processor Trial Capacity On Demand

November 28, 2012 Joe Hertvik

IBM Power system customers usually buy more capacity than they need. A customer may buy an eight processor Power 720 machine but only activate five processors, leaving the additional processors for future growth. Because it’s expensive to activate Power system processors, IBM offers a program called Trial Capacity on Demand (TCoD) that allows you to test whether additional processors will alleviate system bottlenecks before you purchase.

What Is TCoD?

Trial Capacity on Demand (TCoD) is an IBM program that allows you to activate already existing system processors for 30 days at no charge. The intent is to allow users to

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Glenn Wants To Know More Facts About Special Values

November 28, 2012 Hey, Ted

I found your article 10 Facts You Should Know about Special Values very interesting. I have a few questions related to a command I am writing.

–Glenn

I owe Glenn an apology. He is one of the many people whose email I never responded to. I’m sorry, Glenn. Sometimes life presents too many opportunities.

Here’s Glenn’s first question:

1. If a user specifies *ALL for a parameter, how do you prevent the user from typing in other values?

Fair enough. Define *ALL in the Single Value (SNGVAL) keyword, not in the Special Value (SPCVAL) keyword.

CMD        PROMPT('Do it')

PARM KWD(RPTTYPE)

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Write Your Own SCANRPL Built-In Function

November 28, 2012 Bob Cozzi

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

Until IBM i v7.1 has made a pervasive appearance on virtually all IBM systems, the cool new v7.1 updates to RPG IV are out of reach for many RPG developers. Fortunately, with IBM i v7.1, IBM has finally stopped “point release” updates to the RPG compiler, giving us the ability to use anything implemented on (for example) technology refresh 5 all the way back to TR1. Life is good for RPG developers today.

If you’re a software developer or, like me, consulting with clients that have everything from

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Admin Alert: A Checklist For Performing IBM i Planned Maintenance

November 14, 2012 Joe Hertvik

Taking down an IBM i system for planned system maintenance involves more than just performing the maintenance itself. To keep processing running without issue, you need to ensure that the machine ends cleanly before maintenance begins and that it restarts smoothly after maintenance completes. To that end, here’s a starter checklist for how to take down and restart an IBM i machine during planned system maintenance.

The Phases Of System Maintenance

When planning IBM i system maintenance, it’s helpful to divide the maintenance up into three sets of tasks that you must successfully complete. These task sets are:

Pre-maintenance tasks

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Use SQL To Update A Sequence Number

November 14, 2012 Hey, Ted

Is it possible to use a single SQL statement to assign an ascending sequence number to a column in a table? I’d like the sequence number to start at 10 and increment by 10 as every row is updated so that the number column in the updated rows would be 10, 20, 30, etc.

–Doug

I know a way, Doug. However, let me say up front that I’ve only played with this. That is, I’ve never used it in a production environment. I can’t speak to how practical it might be or what you might need to watch out for.

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Converting CASE in CL

November 14, 2012 Bob Cozzi

When I write CL, I long for some of the ease-of-use features IBM added over the last 10 years to RPG IV. Simple things like %XLATE or %SCAN or %EDITC would be nice.

For example, a client of mine had a CL program that required several parameters, one of which was a user ID. However, the non-IBM i platform on which that information was entered did not automatically convert lowercase letters to all uppercase. When the program would try to verify the user profile, it would almost always fail.

Initially my client wanted to use one of the legacy APIs

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Data Structures Make Good Status Parameters

October 31, 2012 Ted Holt

When a good program goes bad, someone must fix it. Sometimes that someone is me. As for the “when,” it’s never a good time. It’s important to me that the failing program give me as much information as possible to help me pinpoint the cause of the error as quickly as possible.

There are two ways a program can inform its caller that it could not complete normally. One way is by sending a message. (I have written about this topic before; see the Related Stories at the end of this article.) The other way is to use a status

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