FHG Volume: 13 Archives

Admin Alert: Four Ways To Move An IBM i Partition, Part 1

December 4, 2013 Joe Hertvik

I’m currently working with a client to migrate three IBM i partitions to new Power 7+ machines located in two data centers in different states. While there are several ways to approach migration, over the next two issues I’ll discuss four specific techniques for moving an IBM i partition to a new location and the different tasks you have to perform for each technique.

Four Ways To Move An IBM i

In general, there are four techniques for moving an IBM i partition to a different machine:

Restore the partition in place or to a new location using the same

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Three Powerful SQL Words

December 4, 2013 Ted Holt

Louisa May Alcott said, “I like good strong words that mean something.” So do I, especially when they’re good strong SQL words. It gives me great pleasure today to share three powerful SQL words with you.

Consider the following summary query:

select d.ItemNumber,
       sum(d.Quantity) as Qty,
       sum(d.Quantity * d.Price) as Extended
  from InvoiceLines as d
 group by d.ItemNumber
 order by 1

Here’s the result set:

ITEMNUMBER      QTY      EXTENDED
  A-1             8         88.00
  A-3             7         35.00
  A-7             7         52.00
  B-1            26         51.25
  Z-3             2         18.00

Standard stuff, yet very powerful. It beats writing an RPG program to read a file, check

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End-Of-Year Feedback

December 4, 2013 Hey, Esteemed IBM i Professional

I hope 2013 was a good year for you. It was my best year in a while. I left a dysfunctional bureaucracy for a company where I can make a difference. I renewed several old acquaintances. And I found out from LinkedIn that I know someone who knows someone who knows Haynes Brooke, the guy who plays the sun in the Jimmy Dean sausage commercials. Let’s close out the year with some of the feedback you’ve been kind enough to send to me.

Hey, Ted:

In Alan’s Easy Method For Building A CSV File From A Report, you

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Minimizing IPL Surprises With The IPL Startup Kit

November 20, 2013 Joe Hertvik

Unlike a Windows server that can be rebooted several times a year, an IBM i machine is so reliable that it can run for a year or more without being IPLed. But infrequent IPLs can cause their own problems, as functions that should be restarted after an IPL may not necessarily actually restart after an IPL. That’s where it comes in handy to have an IPL startup kit available.

Why Create An IPL Startup Kit?

Since an IBM i box can go so long between restarts, your system startup routine may not include all the functions that were added to

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Alan’s Easy Method For Building A CSV File From A Report

November 20, 2013 Ted Holt

I love simple solutions to common problems, and boy, have I got a good one for you today! Clever and faithful reader Alan Urtubia recently told me how he turned a report into a CSV file and I was impressed. Alan kindly allowed me to pass this tip along to you.

Alan needed to create a CSV file from a report without modifying the RPG program. He found a method to do so without modifying or recompiling any of the original source code.

To illustrate his technique, let’s begin with a simple report. Here’s the DDS for printer file QAD001P:

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Allow Repeated Change With SQL Triggers

November 20, 2013 Paul Tuohy

In my previous article, I described how an RPG program as a before trigger, could be used to synchronize two columns in a table. There is an alternative. Instead of using an RPG trigger, we could have used an SQL trigger. An SQL trigger allows us to be more specific about when the trigger is activated and also has the advantage of portability to other database management systems.

The scenario was where a date, stored as a packed numeric column, was to be converted to a proper date field. This was accomplished by duplicating the packed numeric column (and

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Digging Out Data Duplication

November 6, 2013 Hey, Ted

Sometimes an SQL query should return one row, yet it returns more than one. The problem turns out to be multiple matching rows in a secondary table. Is there a way to easily isolate the secondary table that causes more than one match?

–J

Yes, there is an easy way. But first, let me set up the problem for the edification of other readers.

Sometimes we execute an SQL query with the expectation that the result set will contain only one row (record), and we are surprised to get back two or more rows instead. At least one table (physical

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Allow Repeated Change With Before Triggers

November 6, 2013 Paul Tuohy

Recently, during a modernization project, I have been making use of the Allow Repeated Change (ALWREPCHG) option with before triggers. ALWREPCHG allows a before trigger to make changes to the record being inserted or updated, and that lets you do some really powerful database magic!

The Scenario

A table contains a date that is stored in a packed numeric column. The requirement is to change the data type of the column to a proper date data type. This change will require coding changes to at least 20 programs.

The “big bang” approach of changing, testing and implementing the 20-plus programs

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Admin Alert: The 4 GB Access Path Size Time Bomb

November 6, 2013 Joe Hertvik

Many IBM i shops run enterprise software originally created more than 10 years ago. While this allows you to run older applications on newer hardware, older apps can also cause issues with files that are no longer suitable for today’s processing. This week, let’s look at one older file parameter that if not changed, can stop application processing dead in its tracks: The 4 GB Access Path Size Time Bomb.

Time Bomb, What Time Bomb?

The time bomb I’m referring to is the Access path size (ACCPTHSIZ) parameter in some application files. In older versions of the OS/400 operating system

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Admin Alert: A Primer For Setting Up PC5250 SSL Connectivity, Part 2

October 23, 2013 Joe Hertvik

Last issue, I published Part 1 of a primer for setting up IBM i PC5250 Telnet sessions to use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption. That article described everything you need for configuring your IBM i server to use SSL Telnet. This issue, I’ll look at the PC Windows side and show you how to configure your IBM i Access for Windows clients to use SSL when starting Telnet sessions.

Revisiting The Overview

Last time, I listed out these six basic steps for configuring Telnet SSL connectivity between a PC and an IBM i partition. These steps are performed in your

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