• Admin Alert: What Should an IBM i Administrator Do, Part 2

  December 17, 2014 Joe Hertvik

  Last week, I discussed why shops still need IBM i administrators and started describing a checklist of tasks that are well-suited for less experienced administrators. My checklist showcased duties that can easily be turned over to lower level administrators, leaving more experienced people free to complete projects that benefit your organization. Today, I’ll complete describing the IBM i administrator checklist. The Checklist Continued As discussed last week, here’s a starter list of duties that can easily be turned over to an IBM i system administrator. IBM i user provisioning Auditing the system Software setups and on-going software database maintenance Backup

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• In Praise Of One-Off Tools

  December 17, 2014 Ted Holt

  This is the last issue of Four Hundred Guru for 2014, and in the last issue of a year I try to write about something unusual, something different from the routine stuff we usually run in this august publication. I worked on several interesting projects in 2014, but the one I want to talk about today will seem really retrograde to you. I wrote a bunch of System/36 RPG II programs. How I wrote them is the real story. In early 2014, a friend of mine emailed a request. A client of his, who still runs an S/36, was going

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• End of Year Feedback

  December 17, 2014 Ted Holt

  It’s been a wonderful year, in spite of all the difficulties, problems, and vicissitudes of life that I would rather not have faced. I appreciate all the email that you’ve sent in response to the articles we published. To know that we’ve done something to make someone’s life easier and better gives me great satisfaction. I’d like to share some of your comments with your fellow Four Hundred Guru readers. May you enjoy the holidays, and may 2015 be your best year ever. Hey, Ted: I just read Use Wireshark To Diagnose IBM i Communications Problems. You can bypass

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• Admin Alert: What Should An IBM i Administrator Do, Part 1

  December 3, 2014 Joe Hertvik

  With remote monitoring and lights-out data centers, people think there isn’t a need for system operators any more. And they’re right-ish. There’s little need for low-skill operators whose main function is watching the system and printing reports. But IBM i operations work isn’t obsolete; it’s just changed into a systems management function. Given that, here’s my take on tasks a lower level IBM i system administrator can perform in 2015 and beyond. Why You Need Day-To-Day IBM i Administrators For IBM i shops, it’s important to define the difference between project management and day-to-day operations. IBM i project managers are

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• TR8 DB2 For i Enhancements, Part 2

  December 3, 2014 Michael Sansoterra

  In the first part of this series, I introduced several of the DB2 for i enhancements made in IBM i 7.1 Technology refresh 8 (and in IBM i 7.2). These enhancements were of interest to developers and administrators. Likewise, this second set of enhancements we are about to review will be of interest to developers but may hold even greater interest for those in an administrative role. QSYS2.GET_JOB_INFO enhancement This DB2 for i service table function has two new enhancements: 1. The job parameter now accepts the special value ‘*’ to return information about the current job. 2. New

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• Fuzzy Matching In RPG

  December 3, 2014 Ted Holt

  Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. SQL allows you to use wildcard characters with the LIKE operator to search a column for a pattern. As they say in the GEICO commercials, “Everybody knows that.” Well, did you know you can do the same thing in RPG programs? If you’re not familiar with LIKE, read about it here. You can use the LIKE operator to find data with inexact matches. For instance, find all customers whose names contain “ACME”. select * from cust where name like '%ACME%' ID NAME ===== ========================================== 19883 ACME

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• Flip This Job Number: Adjusting The Job Queue Control Utility For Job Number Resets

  November 12, 2014 Hey, Joe

  I just read your article on creating a skeleton program for controlling IBM i job queues creating a skeleton program for controlling IBM i job queues. In your job queue physical file (WRKJOBQPF) that contains the list of jobs inside a specific job queue, you keyed that file by the six-digit job number of each job in queue. I think that’s a bad idea. Here’s why. . . –Charles Charles continues: “On busy systems where the job number can flip (over to 000001) daily, it introduces a period of time where the results will not be desirable. Needless to

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• SQL Functions You Didn’t Know You Had, Part 2

  November 12, 2014 Ted Holt

  In SQL Functions You Didn’t Know You Had, Part 1, I showed you how to make an SQL function that runs a subprocedure in a service program. What I showed you is fine up to a point, but it’s not the entire story. The technique that I shared with you breaks down when null values enter the picture. First, the subprocedures in the ADDR service program cannot accept null arguments into parameters. Second, those subprocedures cannot return a null value to the SQL query. These behaviors are specified in two clauses of the CREATE FUNCTION statement: PARAMETER STYLE GENERAL

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• TR8 DB2 For i Enhancements, Part 1

  November 12, 2014 Michael Sansoterra

  IBM i 7.1 Technology refresh 8 was released on June 6, 2014, and it has another group of small database enhancements worth reviewing. IBM i 7.2 users will find that they already have these features. This tip assumes that you have IBM i 7.2 or IBM i 7.1 with Database Group PTF Level 29 or higher installed. QSYS2.GENERATE_SQL Stored Procedure This is one sweet new stored procedure IBM has given us. Its purpose is to programmatically retrieve SQL source code into a source member. This procedure can accept a boatload of parameters as shown below. Many of the parameters control

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• The IBM i *LOOPBACK Interface Problem

  October 22, 2014 Hey, Joe

  Help! My IBM i credit card software stopped talking to our outside credit card processor. One minute it was working, and the next minute it crashed. When I restart the package, it immediately ends. What’s going on? We can’t process our orders. –Henry This is an unusual situation I’ve seen every once in a while, and it usually involves your TCP/IP setup. Troubleshooting The Issue The first thing to look at is whether all your TCP/IP interfaces are up and running, and whether anything changed with your TCP/IP setup. Before you call your software provider or IBM, check the

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