• Graphically Setting Up TCP/IP Host Routes With System i Navigator

  March 19, 2014 Hey, Joe

  I read your article on setting up IBM i TCP/IP host routes. But the article only contained green screen commands for host routing. Is there a way to graphically set up IBM i routes? –Jose You can graphically work with TCP/IP Host Routes by using the System i Navigator program that comes with IBM i Access for Windows (OpsNav). To get to a partition’s host routes for IPv4 configurations in OpsNav, open the Network→TCP/IP Configuration→IPv4→Routes node under your target partition. To work with a partition’s IPv6 host routes, open the Network→TCP/IP Configuration→IPv6→Routes node. Your OpsNav tree will look something

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• Quick And Handy RPG Input

  March 19, 2014 Ted Holt

  Life was so much simpler when terminals and printers ran on twinax, Java was an island or coffee, and all my data was structured in records. I don’t have to fool with wiring at present, and the Java programming language is to me only an occasional, plodding nuisance, but data is a different story. Unstructured, non-relational data comes at me from all directions at an ever-increasing velocity, and no wonder, as stream I/O is the standard for much of the computing world. (For the benefit of anyone who’s interested, I’ve added a second article to the end of this article.

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• DB2 For i Table Function Performance Considerations

  March 19, 2014 Michael Sansoterra

  In my prior tip, I covered some guidelines on when to use scalar user defined functions (UDF) and the potential performance hit they can impose on a query. In this tip, I’m going to follow up with a few additional guidelines about user defined table functions (UDTFs) in DB2 for i and show how they may impact query performance. Once again, I’m using data from the Microsoft AdventureWorks sample database that has been exported to DB2 for i. Shown below is a sample UDTF named “Transactions” that combines the data from the transaction history and transaction history archive tables:

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• What Should I Monitor For On My IBM i Partition?

  March 12, 2014 Hey, Joe

  I want to shore up my IBM i monitoring plan but I need ideas on what to monitor for. I know a problem when it hits me, but I’m not always sure what to look for. What should I be monitoring? –Victoria IBM i and Power i system monitoring is an important topic because like a shipping manager, your number one priority is to keep the production lines running. You need to find problems both before and after they occur. Here are the general areas I believe every IBM i administrator should be watching on a daily basis. In the

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• Quick And Handy RPG Output

  March 12, 2014 Ted Holt

  Are you one of those people who thrive on complexity? Do you love bureaucracy and paperwork? If so, you’re reading the wrong newsletter. I like everything to be as simple as possible. Today I have a simple routine that is a time-saver for me. I hope you find it useful. My little routine lets me print anything with minimal effort. I can print character variables, numeric variables, data structures, the results of expressions, and anything else that can be assigned to a character variable. I developed it because I needed a quick way to add output to RPG programs without

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• Who Needs Custom Perspectives In RSE?

  March 12, 2014 Susan Gantner

  Who needs custom perspectives in RSE? Just about everyone. At least everyone could probably benefit from them. As you know if you’ve read my earlier tips, I’m a huge fan of the Remote System Explorer that is part of WDSC, RDi and/or RDP. But I rarely use it as it comes “out of the box” from IBM/Rational. I customize it in many ways, including creating my own custom perspectives. I use custom perspectives primarily for two purposes: To provide a good target for “reset perspective. . . “ To create special-purpose editing environments. In this tip, we’ll look at

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• Use Wireshark To Diagnose IBM i Communications Problems

  March 5, 2014 Ted Holt

  Troubleshooting communications problems is akin to dealing with teenagers. There’s plenty of room for blame and finger-pointing, and resolving a problem sometimes seems impossible. I don’t have anything to help you with teenagers, but I can recommend a free tool for communications problems. It’s called Wireshark, and here’s how to use it with IBM i communications traces. First, visit www.wireshark.org to get Wireshark. It is a network protocol analyzer that runs under Microsoft Windows and several operating systems of the Unix flavor. Like the best things in life, Wireshark is free. Next, install the QSPTLIB library. This is a library

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• DB2 For i Scalar Function Performance Considerations

  March 5, 2014 Michael Sansoterra

  I love using user-defined functions (UDFs) in DB2 for i. They encapsulate business logic, provide for code modularity and improve code reusability. But they can also flush performance down the drain. So in this tip, I’d like to use a sample UDF to analyze how it can affect the performance of an SQL statement. For this illustration, I’ve exported the Microsoft SQL Server Adventure Works sample data to DB2 for i. There are three main tables to consider in this query; SalesOrderHeader (31465 rows), SalesOrderDetail (121317 rows) and ProductCostHistory (22680 rows; I dumped in some extra randomized data into this

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• Admin Alert: Setting Up IBM i TCP/IP Host Routes

  March 5, 2014 Joe Hertvik

  On an IBM i partition, you may need to route IP traffic for a particular server over a specific IP address. You could be doing this to segment network traffic or because you can only reach a host server through a specific interface (say an interface that has access to a firewall). Here’s the drill for modifying your IBM i TCP/IP routing entries to set up host routing. The Situation The best way to demonstrate how to set up IBM i host routing is by showing you an example. So let’s start with a single IBM i partition with a

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• Auto-Answering Record Lock Errors And More On Returning An IBM i Box

  February 26, 2014 Hey, Joe

  My Power i system is driving me crazy with RPG1218 record lock messages. Because of the way one of our applications was written, we receive RPG1218 messages several times a day. The record lock only lasts a minute. When we enter a retry on the locked record, the system is always able to update the record. Is there any way to auto-answer these record locks? –Bert Well the first thing I’d do is have your applications staff figure out why that program is causing so many record locks and fix it. (Ha.) Barring that, I may have a solution that

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