FHG Volume: 15 Archives - Page 4 of 8

Know Your PTF Group Level Currency In 30 Seconds Or Less!

August 4, 2015 Larry Bolhuis

The IBM i is one of the easiest to maintain operating systems going. A big part of that is because IBM provides the hardware, operating system, and updates. Clearly the number of permutations are reduced dramatically. In addition, some problematic areas, such as video drivers, simply don’t exist in IBM i. So that’s it then, no need to update because we live in Utopia, right? Well, not so fast!

Just because IBM provides all the pieces doesn’t mean they are either perfect or complete. Besides, there are many components and these are constantly being updated. Two examples are node.js and

…

Where Do Library Lists Reside?

August 4, 2015 Ted Holt

I often sit and ponder the mysteries of life. For example, why do some people use C to write business applications? Why does the text of message SQL6789 end in a period instead of a question mark? And, recently, why do people circumvent powerful features of the robust IBM i operating system? Let me show you what I mean.

The circumvented feature that is on my mind at present is the library list. In case you’re new to the IBM i world, the library list is a list of libraries that the system searches when looking for an object. It’s

…

An Introduction To Processing XML With RPG, Part 1: The Basics

August 4, 2015 Jon Paris

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

RPG IV’s built-in XML support has been available for some time now, having been originally introduced with V5R4 back in 2006. Due to deficiencies in that release, many RPG’ers chose not to use RPG to process XML. Fortunately, IBM has corrected those deficiencies, and RPG provides a smart way to read XML. Here’s how it’s done.

In that first release, the most powerful of the op codes, XML-INTO, had some gaps in its support that sometimes made it difficult to use without pre-processing the XML. In addition, the

…

How Much Temporary Storage Is In Use And Who Is Using It?

July 21, 2015 Pete Massiello

I recently visited the site of a company that had a problem of increasing disk utilization. The staff had run all the GO DISKTASK reports and nothing seemed to be getting bigger. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been an easy way of finding who is using temporary storage. Displaying the amount of used temporary storage was so obscure that most System Administrators had no idea where to look. Let me show you how to see: (1) the amount of temporary storage that is being used; and (2) the jobs are using the most.

Temporary storage is mostly associated with jobs on your

…

Clamoring For Attention

July 21, 2015 Ted Holt

You know how to send a message to the system operator message queue. Here’s some code you can use when you need that message to stand out.

Here’s the CL code.

dcl  &Message   *char 434
dcl  &Line1     *char  74  stg(*defined)  defvar(&Message   1)
dcl  &Line2     *char  72  stg(*defined)  defvar(&Message  75)
dcl  &Line3     *char  72  stg(*defined)  defvar(&Message 147)
dcl  &Line4     *char  72  stg(*defined)  defvar(&Message 219)
dcl  &Line5     *char  72  stg(*defined)  defvar(&Message 291)
dcl  &Line6     *char  72  stg(*defined)  defvar(&Message 363)

ChgVar &Line1 '  **************************************+
                 *********************************'
ChgVar &Line2 '*'
ChgVar &Line3 '*  Test message -- please ignore. '
ChgVar &Line4 '*  More important information'

…

Object Dependency Tracking In DB2 For i

July 21, 2015 Michael Sansoterra

The DB2 for i catalog tables and views present a plethora of valuable information about the various SQL objects defined on your system and their relationship to one another. In this tip, I discuss the dependency tracking views. If you ever wanted to make changes to one of your application’s primary SQL objects (such as a table, view or procedure) but feared the unknown (what related objects are affected?), then it’s time to investigate these special catalog views.

What Are The Dependency Catalog Views?

The “dependency” catalog views under consideration are:

SYSROUTINEDEP–Records the objects used by stored procedures and

…

Security Architecture For Business Applications

July 7, 2015 Patrick Botz

Developers can make it infinitely less complex to manage the security of a system and can significantly improve the security of any computer system by following a simple architecture in their applications. Conversely, not following a similar architecture makes it virtually impossible for any administrator to both maintain the best security possible and avoid failed and crashed applications.

Nearly everyone in most IT shops assumes that it is the system (or security) administrator’s responsibility to manage access control for the data on the system. They also assume it is the administrator’s responsibility to fix any authority failure issues encountered by

…

How To Create Updateable Views

July 7, 2015 Ted Holt

It has been said that perception is more important than reality. I agree, especially when such perception is implemented as a view in a relational database. When creating a view, it is good to keep two things in mind.

First, consider that a view may be updateable or read-only. An updateable view allows the user to update rows in the table through the view, but also to insert new rows and delete rows. Read-only views may only be used when retrieving data. Both types of view are superb, and each type has its uses.

One strong advantage of updateable views

…

Looking For Stuff With iSphere

July 7, 2015 Susan Gantner

In my last tip I introduced you to the iSphere RDi plug-in. In this tip I’ll cover a few other features in iSphere that I find very useful. This time I’ll focus on a couple of options within iSphere that can help you search for things and subsequently edit them. The two things we’ll be searching are source members and message files.

Looking For Stuff In Source Files

Let’s start out with the iSphere Source File Search. This is a feature similar to PDM’s option 25 – Find String Using PDM (FNDSTRPDM). It lets you search for a string of

…

iSphere Plug-in Expands RSE/RDi Toolset

June 25, 2015 Susan Gantner

Followers of my Guru tips know that I’m an RSE (a.k.a. RDi) fan. These days I would be lost trying to write or maintain RPG code without things like RSE’s Outline, Error feedback, editor filtering, and Undo. But you know how it is: the more you use a toolset and come to depend on all the great things it can do you for you, the more you also begin to come up with thoughts like but I sure wish it could do X. . ..

One of the great things about RDi (and its predecessors, RDP and WDSC) is

…

Previous Articles Next Articles

Search for: