Stop Hard-Coding Before It Stops You

April 14, 2004 Kevin Vandever

It drives me nuts. How can it be that month-end reports don’t run correctly all of sudden? These same programs run every month, and no one has modified them in years. Now the numbers are all wrong, and the you-know-what has rolled downhill, all the way from the CFO’s desk, and has landed smack dab in the earpiece of my telephone. Ouch! Yuk!

Sound familiar? Of course it does. It’s probably happened to all of you out there. It happened to me as recently as last week.

These crashes and errors don’t just affect month-end processes. They can happen to

An Alternative to Externally Described Printer Files

April 14, 2004 Cletus the Codeslinger

[The code for this article is available for download.]

There is no shortage of ways to build a report from an iSeries database. IBM offers Query/400, Query Management, and SQL/400, but they’re all limited in one way or another. For example, Query/400 has to be told to read the library list, it has no conditional processing, it has limited calculation abilities, and passing parameters to a Query/400 query is hardly intuitive. There are many third-party query packages. Some run on the iSeries; some run on PCs. Many overcome the limitations of IBM’s query offerings.

Nonetheless, most query

Performing Numeric Bitwise Comparisons in SQL and RPG

April 14, 2004 Michael Sansoterra

[The code for this article is available for download.]

In the iSeries world, there isn’t a high demand for propeller-heads to write software that does bit manipulation. I’ve used bit manipulation on the iSeries a handful of times–once while writing a BASE64 routine to create binary e-mail attachments, once while communicating with a shop-floor device, and a few of other times for doing things like fixing decimal data errors.

Each attempt to work with bitwise operations in RPG or SQL resulted in a new frustration. That’s because both environments do their bit manipulation and comparisons against strings,

V5R2 Security System Value Lock

April 14, 2004 Hey, Wayne

Editor’s Note: Security questions for the Four Hundred Guru are now being answered by Wayne O. Evans, one of the top OS/400 security experts in the world. Wayne designed security features on the AS/400 and S/38 during his 27 years at IBM and is a well-known and highly respected consultant, author, educator, and speaker. His security tips will become a regular item in Guru newsletters.

The security reference manual for OS/400 V5R2 says, “New for V5R2, you can restrict users from changing several security-related system values. These restrictions can prevent even a user with *SECADM and *ALLOBJ authority from changing

OS/400 Alert: iSeries Movies, Tools, and More

April 14, 2004 Shannon O'Donnell

If you’ve ever wondered what IBM would do if it had a really great computing platform, a video camera, and a budget of at least six dollars, then have we got some great news for you! IBM has gotten into the movie business by releasing a series of videos showcasing the reliability of the venerable iSeries. Also in this issue, we alert you to a free study offered by IBM that might help you convince management to consolidate all those Linux and Intel-based servers onto the iSeries.

A NEW TOOL TO PROMOTE THE ISERIES

Being an iSeries professional, you