Discover the DBVisualizer

November 17, 2004 Kevin Vandever

We on the iSeries are a proud bunch, aren’t we? We defend our beloved machine to the bitter end. We talk about its dependability, security, and excellent software development environment. But even with all that the iSeries has to offer, we still find ourselves left with GUI envy. That is to say that, although we love our iSeries machines, we are often ashamed to admit that we work primarily in a green-screen world.

IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT

Such envy is understandable. After all, the user community is getting more accustomed to GUI-based applications everyday, in the form of e-mail and

Creating Effective Passwords

November 17, 2004 Hey, Wayne O

Our users want passwords that are easy to remember, so I would like to keep them simple. What is the recommended practice for a typical OS/400 shop?

–John

It is a constant struggle to decide just how far to go in making passwords secure. Eliminating trivial passwords is very important because if a hacker can compromise user passwords, he can access to your system. When I conduct a security audit I often discover trivial passwords. I once did an audit of an international bank and tried the user profile TEST, and–you guessed it–the password was also TEST. This

Admin Alert: More on Safely Deleting User Profiles

November 17, 2004 Joe Hertvik

In the last “Admin Alert,” I presented a checklist of items to review before deleting i5, iSeries, or AS/400 user profiles. Because of OS/400’s design, the checklist was incomplete, since there are so many OS/400 processing functions that can launch jobs running under a particular user profile. Fortunately, my readers came to the rescue on this one with more items to add to the checklist.

User profiles usually own objects, they can be used in running regularly scheduled jobs or in client/server situations, or they may be group profiles that other user profiles depend on for program and file authorization.