• RPG IV Comment Blocks

  December 8, 2004 Hey, Ted

  Conditional compilation directives (/IF DEFINED) have two good uses that I have not seen mentioned in any of the midrange-oriented e-mail newsletters. Maybe you would like to tell your readers who work in RPG shops about them.

  

  One good way to use a conditional compilation directive is to comment-out large sections of source code. Here’s an example.

   /if defined(TheFollowingIsCommentedOut)
  C                    eval      *in21 = *on
  C                    eval      *in22 = *off
  C*                   eval      *in23 = *on
  C                    if        *in24
  C                    exsr      DoSomething
  C                    exsr      DoSomethingElse
  C                    endif
   /endif
  

  I prefer this technique to that of commenting out each line individually. For one

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• Controlling PC Access

  December 8, 2004 Hey, Wayne O

  First of all, thank you for your good Web site and your very useful essays. I have some questions about AS/400 security. I would like to find a solution to prevent access to the database, running remote commands from PCs, and PC file transfers.

  

  Of course, we want to give permission to users to be able to run programs that use files or objects for reading and updating. I have followed your recommendation to specify *EXCLUDE for *PUBLIC when securing files with the Grant Object Authority (GRTOBJAUT) command, but doing so prevents our users from running any program that uses

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• Admin Alert: Use Fix Central to Order iSeries PTFs on CD-ROM

  December 8, 2004 Joe Hertvik

  Fix Central is IBM’s online facility for downloading and ordering PTFs. From this Web site, you can immediately download PTFs through a Web browser or download a CD-ROM image of the PTFs to an FTP server for later use. But Fix Central’s big flaw is that you can’t specifically order PTFs on CD-ROM. You have to work the Web site to request that IBM send you CD-ROM fixes. Fortunately, that isn’t very hard to do.

  

  From Fix Central, IBM allows customers to download PTFs via a browser or through an FTP download. And I see the point. Customers can immediately

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• Submit Job Schedule Entries Immediately

  December 1, 2004 Ted Holt

  The code for this article is available for download.

  You can buy better job schedulers than the one that comes bundled with OS/400. Unfortunately for many of us, the OS/400 job scheduler is the only one we’re permitted to use. Because I recently found myself forced to work within that restriction, I wrote a command to overcome one of the built-in job scheduler’s limitations. Later I discovered that my new utility overcame a second limitation. It occurred to me that some of you might like to have this utility.

  

  In “Job Scheduler’s Other Defaults,” I explained to Beau that

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• V5R3 CL Enhancements on V5R2

  December 1, 2004 Hey Ted

  I have heard that the V5R3 CL compiler enhancements would be moved to OS/400 V5R2. I have searched V5R2 PTF cover letters for more information, but without success. Do you have a PTF number for the V5R3 CL enhancements in V5R2?

  –Bob

  

  You can use the V5R3 compiler enhancements under V5R2, but you can’t compile them under V5R2. I checked with Guy Vig of IBM, who spoke about the V5R3 compiler enhancements at the recent COMMON conference. Here’s his reply.

  There is a zero percent probability that IBM will ship updates to any pre-V5R3 release of the CL compiler to

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• Admin Alert: Tips for Dealing with Deleted Records in AS/400 Files

  December 1, 2004 Joe Hertvik

  One of the problems with OS/400 databases is dealing with deleted records. By design, OS/400 doesn’t remove deleted records from a file; it only marks the records as deleted. Deleted records continue to occupy file space, and special processing is needed to truly clear deleted records from a file, reclaim their storage, and compress the file for greater efficiency. To that end, here are four tips for dealing with deleted records.

  

  Tip 1: Reorganize large physical files to get rid of deleted records.

  To check if a file has a lot of deleted record space, you can run the Display

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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.

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• Executing Dynamic Calculations with Embedded SQL

  November 10, 2004 Michael Sansoterra

  The code for this article is available for download.

  Every so often I encounter an application where an advanced user wants the ability to maintain a formula. Further, the formula may change every so often, so that building the formulas into the program is undesirable. This is a difficult situation in the RPG world, since the RPG language has no ability to evaluate a string expression at runtime.

  

  Here’s an example:

  Formula='Qty * Price * (1 + Case When Qty > 100 Then .10 Else 0 End)';
  

  Fortunately, SQL can handle this dynamic calculation.

  This calculation can be done

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