• Why Use the Magic Number in Qshell Scripts?

  March 17, 2004 Hey, Ted

  I have not worked with Unix, so Qshell is a new adventure for me. I am curious about the “magic number,” the #! comment that shell scripts typically begin with. It appears to me that Qshell doesn’t care whether you include the comment. Is that true? If so, is there a reason why I should include the magic number?

  

  –Jim

  It’s true. Take a look at the process Qshell goes through to execute a script.

  When you type a script name and press Enter, Qshell starts a new job and asks the system to run the script. The system reads

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• Admin Alert: The Absolute Coolness of the QNTC File System

  March 17, 2004 Joe Hertvik

  Because most OS/400 shops also have Windows servers, IBM provides tools to integrate Windows data and objects with OS/400 applications, including the little understood but immensely valuable QNTC file system. QNTC allows OS/400 processes to access Windows server data from OS/400 applications just as if those processes resided on a Windows client machine.

  

  Like QDLS and QSYS.LIB, QNTC is an OS/400-based file system that resides in a subsection of OS/400’s Integrated File System (IFS). But where most other IFS file systems provide access to data that physically resides on your iSeries or AS/400 box, QNTC provides access to data and

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• OS/400 Alert: Major Outlook 2002 Vulnerability Discovered

  March 17, 2004 Shannon O'Donnell

  In this week’s “OS/400 Alert,” we’ll tell you about a major new vulnerability in Outlook 2002 that Microsoft has announced. Microsoft Windows Media Services are also being targeted. In addition to these latest threats, as usual, there are a number of major viruses floating around the Web that you should be aware of.

  

  OUTLOOK 2002 VULNERABILITY FOUND

  On March 9, Microsoft issued a Critical Security Warning for users of Outlook 2002. On March 10, Microsoft issued an additional warning about this same security exposure. What happened is that Microsoft discovered a vulnerability in Outlook 2002 that can allow Internet Explorer

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• Sleep Soundly with Hibernate

  March 3, 2004 David Morris

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

  

  Java is often considered less capable at reading and manipulating database table data than procedural programming languages, like RPG and COBOL. That’s because Java programmers often write procedural code when working with relational data, making it more difficult to take advantage of Java’s object-oriented strengths. Hibernate handles this problem by performing many of the mundane tasks associated with database work, allowing Java programmers to concentrate on business requirements instead.

  Managing hand-coded SQL statements, Connections, ResultSets, and caching in your applications is error-prone and inefficient. Technologies like Enterprise JavaBeans

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• Practical Use of a Translation Table

  March 3, 2004 Michael Sansoterra

  While working on a Microsoft Access 97 project, I was purging and redownloading a large amount of data every night from an iSeries. I noticed that once the data was downloaded, Access took a while to query the data even though there were proper indexes built on the table.

  

  Some investigation revealed that Access was actually doing a large amount of re-sorting of the data because of the difference in the EBCDIC and ASCII collating sequences. In particular, EBCDIC places numerals at the end of the sort order; whereas, ASCII places them toward the beginning. So Access still had to

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• OS/400 Admin Alert: Five Quick PC5250 Tricks for Administrators

  March 3, 2004 Joe Hertvik

  Because it’s a mature product, PC5250 has a number of built-in features that the savvy administrator can use to keep his users happy, as well as to make his own life a little easier. Here’s a quick list of five handy PC5250 tricks that are useful in an AS/400 shop. All of these tricks were tested with Client Access Express for Windows V5R1M0, but many of these features are also available with other versions of the product.

  

  Starting a PC5250 Macro or a Script After PC5250 Session Starts

  In special situations, you may want to immediately start a macro to

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• OS/400 Alert: Have You Been Snarfed?

  March 3, 2004 Shannon O'Donnell

  Just when you thought it was safe to talk on your cell phone, along comes a new form of hacking targeted specifically at these devices. Hacking into cell phones or other Bluetooth-ready devices, known in the industry as “snarfing,” has just gotten a whole lot easier. Speaking of easy, are you are looking for a way to remove any of those nasty Windows viruses making the rounds these days? I’ll tell you where to find the tools you need to target specific viruses.

  

  SNARFING

  Despite its name, snarfing has nothing to do with the Smurfs. Nor is it something you

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• iSeries Navigator: Application Administration

  February 25, 2004 Shannon O'Donnell

  One of the coolest things about OS/400 is its integrated security. If you are not the owner of an object, and that object does not have public access, and no one has granted you specific access to that object, guess what? There is absolutely no way you can get into it. Period. Show me any other operating system in the world that you can say that about.

  

  The iSeries Navigator’s Application Administration tool allows OS/400 users who have sufficient authority in their user profile (*ALLOBJ, *IOSYSCFG), and have this piece of software installed on their PC, to control access to

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• Get Rid of the SNADS Headache with Auto-FTP

  February 25, 2004 Wendy White

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

  

  Do you need a fast, reliable way to send code between iSeries boxes? With my Auto-FTP command, you can easily send code from PDM by setting up a user-defined option to do the work for you. It takes advantage of the iSeries’ powerful batch processing, as well as the ease of OS/400’s FTP utility.

  Auto-FTP will automatically save the selected objects, transfer them to a remote system, and automatically restore them for you. If you haven’t used FTP before, you’ll quickly find it is one of the easiest

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• Is Your File Transfer Still Active?

  February 25, 2004 Hey, Doug

  Recently I was FTPing a large file from my AS/400 to a remote site. Upon returning from a long meeting, I found my 5250 session had locked up, and I had no idea of the status of my file transfer. I had to resend my file, which took hours. A colleague said there is a way on the AS/400 to check file transfers, but I could not find the command. Please help!

  

  –Cathy

  Great question, Cathy. This happened to me recently when I was required to send IBM a large file. Because of network issues, our local area network was

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