Using FTP to Poll for File

April 6, 2005 Hey, David

I am moving data between an iSeries system and several Unix systems. I pull the files over manually using FTP and then use the Copy from Import File (CPYFRMIMPF) to copy the records to a database file. After processing is done, I send the files back to the Unix system.

The biggest “hole” in the process is that there is no automated way to bring over the files from the FTP server onto the iSeries. I would like to have a polling process that would go through a list, check for new files to process, automatically run the FTP GET,

Yet Another Way to Build a Tab-Delimited File

April 6, 2005 Hey, Ted

Thanks for the tip on creating CSV files with SQL. If the data itself contains commas or double quotes, import programs such as Microsoft Excel may get confused on where fields start and end. I think it’s much safer to use a tab (X’05’) as the delimiter and use the PC file extension “txt”.

Keep up the great work!

–Chris

That sounded like a good suggestion to me, so I gave it a whirl, Chris. You were right. I had no trouble opening a tab-delimited file with embedded commas in Microsoft Excel. But that’s not to say I didn’t

Admin Alert: Using OS/400 Prestart Jobs for Repetitious Server Processing

April 6, 2005 Joe Hertvik

In a previous column, I discussed using OS/400 autostart jobs to run server jobs that handle repetitious processing for system users. With OS/400 being the full-featured operating system that it is, there’s more than one way to skin this particular cat. OS/400 also provides a second and, in some ways, a more effective way to automatically start repetitious server jobs in a subsystem: prestart job entries and prestart jobs.

Like autostart jobs, a prestart job is a batch job that is usually configured to start running when a subsystem begins. But unlike autostart jobs, prestart jobs can easily be