• Admin Alert: New TCP/IP Functions to Check Out When Upgrading to i5/OS V5

  October 26, 2005 Joe Hertvik

  As shops upgrade old AS/400 and iSeries systems to modern i5 machines running i5/OS V5R3, many administrators are discovering their newer operating systems provide more goodies than the systems they left behind. This week, I reviewed some of the newer TCP/IP features that IBM added to the system starting in i5/OS V5R1. If you are upgrading your old AS/400 gear this year, here are some of the new TCP/IP features you may now be able to take advantage of.

  

  1. Checking your i5/OS TCP/IP routing by using TRACEROUTE. Long available in most other networked operating systems, Trace TCP/IP Route (TRACEROUTE) only

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• Correction: Bugged by the Bugged by Interactive Debugger Tip

  October 26, 2005 Brian Kelly and Joey Maniskas

  Editor’s note: Last week, Brian and Joey took a question from Dave regarding the SQL interactive debugger and from the responses we received to the tip, we created as much confusion as we attempted to address. The fact is we got our commands mixed up in the solution. Our sincere apologies for the inconvenience this may have caused anybody out there in iSeries-land. The moral of the story of course is check, double check, recheck, and then check again. Here is the original question followed by two emails from some sharp early bird readers of Four

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• Find the Length of a Character String in CL

  October 19, 2005 Hey, Ted

  Numerous times over the years, I’ve seen this question: How can I find the length of the value in a CL variable? That is, how many characters are in a variable, ignoring trailing blanks? I needed the answer often enough myself that I created my own “clever” way to handle it years ago by creating a RTNLEN command. But I recently discovered an alternative that’s been around forever. It uses a single command, RTVMSG, and it works for character variables up to 512 bytes long.

  

  Here’s an example:

  dcl &myvar *char 256 value('Abcd') /* Can be max *CHAR(512) */ 
  dcl 

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• Bugged by the Interactive Debugger

  October 19, 2005 Hey, Brian and Joey

  After having a problem attempting to use the Interactive Source Debugger (ISDB) to debug RPGLE and RPGSQLLE programs, I was so frustrated that I admit I punted. It was the first time I had tried to debug an RPGLE program I had written. When I attempted to start the ISDB debugger (using the STRISDB command), nothing happened. The STRISDB command wouldn’t even open the program.

  

  To make matters worse, a co-worker of mine said that ISDB could not be used to debug RPGLE programs and I was left wondering what I was going to do. I managed to fix my

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• Admin Alert: How to Change OS/400 Command Default Parameters

  October 19, 2005 Joe Hertvik

  A number of readers have recently written in and asked me how to change default parameters for OS/400 commands. While IBM does provide the Change Command Default command (CHGCMDDFT) for this purpose, there are a few wrinkles in the process that you need to understand to use CHGCMDDFT effectively.

  

  Before you begin changing command parameters, it’s always best to make a copy of each command that you want to change and only modify the copied command. This is a wise move for a number of reasons. First, you can retain IBM’s original unaltered commands in case you make a mistake

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• Absolute Versus Relative Paths

  October 12, 2005 Ted Holt

  Faithful reader Bobby recently contacted me for help. He was having some trouble copying files between a library and the root file system. Helping him resolve his problem reminded me that the topic of addressing objects in the Integrated File System (IFS) is confusing and deserves to be written about from time to time.

  

  I’ll use a Copy to Import File (CPYTOIMPF) command to illustrate the type of problem that Bobby ran into. Pay attention to the TOSTMF parameter, which indicates a stream file (IFS file) into which the data is to be copied.

  The first command copies a database

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• Get to Know Some Powerful CL Commands

  October 12, 2005 Bruce Guetzkow

  I use CL (and now CLLE) procedures, rather than RPG, to do as much work as I can. It’s usually quicker to write CL than RPG because IBM has given us a great wealth of commands that perform all kinds of activities. Perhaps the most powerful commands are the RTV (Retrieve) commands, which retrieve information about objects (e.g., libraries and files) and non-objects (e.g., jobs and file members) alike. The Retrieve commands can only be used in CL, CLLE, and REXX procedures. Here’s a sampling of some of the data that you can retrieve.

  

  RTVJOBA: Retrieve Job Attributes. This

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• Admin Alert: Reader Feedback on Limiting Users with *ALLOBJ Authority

  October 12, 2005 Joe Hertvik

  In a recent column about limiting access to i5/OS job commands, I stated that there is no way to restrict users with all object authority (*ALLOBJ) from accessing any object on an i5/OS (OS/400) system. It turns out that statement is wrong and that there is a technique you can use to limit a user with *ALLOBJ authority from accessing a specific object.

  

  Reader Peter Kemp got the ball rolling on this one by sending me the following email:

  “It’s a good idea to grant *ALLOBJ authority to user profiles by inheriting it from a group profile, rather than by

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• REXX Can Talk to Other Languages

  October 5, 2005 Bruce Guetzkow

  The code and figures for this article are available for download.

  One of the most confusing aspects of using REXX can be how to pass data between a REXX procedure and a procedure that has been written in another programming language. What follows is an explanation of the many ways to pass data into a procedure and then extract it back out.

  Calling a REXX procedure

  Before you can pass data to a REXX procedure you need to know how to execute a REXX procedure. The first way is to use CL’s Start REXX Procedure (STRREXPRC) command.

       STRREXPRC SRCMBR(member)
                               

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• The Dangers of Dynamic SQL

  October 5, 2005 Ted Holt

  The term “dynamic SQL” refers to SQL commands that are interpreted at runtime. The SQL command is loaded into a statement string (host variable), then the PREPARE statement tells the SQL processor to compile the statement string into a prepared statement (an executable command). Here’s a short example of the process.

  D SqlCommand      s           1024a
  
  C                   eval      SqlCommand =
  C                             'select * from qcustcdt +
  C                              where state =''' +
  C                             %trim(CtlState) + ''''
  C/exec sql
  C+  prepare SqlStmt from :SqlCommand
  C/end-exec
  C/exec sql
  C+  declare Input cursor for SqlStmt
  C/end-exec
  

  Dynamic SQL provides great flexibility, since the statement string

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