Recently, I needed an easy way to refresh a development system with a subset of records from a file on a production system. I needed a method that I could run unattended, during off hours. FTP, the Save-Restore commands, and the third-party file transfer utilities available to me are good tools, but they have their drawbacks. All of them require me to transfer complete files, even if I only want to transfer a subset of records. And it is difficult to determine whether FTP succeeds or fails in a batch job. I found an easy way to accomplish my

How do you stuff five digits into a four-digit database field? I found out recently that it can be done. Suppose you have a database file with a four-digit binary field.

A          R REC                
A            FIELD4         4B  

If you use the Display File Field Description (DSPFFD) command to view the record layout of the file, you will find that FIELD4 occupies two bytes of storage. Two bytes can hold values from -32,768 to 32,767. (For more about why this is so, see When a 10-Digit Variable Won’t Hold a 10-Digit Number.

If you use traditional I/O to try to

In a weekly column, important points can easily get muddied in the writing, which sometimes leads to incorrect information. This week, I am going to correct some previous mistakes I made while writing about IBM‘s iSeries Access for Windows product and about an ODBC freeware product. Mistakes can become opportunities when they help you question conventional wisdom, and a mistake can also highlight a better way of doing things.

So please join me while I eat some crow washed down by a nice bottle of Chianti and some fava beans, as I tell you where I went wrong and