• Omit Commas from Numeric Dates

  March 1, 2006 Ted Holt

  Are you tired of seeing commas (or whatever thousands separator you use) in dates when querying data with SQL? Are your users underwhelmed when you give them a quick-and-dirty report that has dates like 20,060,301 and 20,051,124 on it? Do you wish SQL had some way you could easily reformat a date to get rid of commas and maybe even insert some more traditional separator characters? The only SQL implementations I know of that allow you to format or edit a number are Sequel, from Advanced Systems Concepts, and Microsoft Access. If you’re using most any other version of

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• Admin Alert: Moving Libraries Between i5/OS Partitions, Part 2

  March 1, 2006 Joe Hertvik

  In my last column, I presented the first half of a template for moving libraries between i5/OS partitions, covering how to prepare data for movement and detailed steps for saving a library to a save file. This week, I conclude the plan, showing you how to complete the transfer through FTP, restoring your library to the target system, and checking the results. To review, my plan for moving libraries between systems contained the following five steps: Prepping the data to be moved Saving the library to be moved Transferring the saved library to the new partition or machine Restoring the

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• V5R4 RPG Enhancements

  February 22, 2006 Ted Holt

  The RPG compiler team is one fine bunch of practical people. From my perspective, everything they do seems to be motivated by the desire to help programmers do their jobs more easily, rather than by some theoretical, esoteric computer science concepts that have no practical value. (I will admit that I still haven’t quite forgiven them for not supporting MOVE, MOVEL, and MOVEA in free-format calculations, but I’m working on it.) Anyway, RPG V5R4 includes more practical stuff, which, thanks to Barbara Morris, I have the pleasure of sharing with you. Free Format Enhancements If you’re a free-format enthusiast, as

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• Readers Write about the INCR and RRN Functions

  February 22, 2006 Hey, Ted

  I liked your article, Numbering Rows in an SQL Result Set, but I think your INCR function may be overkill. I’m able to accomplish the same thing with the RRN function. Would you please elaborate on the difference between the two methods? –Rafael Rafael, you need to take a look at the results of the slightly modified SQL query you sent me. Here’s the query. SELECT INCR(9999), (RRN(qcustcdt) + 9999), LSTNAM, INIT, CUSNUM FROM qiws/qcustcdt ORDER BY LSTNAM, INIT And here are the results. INCR RRN LSTNAM INIT CUSNUM 10000 10011 Abraham M T 583990 10001 10006 Alison J S

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• Admin Alert: Moving Libraries Between i5/OS Partitions, Part 1

  February 22, 2006 Joe Hertvik

  For i5, iSeries, and AS/400 administrators, it’s common to move libraries between partitions or machines. Library duplication is necessary when you’re creating or updating data in a test partition, moving software libraries between machines, or migrating information from an existing partition to a new machine in advance of an upgrade. Whatever your migration situation, there are definite steps for easily transferring libraries between environments. When performing library duplication, you generally need to perform the following five steps for a successful transfer. Prepping the data to be moved Saving the library to be moved Transferring the saved library to the new

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• RPG Looks into the Future

  February 15, 2006 Ted Holt

  If you could write a program that could accurately predict the future, you’d be set for life. Unfortunately–or fortunately, depending on your point of view–such a program is not possible. But you can make a program look ahead as it reads a sequential data set, and that can be a valuable asset. The RPG cycle includes a handy lookahead feature, which allows a program to view data in the next record to be read, but it’s not available for externally described files, nor for full-procedural files. However, rolling your own lookahead logic is easy. To demonstrate just how easy it

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• Work Fields and SQL

  February 15, 2006 Hey, Ted

  I haven’t been able to get SQL to handle result fields in the same way Query/400 can. In Query, I can define a result field, then use that field in the definition of another field. If I try this with SQL, I get a message that says, “Column X not in specified tables.” Is there a way to avoid duplicating the calculations of a work field? –Erik No, Erik. Not with SQL/400. To my knowledge, the only SQL-based software product that permits you to define work fields is Advanced System Concepts‘ SEQUEL. But I can give you some workarounds

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• When Users Need to Create Duplicate Objects

  February 15, 2006 Hey, Joe

  I just wrote a CL program that uses the Create Duplicate Object command (CRTDUPOBJ) to copy a file into a user’s QTEMP library for test processing. However, every time my users run the CRTDUPOBJ command in that CL, it gives them a CPF2189 error (Not authorized to object), even though the users have *PUBLIC *USE authority to the object. What’s going on here? –Brian I’ve run into this problem before when running the following Create Duplicate Object command (CRTDUPOBJ): CRTDUPOBJ OBJ(object_name) FROMLIB(library_name) OBJTYPE(*FILE) TOLIB(QTEMP) DATA(*YES) The solution is simple. This is an authority issue, but it’s

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• V5R4 CL Enhancements, Revealed and Detailed

  February 8, 2006 Ted Holt

  Version 5 Release 4 of i5/OS continues the tradition that V5R3 began–that is, making a liar of me. Before V5R3, I would have bet my last Federal Reserve Note that IBM would never enhance the i5/iSeries Control Language (cleverly known by its acronym, CL), and I would have lost the bet. Like V5R3, V5R4 introduces several new CL features. I would like to thank Guy Vig of IBM for telling me about them. Now I’d like to share them with you. Enhancements come in two general areas–subroutines and data definition. Let’s learn more about them. Keep in mind that I

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• iSeries Security Journal Receiver Management, Part 1

  February 8, 2006 Hey, Steve

  We were recently subjected to an audit of our iSeries security practices under the auspices of Sarbanes-Oxley due to the fact that we are a publicly traded company. Believe it or not, it was the first time we had ever had any outside party review our iSeries security! Ignoring that glaring security exposure and getting right to the point, we were cited by the auditors for not having the security audit journaling function activated on our production iSeries system. (I know: an even worse security exposure!) We have been hesitant to activate the audit journal due to things we have

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