• Admin Alert: Better Subsystem Throughput Via Multiple Job Queues, Part One

  February 28, 2007 Joe Hertvik

  Scheduling system i5 batch job execution can be an art form. Some groups of jobs (such as monthly processing) must run in sequence to maintain data integrity while other jobs (such as nightly reports) can be simultaneously run to achieve better throughput. Luckily, there are specific techniques for creating subsystem job queues to meet these needs. This week and next, I’ll explain how to create multiple subsystem job queues to help with your throughput issues. Why Would My Subsystem Need More Job Queues? All i5/OS subsystems use job queues to stage work for processing. Job queues are assigned to a

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• Get Connected with Remote Systems Explorer

  February 21, 2007 Susan Gantner

  If you are a user of Remote Systems Explorer, then you have certainly created a connection resource so you can interact with libraries, objects, and members on your System i along with jobs, commands and Integrated File System. Your connection resource contains information about which system you will interact with when using RSE or other parts of WebSphere Developer Studio Client (WDSc) and what user profile and password should be used when creating the RSE server job on the host system (that is, when activating the connection). Have you ever considered whether you need more than one connection to the

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• A Handy Tip for Testing Batch Job Streams

  February 21, 2007 Ted Holt

  Recently, I had to make some changes to a job stream that had a lot of hard-coded output queue names. Even though I was able to use a test system that was a copy of the production system, some of those OUTQs were live. The OUTQ for the fax server is a prime example. Holding the OUTQs for extended periods of time was not practical. Neither were holding or stopping the writers. Fortunately, there was an easy way to test the job stream without distributing the spooled output. I started another green-screen session just for the test. Before calling the

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• Admin Alert: Automatically Moving Printed Spooled Files Between Output Queues

  February 21, 2007 Joe Hertvik

  A reader recently wrote in looking for an automated technique to move spooled files between i5/OS output queues after printing. His goal was to retain spooled files in an output queue with a longer retention date than the printer output queue that the files were originally printed to. This week, I’ll look at a utility program that performs this function and the benefits it can provide your shop. The Basic Template In my research, I found that IBM didn’t seem to offer any APIs to perform a function similar to what I was looking for with this utility. This led

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• Be Content with Content Assist

  February 14, 2007 Paul Tuohy

  When you are editing a free-form RPG program or an ILE COBOL source, the RSE LPEX editor has a very nice feature called Content Assist. At first glance, Content Assist seems like a simple helpful feature but there is more to Content Assist than first meets the eye. This tech tip looks at the basic use of Content Assist, using Content Assist with subprocedures, and defining your own Templates for Content Assist. Basic Use Enter an operation code, keyword, or BIF followed by Ctrl+Space and the LPEX editor will display a pop-up window containing a list of valid code completions.

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• The Long and Short of Setting Up Level 40 Security

  February 14, 2007 Hey, Brian

  We are at security level 30 in i5/OS and we have been told by our auditors that we need to move to security level 40. What are some of the benefits that we will see going to level 40, and is it as simple as changing the QSECURITY system value? Some of what I read tells me I have to start journaling in order to see if I can run at level 40, but then it says I can go to level 40 just by changing the system value. What is the real answer here? –Bob Besides all of the

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• What Happened to My Backup?

  February 14, 2007 Hey, Joe

  My automated tape backup job just stopped working. It was working fine last week, but when I try to run any of the i5/OS Save commands (SAVOBJ, SAVLIB, SAV, etc.), the command fails with a CPF4380 message (“Open attributes not valid in a multithreaded job”). I can manually back up my data, but I can’t use my usual backup routine. What’s going on here and do you have any idea why my automated backup suddenly started failing? –Jim In spite of a scary scenario when your backup stops running, this problem is actually very easy to solve. Here’s what I

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• Opportunities, Not Problems!

  February 7, 2007 Ted Holt

  The code accompanying this article is available for download One of my former bosses would often greet me with the phrase, “We have an opportunity.” I suppose he didn’t like the word problem. A recent problem I faced turned out to be a great opportunity. The utility I developed has turned out to be handy, and I thought you might like to have it in your toolbox. It all started when a CL program that I had written blew up because the value of a variable was in mixed case (i.e., “Print”) instead of uppercase (“PRINT”). An IF command

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• SQL Cross Platform Interoperability: The Proper Function

  February 7, 2007 Michael Sansoterra

  The code accompanying this article is available for download This tip has one very easy point: There’s lot of reusable SQL code out there, and System i (AS/400) DB2 developers can take advantage of it. Even though SQL’s promise of cross platform independence has never materialized, there are still enough similarities to make conversion between platforms worthwhile. All it takes is a little practice. This tip assumes you have some knowledge of writing SQL modules (triggers, functions or stored procedures in the SQL language). If you’re new to this arena, review the Control State section in the IBM SQL Reference

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• Admin Alert: Selectively Sending Break Messages to Active Users

  February 7, 2007 Joe Hertvik

  In a recent column, I discussed how to use the i5/OS Send Break Message command (SNDBRKMSG) to send messages that will immediately display on all 5250 terminals. Unfortunately, SNDBRKMSG has some issues in that it sends break messages to all defined user terminal message queues, not just the terminals of currently signed on users. In this issue, I’ll discuss my utility to send break messages only to signed-on users. The Problem with SNDBRKMSG (and SNDMSG, Too) In my target scenario, I want to send a message to all my signed on interactive 5250 users asking them to perform some

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