We have a job that is designed to run periodically to collect XML files from a third party via FTP. Rather than have a program that is constantly active, it was decided that the very first action of the program would be to re-submit itself to a single entry job queue with a scheduled run time derived from a maintainable value held on a file. The benefit of this approach is that if for some reason the program fails there is no need to worry about re-starting the process–unless of course the program failed at the self-submit stage!

When an

I would like to write a conditional INSERT in SQL so I can use a prepared statement through JDBC. However, SQL supports IF only in SPL, the Stored Procedures Language. Is there another way to insert the record if doesn’t exist?

–Avdhesh

For the reader’s benefit, here is the SQL statement Avdhesh wants to run in JDBC:

if not exists (select 1 from cotable where coekey = ?) then
    insert into cotable
    (coekey, cocode, coname, coactv)
    values (?, ?, ?, 1);
end if

Unfortunately DB2 for i5/OS doesn’t support dynamic scripting. Therefore conditional statements such as IF are not supported

In April, I introduced Rick, an admin with a Client Access problem. His 9406-720 AS/400 would not accept more than 70 5250 client sessions. Try as I might, I was unable to solve Rick’s issue. In desperation, I submitted the problem to my legions of readers (at least 50), offering a variation on a Marvel Comics’ No-Prize to anyone who could solve it. Here’s what happened.

Part One: The Deluge of Answers

Never in the history of Admin Alert (serving the Power i, iSeries, and AS/400 community since 2002) had I received so large a response to a single