• Encouraging Mere Mortals

  December 16, 2009 Hey, Ted

  You’ve got to be kidding, right? I’ve generally thought you were trying to show better approaches for coding issues. Are you advocating falling back to bad fixed-format techniques? The only conclusion that makes sense is that you’re testing the waters to see if anyone’s paying attention. Or just trying to drum up traffic to your site. What about a data structure that would have performed the split? Or an EVAL operation using built-in functions to convert to character format, substring it, then convert it back to the decimal fields? Both of those wouldn’t rely on the “magic smoke” multiply and

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• Miscellaneous Comments from Readers

  December 16, 2009 Ted Holt

  Dear Esteemed Colleagues: One of the best parts of writing for this newsletter is hearing from the readers. Whether what you write is laudatory or not, I appreciate your wisdom and your willingness to share it with me, and I regret that I’m not able to answer every email I receive. To end the year, here are some of your comments, with my replies or comments in italics, for the benefit of fellow readers. –Ted Hey, Ted: Thanks for the maze article. I enjoyed reading every part of it. It reminded me that a maze is a curled tree

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• When i5/OS Backups Keep You Waiting

  December 16, 2009 Hey, Joe

  We recently watched our month-end backup drag on forever. Occasionally, a job log message would appear saying that an object was in use and couldn’t be opened. Do the i5/OS backup commands “wait” on locked objects? Does that mean if several objects are in use, the backup wastes time waiting, or does it save other objects until it times out waiting for the locked items? –Mike Mike went on to say that he understood his system shouldn’t be locking objects when he’s performing a month-end backup, but his suspicion is that the locked objects are log files from various third-party

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• Prompting CL in Run SQL Scripts

  December 9, 2009 Skip Marchesani

  System i Navigator’s Run SQL Scripts lets you create scripts, from simple to complex, that can be comprised of one to many SQL statements and/or batch CL commands (no interactive or display commands allowed). SQL statements are entered without any prefix, and batch CL commands must be prefaced with CL. The syntax for SQL statements and batch CL commands can get quite complex, and keying or creating each without some sort of help or assistance can be a challenge. RUN SQL Scripts does a good job of helping you create either. Figure 1. There is SQL Assist for SQL statements

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• Publish Result Sets Using Web Services and IWS

  December 9, 2009 Michael Sansoterra

  Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. IBM i/OS V6R1 (a.k.a. 6.1) introduced a new feature called Integrated Web Services (IWS). This feature is also available by PTF on V5R4 systems. One benefit of IWS is its ability to make data and logic in high-level language programs such as RPG, COBOL and C available as a Web service. Publishing business logic as a Web service allows clients on just about any platform (PDA, green screen, Web application, Windows client) in just about any language (Java, C#, VB.NET, VBA, etc.) to easily consume the data provided

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• Admin Alert: The Ins and Outs of IBM Business Partners

  December 9, 2009 Joe Hertvik

  Due to an unusual situation, we didn’t have a business partner for my System i 550 box and we needed to select a new partner before we could upgrade. That experience taught me a lot about how business partner relationships work. This week I’ll share that knowledge to help anyone who is interested in changing their business partner or to help you learn more about how the program works. The Basics It’s helpful to understand what IBM business partners do, how to select a business partner, what the relationship entails, and what to do if your business partner relationship isn’t

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• Retrieving and Storing SQL Source for DB2 Database Objects

  December 2, 2009 Skip Marchesani

  One issue that System i professionals are constantly raising when I’m preaching the gospel of DB2 for i SQL is that it’s difficult, or in some cases, not possible, to capture and store the SQL source statements or DDL (Data Definition Language) that were used to create DB2 database objects on a System i. This is actually quite easy to do in Navigator using either of two almost identical functions. One is Generate SQL found in Database, and the other will be the focus of this article: Insert Generated SQL found in Run SQL Scripts. For reference, I am running

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• Ken Likes FMTDATE

  December 2, 2009 Hey, Ted

  I immediately loaded and tested your FMTDATE function when I saw it in Four Hundred Guru. I just wanted to say “Thank You!” The tool is fantastic! We have mostly ISO and LONGJUL dates in our files and it is always a pain when converting or throwing math at them. No more! Here is an example of some date math I tried on a LONGJUL order date and an ISO invoice date to calculate “Days-To-Ship” using your function: SELECT fmtdate(OrderDate, 'LONGJUL', 'ISO-') Ordered, fmtdate(InvDate, 'ISO', 'ISO-') Invoiced, Date(fmtdate(InvDate, 'ISO', 'ISO-'))- Date(fmtdate(OrderDate, 'LONGJUL', 'ISO-')) FROM ORDERS –Ken I got a

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• Admin Alert: Creating a High-Priority Batch Subsystem

  December 2, 2009 Joe Hertvik

  I recently showed a reader how to create a high-priority batch subsystem on his i5/OS partition. I configured my prototype subsystem to run critical batch jobs at a higher priority than normal batch jobs, so that urgent work received preferential processing when allocating CPU cycles, performing I/O, etc. This week, I’ll demonstrate this technique for any readers who want to create this type of subsystem in their own shop. The Need Louis (not his real name) wrote in with an urgent need to run specific batch jobs at a higher priority than other batch work and possibly even higher than

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• File Caching in RSE

  November 18, 2009 Jon Paris

  Two of my favorite features of RSE are the Outline View and the Program Verifier. One thing they both have in common is the fact that they use cached descriptions of any required externally described files. These cached descriptions are retrieved once and then stored in the RSE workspace for fast retrieval when required to refresh the Outline View or when Verifying the code in the editor. Because both these features rely on those cached descriptions, they also have something else in common; when a file’s external description changes, neither of them will automatically catch on to that fact. Therefore

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