• Remove Blank Lines from a Stream File

  October 4, 2006 Hey, Ted

  Working with IFS files, especially those we get from other systems, greatly increases my appreciation of physical files. Opening a stream file is like opening a Christmas present–we never know what we’ll get. Anyway, one source typically sends us stream files that often have blank lines in them, which messes up our process. Is there any way to delete those blank lines? –Ray Well, Ray, I don’t know of a way to delete them, but if you’re willing to copy the stream file to another stream file and omit the blank lines in the process, you can take advantage of

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• Admin Alert: Changing Physical File Characteristics on the Fly

  October 4, 2006 Joe Hertvik

  Many people don’t realize that they can use the Change Physical File command to alter the field and key definitions of a physical file without having to recompile that file or to save and restore their data. This command can enlarge or shrink existing file fields, add new fields, delete old fields, or change file keys. This week, I’ll explore this hidden feature of CHGPF, and discuss its advantages and its disadvantages. Why We CHGPF The Change Physical File (CHGPF) command’s life purpose is to change the attributes of a physical file and all its members. The Change Physical File

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• Copy a Subset of Records from One System to Another

  September 27, 2006 Ted Holt

  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

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• Stuffing Five Digits Into Four

  September 27, 2006 Ted Holt

  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

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• Admin Alert: Setting the Record Straight on iSeries Access and ODBC Freeware

  September 27, 2006 Joe Hertvik

  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

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• Redirecting a List of Qshell Commands

  September 20, 2006 Hey, Ted

  I need a little help with a Qshell script. I retrieve a list of IFS files that have a certain extension (a suffix precede by a period) and pipe the list into another process. Now I have to also include other files that have a completely different extension. I do not want to run the command twice, processing each type of file in turn. How do I redirect the output of more than one command into one output stream? –Brad OK, let’s set up the problem for the benefit of the readers. Suppose Brad’s script currently processes files with the

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• Include Comments in Query/400 Queries

  September 20, 2006 Hey, Ted

  OK, I’ll bite. In your article Query/400 Handles Zero Dates (Sort Of), from Four Hundred Guru Volume 6, Number 25, you said, “This is one way to include comments in a query.” Does that mean there are other ways I can include comments in queries? –Paul I know of one other way to comment result fields other than the one I used in that example. First, let’s review that method. Here’s the first result field in that article. Field Expression Column Heading Len Dec SDNOT0 shipdt/(shipdt-0.0000001) 0=Ship date is zero 1 0 1=ship date is not zero In this

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• Admin Alert: Dissecting the Unusual QLGPGCMA.LOCALE Error

  September 20, 2006 Joe Hertvik

  One of my i5/OS partitions went haywire recently. Suddenly, some users couldn’t run Infor‘s SSA ERP LX package, an i5 Domino server wouldn’t reboot, and some users couldn’t sign on. These problems occurred because of an authority problem involving an i5 object named QLGPGCMA. This situation is commonly referenced on the Internet, but there isn’t much information about its cause. The good news is that once the problem is diagnosed, it’s fairly easy to cure. Diagnosing the Problem The QLGPGCMA.LOCALE problem is very simple. When it occurs, some of your once reliable applications and i5/OS features may simply stop

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• Developers Don’t Despair: Virtualize Your PC

  September 13, 2006 Michael Sansoterra

  Today’s developers often wear many hats: programmer, operator, help desk, and database administrator. Furthermore, they often support software on many operating systems (various versions of Windows, Linux, Unix, and so forth) with various versions of application software (Microsoft Office 97 or 2003, ERP clients, and so on) using a variety of developer tools (Visual Studio, Visual Studio .NET, Websphere Development Studio Client, Delphi, and others). It can be quite overwhelming for companies with small budgets to create testing and development environments for such a wide array of software. Fortunately, there is a way to deal with this type of

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• Unusual But Logical SQL Sorting

  September 13, 2006 Hey, Ted

  A physical file that I’ve loaded with data from another system has a department field that I would like to use for sorting. The department field contains a description, rather than a code. I need to sort the data on the description, but not in alphabetical order. That is, I want a certain department to appear first, then a certain department to appear next, and so on. The only way I know to pull this off is to create a little table that lists the departments and the order each one appears in the sort, but I do not like

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