FHG Archives - Page 113 of 144

Stopping i5 UPS Usage Before Something Ugly Happens

March 8, 2006 Hey, Joe

We recently installed an i5 520 machine. We also experienced a power failure that lasted longer than our UPS could sustain, and the system wound up ending abnormally. Do you know how to set up an i5/OS system so that it automatically shuts down its partitions during a power failure? I have searched the IBM knowledgebase in vain.

— From the IT Jungle Forums

Yes, IBM provides a way to do this with the Uninterruptible Power Supply Delay Time system value (QUPSDLYTIM). According to IBM, this value is available for several different versions of the OS/400 and i5/OS operating system,

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A (Relatively) Easy Way to Process Parameters as an Array

March 1, 2006 Dominic Lefevre

In Printing from Qshell, Ted Holt lamented that there seems to be no useful way to treat parameter lists in RPG programs and procedures as arrays, as the C language does. This need arises for me every once in a while, and while I’ve never found a completely satisfactory way to handle it, I have found a way that works.

First, it might be good to provide an example in C, for those who do not know that language, in order to illustrate the advantage of treating parameters as an array. The following C program prints out the parameters

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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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