• Alan’s Easy Method For Building A CSV File From A Report

  November 20, 2013 Ted Holt

  I love simple solutions to common problems, and boy, have I got a good one for you today! Clever and faithful reader Alan Urtubia recently told me how he turned a report into a CSV file and I was impressed. Alan kindly allowed me to pass this tip along to you. Alan needed to create a CSV file from a report without modifying the RPG program. He found a method to do so without modifying or recompiling any of the original source code. To illustrate his technique, let’s begin with a simple report. Here’s the DDS for printer file QAD001P:

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• Minimizing IPL Surprises With The IPL Startup Kit

  November 20, 2013 Joe Hertvik

  Unlike a Windows server that can be rebooted several times a year, an IBM i machine is so reliable that it can run for a year or more without being IPLed. But infrequent IPLs can cause their own problems, as functions that should be restarted after an IPL may not necessarily actually restart after an IPL. That’s where it comes in handy to have an IPL startup kit available. Why Create An IPL Startup Kit? Since an IBM i box can go so long between restarts, your system startup routine may not include all the functions that were added to

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• Allow Repeated Change With Before Triggers

  November 6, 2013 Paul Tuohy

  Recently, during a modernization project, I have been making use of the Allow Repeated Change (ALWREPCHG) option with before triggers. ALWREPCHG allows a before trigger to make changes to the record being inserted or updated, and that lets you do some really powerful database magic! The Scenario A table contains a date that is stored in a packed numeric column. The requirement is to change the data type of the column to a proper date data type. This change will require coding changes to at least 20 programs. The “big bang” approach of changing, testing and implementing the 20-plus programs

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• Digging Out Data Duplication

  November 6, 2013 Hey, Ted

  Sometimes an SQL query should return one row, yet it returns more than one. The problem turns out to be multiple matching rows in a secondary table. Is there a way to easily isolate the secondary table that causes more than one match? –J Yes, there is an easy way. But first, let me set up the problem for the edification of other readers. Sometimes we execute an SQL query with the expectation that the result set will contain only one row (record), and we are surprised to get back two or more rows instead. At least one table (physical

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• Admin Alert: The 4 GB Access Path Size Time Bomb

  November 6, 2013 Joe Hertvik

  Many IBM i shops run enterprise software originally created more than 10 years ago. While this allows you to run older applications on newer hardware, older apps can also cause issues with files that are no longer suitable for today’s processing. This week, let’s look at one older file parameter that if not changed, can stop application processing dead in its tracks: The 4 GB Access Path Size Time Bomb. Time Bomb, What Time Bomb? The time bomb I’m referring to is the Access path size (ACCPTHSIZ) parameter in some application files. In older versions of the OS/400 operating system

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• Responsive Web Design

  October 23, 2013 Paul Tuohy

  The design of web pages used to be a very straightforward process. You picked a style and made sure that that style was applied throughout your website. Usually, each page would have a fixed width of 500 or 700 pixels, which would be formatted in a grid pattern to best represent the content of the page. But that was way back when you only had to be concerned about designing a web page that would be displayed on a desktop or a laptop. Today, your web page might be displayed on a desktop, a laptop, a tablet, or a mobile

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• Make Your DB2 For i Apps Environment Aware

  October 23, 2013 Michael Sansoterra

  Time and time again, applications need to know something about the environment they’re running on. For example, if an application uses dynamic SQL and it needs to know what features are available, then knowing what version of IBM i it is using can help it decide how to build a query. Likewise, when auditing the source of database changes, it’s useful to know the TCP/IP address of the host requesting the change. Consider the case where an application may need to know if a certain required PTF has been installed. While there have always been APIs to retrieve this information,

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• Admin Alert: A Primer For Setting Up PC5250 SSL Connectivity, Part 2

  October 23, 2013 Joe Hertvik

  Last issue, I published Part 1 of a primer for setting up IBM i PC5250 Telnet sessions to use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption. That article described everything you need for configuring your IBM i server to use SSL Telnet. This issue, I’ll look at the PC Windows side and show you how to configure your IBM i Access for Windows clients to use SSL when starting Telnet sessions. Revisiting The Overview Last time, I listed out these six basic steps for configuring Telnet SSL connectivity between a PC and an IBM i partition. These steps are performed in your

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• Open Access Handles The Queue

  October 9, 2013 Jon Paris

  Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. In my previous tip I introduced you to an RPG Open Access (OA) handler that facilitated writing to a data queue using conventional WRITE operations. As you saw, from the programmer’s perspective they were writing to a disk file. The only difference was that the F-spec included the HANDLER keyword to instruct RPG that the handler was to perform all of the actual I/O operations. This time I am going to describe its companion handler–one that reads from data queues. Design Considerations When we write a program that

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• Anita’s SQL Tips

  October 9, 2013 Ted Holt

  I derive great satisfaction when something I say benefits someone else. Call me selfish, but I derive as much or more satisfaction when something someone else says benefits me. A case in point occurred when I spoke about SQL recently at the COMMON 2013 Fall Conference and Expo in St. Louis. Anita Corcoran, of StoneMor Partners, in Levittown, Pennsylvania, greatly honored me by coming to hear what I had to say. She shared an SQL tip that I had seen before and forgotten. Today I pass along to you that tip and a few other tips she emailed me. 1.

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