• Debugging Server Jobs In Green Screen

  October 3, 2012 Susan Gantner

  A few years ago, I wrote a tip about my favorite way to debug programs using the Service Entry Point (SEP) feature of WDSC, which I have now replaced with RDP Rational Developer for Power Systems. If you’re a WDSC or RDP user and have somehow missed out on using SEPs for debugging, take a look at my tip. If you don’t use WDSC or RDP, you probably didn’t pay any attention to that tip. As it turns out, SEPs aren’t just for the graphical toolset. You can use SEPs with the traditional STRDBG “green screen” debugger as well.

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• Alternatives To SQL Literals

  October 3, 2012 Ted Holt

  Literals have caused me grief on more than one occasion. Trying to figure out what a certain number or character literal means in a program has wasted too much of my time, and my time is more valuable to me than money. I have written about this topic before, but I have not talked about literals in SQL. The example I’ve chosen may not be the best one, since the ratio of pounds to kilograms never changes. I chose it because it’s one most people should be able to relate to. The article I just referred to covers the

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• Admin Alert: Seven Things You Should Be Monitoring On Your System

  October 3, 2012 Joe Hertvik

  Last year, I wrote a two-part article outlining a basic plan for monitoring and answering IBM i error messages. But while it’s important to detect and answer error messages that require a response right now, it’s equally important to detect developing situations that will cause system problems if left alone. This week, I’ll discuss seven other things besides error messages that you should be monitoring for on your IBM i systems. The Basics For this article, let’s assume you are already using a system monitoring product to send out pager, email, or text alerts whenever an error message shows

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• The New Basics: Indicators

  September 19, 2012 Jon Paris

  The history of indicators pre-dates even the earliest versions of RPG and takes us all the way back to the old tabulating machines, perhaps even earlier depending on how broad a definition one uses. What is without doubt, though, is that indicators in the sense of *INnn and *INLR were introduced to the RPG language as a vehicle for translating those old tabulator board programs. RPG has grown a lot since those early days, and yet many people still write code using the old-style numbered indicators. LR? Well, we’re kind of stuck with that, but there hasn’t been a need

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• OSHA Changes To IBM Battery Handling Affect Cache Battery Replacement

  September 19, 2012 Hey, Joe

  I’m scheduling cache battery replacement for my production machine. Since this machine is never off-line, do you have any best practices or recommendations for how to change these batteries while production is running? –Ben Due to a recent United States Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) change, changing the cache batteries on your IBM i partitions isn’t as easy as it used to be, especially on a production machine. Here’s what happened. IBM uses batteries in its disk controllers to provide disk drive caching. The batteries have a useful life of about 2.75 to 3 years and the system will

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• Admin Alert: Eternal Users: A Common Problem With IBM i Batch Jobs

  September 19, 2012 Joe Hertvik

  Many IBM i shops have problems with eternal users. Eternal users are user profiles previously used by former IBM i power users that are still on the system. Although these users have left your organization, you can’t delete their user profiles, because the profiles are used in IBM i functions used to run batch jobs. This week, let’s look at eternal users and how to weed them out of your system. How The Gotcha Gets Ya Eternal users happen when administrators use their own or other power user profiles for submitting batch work to the system. Batch jobs are frequently

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• Future Coding

  September 5, 2012 Paul Tuohy

  One of my favorite benefits that comes from speaking at conferences is the great questions that get asked of me and other speakers. Even if we can answer the question, be assured the next time we’re gathered with colleagues over a cup of coffee (or other beverage of choice), one of us will say, “I was asked an interesting question at my last conference. . .” At the last RPG & DB2 Summit, I was having coffee with Susan Gantner and Barbara Morris, when Susan uttered those intriguing words. The ensuing conversation didn’t result in a change to the answer

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• Checking IBM i OS and PTF Level Status for Sarbanes-Oxley Documentation

  September 5, 2012 Hey, Joe

  I have to write a quarterly procedure for our Sarbanes-Oxley manual that details how we make sure our IBM i operating system and PTFs are current. Our auditors want us to prove that we are up to date on upgrades and fixes. Any ideas on how we can do that? I’m on i 6.1.1. –Bill Here are my thoughts for doing this on a 6.1.1 system. Note: The process I’m describing here can be used to provide operating system and PTF review documentation for any auditing requirements, not just SOX. Review your PTF and upgrade status at least twice yearly

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• Admin Alert: Two Useful PC5250 Parameters In IBM i Access For Windows 7.1

  September 5, 2012 Joe Hertvik

  With IBM i Access for Windows 7.1, IBM offers some valuable parameters for customizing Personal Communications sessions (PC5250) to connect to your IBM i partitions. This week, I’ll look at two of these features–setting a default path for PC5250 configuration files; and storing PC5250 window and font information–that can be useful for IBM i administrators trying to provide better control over their user installs. For this article, I’ll discuss two valuable PC5250 configuration parameters that are available with IBM i Access for Windows 7.1. These features are configured through the IBM i Access for Windows Properties screen, which is accessed

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• Composing An XML Document From Relational Data: Part 2

  August 22, 2012 Michael Sansoterra

  In Part 1 of this series, I covered how to transform the results of a DB2 for i7.1 query into either an element- or attribute-based XML document. This time, I’m going to delve into a more complicated XML composition that requires the nesting of sales order XML elements as children of retail store elements. As with the last tip, I’ll start with a base SQL statement that extracts the required data and then gradually transform that statement until it produces the desired XML document using the new DB2 for i XML functionality. To start, here is the base query that

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