FHG Archives - Page 52 of 144

How To Rename Your Local Database

January 5, 2011 Hey, Ted

When I start up an interactive SQL session I see “Current connection is to relational database Sxxxxxxx.” Sxxxxxxx is our serial number. Is there a way to change the relational database name to something a little more meaningful?

–David

Use the Work with Relational Database Directory Entry (WRKRDBDIRE) command. The entry you need to change is for remote location *LOCAL. For more information about WRKRDBDIRE, see Using the WRKRDBDIRE command at IBM‘s Info Center.

–Ted

That solved the problem. It was little scary because I couldn’t change the name, but had to delete the existing one

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Make SQL Edit the Way You Want It To

December 15, 2010 Ted Holt

Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here.

In the last issue of the year, I like to do something fun. In 2008, I found my way through mazes. In 2007, I solved the peg game and talked about some other unusual things. This year I’ve done something fun that I think you’ll find to be a little more practical.

We use SQL a lot in my shop for ad-hoc queries. One annoyance is that the various and sundry SQL clients we use don’t display the numbers the way we want to see them.

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End of Year Miscellanea

December 15, 2010 Hey, Distinguished Professional

The year’s almost up, believe it or not. What’s even harder for me to believe is that we’ve been putting out this newsletter for almost 10 years. It’s been wonderful to hear how you’ve benefited from Four Hundred Guru. Let’s end 2010 with some feedback from readers of this august publication.

–Ted

Hey, Ted:

Thank you very, very, very, very much for the extremely helpful tip showing how to edit spool files. Under big time pressure, I couldn’t fully test mandatory payroll changes before payroll ran them. In the middle of the check it would jump to the

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Discovering Which Locked Object is Holding Up Your Job

December 15, 2010 Hey, Joe

I have a recurring problem with file locks on my system, where critical jobs are stuck in lock waiting status (LCKW) waiting for an object before crashing on a file allocation error. How can I tell which object the job is waiting for before it crashes and which user has that object locked? I’m running i5/OS V5R4M5.

–Brett

There are two ways to figure out which locked object a job is waiting for. One way to locate it is by using i5/OS green screen commands; the other is by using iSeries Navigator (OpsNav). Here’s the drill for locating your locked

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The Top 10 IBM i Security Exposures, Part 2

December 8, 2010 Wayne O. Evans

In Part 1 of this article, I mentioned the importance of being aware of common security exposures. I described five of the 10 most common security exposures and provided suggestions for minimizing risk. This article covers the remaining five security exposures.

Exposure #6: Unrestricted use of IBM Navigator for i.

IBM provides IBM Navigator for i (formerly called iSeries Navigator and Operations Navigator) as the graphical user interface for OS/400 functions. This powerful interface can be used in place of a command line to manage the security of objects, display data file content, and even delete objects. IBM Navigator, like

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Find Time and Date Durations in RPG

December 8, 2010 Hey, Ted

Time and date calculations fall short in ILE RPG. I have seen many examples of handling date or time math on IT Jungle and other Web sites. All of them calculate one unit of time only–either years, days, hours, minutes, etc. In the application I am working on, I need to find an interval in days, hours and minutes, but I have found nothing that subtracts one date from another and gets a true answer in mixed units.

–Al

RPG does not have date and time durations, as SQL and Query do. (For more information about durations, see the articles

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Admin Alert: The Nine Stages of a Power i Upgrade

December 8, 2010 Joe Hertvik

Like many other shops, you may soon be upgrading your existing iSeries, System i, or Power i hardware. To help with that process, this week I’m reviewing the nine general stages that occur during a Power i upgrade. While not all-inclusive, these stages create a general roadmap for what you need to consider during a Power i hardware purchase.

The Overview

Briefly, the nine stages of a Power i upgrade are:

IBM hardware and software maintenance extension (if necessary)
Operating system upgrade (optional)
High availability preparation (optional)
Sizing your machines
Evaluating alternatives
Final specifications, decision, financing, and ordering
Third-party software

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The Top 10 IBM i Security Exposures, Part 1

December 1, 2010 Wayne O. Evans

In today’s highly security-conscious network environment, it’s important that you be aware of some of the common security exposures that could lead to a security breach of your systems. Even though there are excellent security features built into IBM i, today’s network environments often open your systems to exposures not even dreamed of a few years ago.

Based on numerous security reviews I have conducted across different industries, the same types of security exposures appear over and over again. In this series of articles, I describe the top 10 most common security exposures and provide suggestions for minimizing your risk.

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Case-Sensitive SQL Identifiers

December 1, 2010 Hey, Ted

Like most people who use SQL, I have never bothered worrying about which case a field name is written in. Case never seemed to matter. However, while performing a data fix, I discovered an instance where it does. (Fortunately, I was using test data!)

I had a number of files from which records were to be deleted. The key values of the records to be deleted were held in a spreadsheet. There were three fields, one of them called VERSION, in the files I was deleting from.

I tried to create a table to store the contents of the spreadsheet,

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Admin Alert: Prototype Instructions for Running TCP/IP in i5/OS Restricted State

December 1, 2010 Joe Hertvik

A reader recently wrote asking how to configure i5/OS to use TCP/IP communications while in restricted state. Here are my prototype instructions for accomplishing this task. Due to constant uptime demands on my machines, however, I haven’t yet been able to fully test this process. But I invite any interested readers to test these instructions and write in with suggested changes. I’ll publish the best comments in a future article.

Getting Started with Restricted State TCP/IP

If you’re running recent versions of i5/OS or the i operating system, you should be able to run a subset of TCP/IP functions in

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