FHG Archives - Page 73 of 144

Catching Robot/SCHEDULE Job Failures As They Happen

March 25, 2009 Hey, Joe

We’re using Help/Systems Robot/SCHEDULE version 9.0 to schedule batch jobs on an i5/OS V5R4 machine, and it works great. However, I have a new requirement to alert my staff whenever a Robot job fails to run or terminates unexpectedly. Do you know of any utilities that can monitor and send out email pages when this happens?

–Bob

Given that Robot/SCHEDULE is one of the most widely used utilities in iSeries, System i, and Power i shops, I’ve run into this problem before and wrote a utility to do exactly what you’re talking about. I’ve run this utility on Robot/SCHEDULE version

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Looking for Commitment, Part 2

March 18, 2009 Paul Tuohy

In this article I will take a look at the basic rules and coding requirements for using commitment control within RPG programs.

A Database

Figure 1 – SQL used to create a sample schema and tables.

Note: The code show above is available for download here.

Figure 1 shows the SQL used to create a schema named COMMIT, which contains two related tables, called HEADER and DETAILS. The main points to note are as follows (refer to the corresponding letters in Figure 1):

A. Creating the schema COMMIT results in a library named COMMIT that contains a journal named

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Treasury of New DB2 6.1 (V6R1) Features, Part 3: Client Special Registers

March 18, 2009 Michael Sansoterra

This article briefly explores the new client special registers that are now available in V6R1 and how they benefit client/server development. In case you missed them, Part 1 of this series discussed several query enhancements and explained how IBM is packing more functionality into a single statement. Part 2 of this series discussed the concept of super groups and grouping sets, which are very useful features that allow developers to add various aggregations to a result set.

Now back to the topic at hand. Since so much new DB2 development is client/server based, IBM created a useful set of special

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Admin Alert: Changing your SMTP Server is Easy-ish

March 18, 2009 Joe Hertvik

My shop recently upgraded its email system from Novell GroupWise to Microsoft Exchange. Along with the server change, we also had to reconfigure six i5/OS partitions to use the new Exchange server as their SMTP relay. If you’re faced with this type of issue, here’s an easy checklist for painlessly making the change.

Three Easy Steps

Changing your iSeries/System i/Power i SMTP relay is a relatively easy process with one or two minor kinks. There are three keys to making this change.

Change the SMTP mail relay settings. This can be done either on the green-screen or in iSeries Navigator

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Looking for Commitment, Part 1

March 11, 2009 Paul Tuohy

In this article I will discuss what commitment control is, why you may want to use it, and the basic requirements for commitment control. In subsequent articles we will look more closely at some of the considerations for using commitment control effectively: how commitment control works; different ways in which it can be implemented; and how it works in ILE.

Throughout these articles I will be using the SQL terminology of schema, table, row, and index as opposed to library, physical file, record, and logical file. However, be aware that commitment control is applicable to both SQL-defined tables and DDS-defined

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Treasury of new DB2 6.1 Features, Part 2: Grouping Sets and Super Groups

March 11, 2009 Michael Sansoterra

Part 1 of this series focused on some of the stellar query enhancements IBM gave its DB2 for i developer community. It’s hard to believe the 20-plus-year-old AS/400 system (now called IBM i) can continue to look so young given its great strengths in database and other areas. But for now, I want to focus on specialized query enhancements called grouping sets and super groups.

The ability to work with grouping sets and super groups in a query is an overdue feature, in my opinion (which incidentally has long been available with other versions of DB2 and other database servers).

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Admin Alert: Six Ways to Mess Up i5/OS User Profiles Security (And What To Do About It)

March 11, 2009 Joe Hertvik

Compared to other platforms, the i5/OS operating system is one of the more secure systems available today. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t any security holes. This week, let’s look at some common user profile security problems that iSeries, System i, and Power i shops encounter and talk about how you can counter these issues.

Auditing Your User Profiles

To truly troubleshoot the issues I’m discussing here, you’ll need to create a user profile information file (UPIF). It’s easy to create a UPIF and once you have it, you can query individual user profiles to determine which profiles have which

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A Bevy of BIFs: %XLATE and %REPLACE

March 4, 2009 Jon Paris

The %XLATE and %REPLACE text replacement built-in functions (BIFs) are often confused, and part of that confusion may be the result of wishful thinking on the part of RPGers frustrated with the limitations of %XLATE. Just as with the %SCAN and %CHECK BIFs that I discussed in an earlier tip, the major difference between %XLATE and %REPLACE is that %XLATE operates on individual characters and %REPLACE operates on strings.

Before we study %REPLACE, let’s quickly review the function of %XLATE.

%XLATE( from : to : input {: startpos} )

The function of %XLATE is to search the input string

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Send Messages Unto Others

March 4, 2009 Ted Holt

I’ll never forget the guy who used to call my telephone with a cheery “My computer won’t compute!” whenever he had a problem. Ambiguous appeals for help annoy me to no end. The least a guy can do is give me something to go on; some information to give me a place to start to look for his problem. But in fairness to users, I often find that they don’t have much information to give me because the programmer didn’t make the program tell them anything. A crafty CL programmer knows how to easily avoid such situations.

When something goes

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Admin Alert: Things I Learned About IBM Maintenance Contracts

March 4, 2009 Joe Hertvik

Due to timing issues in my shop’s upgrade cycle, I’m extending system maintenance for several months on one of our System i boxes, which has allowed me to pick up some pointers regarding IBM maintenance contracts. If the bad economy is forcing you to keep your current machine a little longer than you’d like and your existing maintenance is running out, consider these items when purchasing a new contract.

Think About Termination Options

When extending maintenance, be sure to carefully review the termination clause in your service agreement.

In many cases, you only need to extend maintenance for a month

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