• Stopping Your System i from Starting Up

  June 25, 2008 Hey, Joe

  I’m performing an i5/OS upgrade this weekend, but I first want to save my system by performing an Option 21 save (Entire system) off the GO SAVE menu. To save time, I don’t want to automatically restart the system after the backup completes. How do I stop my system from automatically restarting? –Bruce The bad news is that there isn’t a parameter that stops an Option 21 save from restarting an i5/OS system after your save completes. The good news is that you don’t need one. It’s simple to keep your system in a restricted state after a backup. All

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• Creating an RPG-based Web Service Using WDSC, Part 1

  June 18, 2008 Shannon O'Donnell

  Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last couple of years, you cannot help but to have heard about Web Services. According to the industry experts, whoever they are, Web Services will solve every problem you have ever had and ever will have in your quest to send and receive data from one computer to another over the Web. And while that may be a bit of an overstatement, it is true that Web Services really do make communicating with another computer system on the Web very easy. In this article I am going to show you how

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• SQL May Be Catching Up with DDS

  June 18, 2008 Ted Holt

  As enthusiastic as I am about SQL, I am not ready to abandon the native DB2-for-i interfaces. There are a few things that DDS and native I/O op codes do that SQL doesn’t handle as well. However, in V6R1 IBM has eliminated one of the DDS advantages. A logical file can do three tasks: it can define a record format to be a set of fields, it can define a data set to be a set of records, and it can create an access path over the data. SQL needs two commands. CREATE VIEW handles the first two tasks, and

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• Admin Alert: Redundancy is Good, Redundancy is Good, Re…

  June 18, 2008 Joe Hertvik

  The next time you order a Power i upgrade, pay special attention to the redundant components that are available. As the computing world moves toward more and more redundancy options, many 24×7 i5/OS shops are requiring absolute redundancy in almost everything available. This week, I’ll look at some of the redundancy options available for i5/OS machines and how they can help your shop. Basic Redundancy The math of redundancy is simple. If it costs 10 percent more to install redundant components, for example, how much will that save the company if it keeps a critical system running during a busy

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• Keeping 5250 Alive

  June 11, 2008 Tom Van Looy

  Some time ago, we had problems with Client Access sessions being reset. It seemed that these connections were traveling over a VPN that got disconnected after being idle for a while. Because we were not in charge of the VPN, I used TCP keepalive as a workaround for this problem. Keepalive A TCP connection can set the SO_KEEPALIVE option with the setsockopts() system call. When the TCP connection is idle for a specified period of time, a keepalive packet will be sent to keep the connection open. (In practice, this keepalive packet is a request for acknowledgement of the previous

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• Seeking Advice on REXX

  June 11, 2008 Hey Bruce

  I want to call from CL program a REXX program, where the REXX program returns a calculate of date (yymmdd). Do you have an example you could send me? Thanks in advance, –Larry Larry, REXX can’t directly return a value to CL the way other languages do. You’d have to have your REXX procedure write the data to a file or use the REXX External Data Queue. To use a file you’d have to first override STDOUT to a file of your choice, then use “SAY” to write the data. In your REXX procedure you could do this: 'OVRDBF FILE(STDOUT)

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• Admin Alert: All About the System i Attention Light

  June 11, 2008 Joe Hertvik

  In this week’s article, I’m presenting a high-level overview of the Power i, System i, and the iSeries system attention indicator light, which is activated when the system detects a problem. While it may be mundane to concentrate on how the system alerts you when something goes wrong, this information can come in handy when that little amber light blinks on and you’re not sure what to do. Where Is the System Attention Light? You can generally find the system attention indicator light (SA light) on the System Unit panel near the green power light, although the location varies by

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• Exploring the DB2 for i5/OS Extensions to the PHP Language

  June 4, 2008 Erwin Earley

  This is the fifth (and final) article in the PHP on i5/OS series. Previous articles in this series have looked at the structure of Zend Core in i5/OS, basic syntax of the PHP language, and the i5 Toolkit collection of APIs for accessing native i5/OS resources. This article will look at the extensions to the PHP language for accessing DB2 for i5/OS resources. The DB2 extensions can be broken down into a number of categories as follows: Server/Connection Result Commit/Rollback Fetch Field Information Key Information Statement Errors Column/Procedure Table Information This article will focus mainly on functions from the Server/Connection

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• Use Parameter Markers in SQL Persistent Stored Modules

  June 4, 2008 Hey Mike

  I have read your articles about SQL stored procedures with great interest. A year ago I tried to use parameter markers in dynamic SQL stored procedures but couldn’t succeed. I ended up writing stored procedures in COBOL. Could you please provide an example of dynamic SQL stored procedures using parameter markers? –Venkat Parameter markers in SQL Persistent Stored Modules are very easy to implement. If you’re using embedded SQL in COBOL to prepare dynamic SQL statements, you’re probably already 99 percent there. Below is an example of an SQL stored procedure that uses dynamic SQL to create a cursor and

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• Admin Alert: Quick Audits for i5/OS Backups

  June 4, 2008 Joe Hertvik

  In many shops, Sarbanes-Oxley and other regulations require iSeries, System i, and Power i administrators to audit their backup procedures and to keep records showing that regular backups are being administered and that their backups are working as advertised. To help with this effort, this week I’ll review a few common i5/OS commands and parameters that can make your backup auditing process easier to document. Two Alternatives for Auditing Backups When using an i5/OS or OS/400 SAVxxx command, it’s common to have the command produce a report detailing backup results by running the SAVxxx command like this: SAVLIB

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