• Data Scrubbing Functions In DB2 For i

  November 17, 2015 Hey, Mike

  Imagine a character database field that stores a phone number. No formatting rules are involved, so the values in the column vary such as 8370155738, 837/015-5738, 837-015.5738, etc. We’d like to write an RPG program that allows the user to enter a number, formatted or not, onto the screen and if that string of numbers is found in the table’s phone column, show it to the user. Is there a way to use SQL to strip the non-numeric characters from the phone field, and select the record if the result matches the user input? –Brad Hi, Brad. Scrubbing data is

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• Formatting Dates with SQL, Take 3

  November 17, 2015 Hey, Ted

  Great technique shared! Function overloading is a real boon to SQL programming. Here’s another way that requires less code and is less invasive (i.e., you won’t have to recompile anything.) Leave your original FMTDATE function alone and add the following to the SQL source: create function xxx/fmtdate (inDate varchar(8), inFromFmt varchar(8), inToFmt varchar(8)) returns varchar(10) language SQL specific FMTDATEA deterministic returns null on null input begin declare DateNum numeric (8,0); declare OutDate varchar(10); set DateNum = decimal(inDate); set OutDate = FmtDate(DateNum, inFromFmt, inToFmt); return OutDate; end I’ve used this technique to overload many user-defined functions and keep the HLL programming

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• An Introduction to Processing XML with RPG, Part 4

  November 17, 2015 Jon Paris

  Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. In the first three parts of this series, I focused on the basics of using RPG’s XML-INTO. In this episode I want to wrap things up by covering two of the more recent additions to this support. Let’s start with namespaces. I haven’t got time to go into all the whys and wherefores of namespaces. For now let’s just say that they allow you avoid name collisions by qualifying element and attribute names. Since you will encounter them in many documents it is important to understand the

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• HelpSystems’ Application Integration Begins With GUI

  November 16, 2015 Dan Burger

  Almost every IBM midrange shop faces integration issues. The next piece of the IT puzzle has to fit in with existing environment, or the system that was functional 15 years ago requires modernization to make it functional today and into the foreseeable future. You’re lucky if you are only dealing with one piece of the puzzle at a time. In fact, that rarely happens. You have to sort through a pile of priorities and make a plan. You need a road map. Integration lessons come in all shapes and sizes and varying degrees of difficulty. Sometimes we learn quickly and

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• Mad Dog 21/21: Time, Like Gas, Passes; Love, Like Stardom, Fades

  November 16, 2015 Hesh Wiener

  IBM’s Watson said the main themes of Bob Dylan‘s song lyrics were that time passes and love fades. Dylan said this sounded about right. Both were kidding: The obvious point of the television commercial featuring this insipid exchange between machine and man was that there are no fools like old fools. Mr. Dylan, for non-AARP folk, was a pop music icon decades ago, when IBM was the emperor of computing; today, Dylan, a wrinkled old fart, is at best the second most important living entertainer from Minnesota, long since eclipsed by the timely and relevant Garrison Keillor.

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• Move Your IBM i To The Cloud On Your Own Terms

  November 16, 2015 Alex Woodie

  One of the biggest technology shifts in history–the move to cloud computing–is currently occurring. But technology pros at many organizations–in particular those running IBM i servers–are fearful about what a move to the cloud will mean for them and their organization. The good news, says Denovo Ventures CTO Richard Dolewski, is that IBM i pros can make the move on their own terms. The cloud is still fairly new to most IBM i professionals. While IBM i cloud deployments are growing, arguably less than 10 percent of IBM i workloads are cloud-based at this time. However, all signs point to

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• Technology Refreshes Go Unnoticed By Most IBM i Shops

  November 16, 2015 Dan Burger

  The IBM midrange community is full of normal people trying to keep the lid on a can of worms and make a living. In the pursuit of what should be two simple and compatible objectives, there’s a lot of fancy dancing going on. What has to get done today overrides the broader view of what could be done. The IBM i development team rolls out Technology Refreshes, but relatively few take notice. On Friday, November 20, Technology Refresh (TR) 11 for IBM i 7.1 and TR 3 for IBM i 7.2 will become generally available, or GA in the lingo

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• What Good Is Native .NET On Power?

  November 16, 2015 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As many of you know, most of us at IT Jungle have advocated for some form of support for the Windows Server platform on Power-based systems since the advent of the PowerPC Alliance nearly 25 years ago. Back then, there really wasn’t a Windows Server platform at all, in fact, and it was not until that alliance that two things became clear: Microsoft had aspirations as a system software provider, and it intended to start down that road by making its Windows desktop operating system available on Power, Alpha, MIPS, and X86 processors. Except for a few months in the

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• R2D2 Is Alive And Well–Inside Your IBM i Server

  November 9, 2015 Bob Losey

  R2D2? That little dome-headed droid that always kept the Star Wars heroes one step ahead of big trouble? Well, not exactly. The one we’re talking about doesn’t roll around, nor does he chirp. But, unlike the movie version, ours is real. He lives inside your IBM i server and he spends his life keeping you out of trouble. . . with never so much as a thank you from his owner. It’s time he got a little respect, because he works day and night; not only “off the books” but entirely off your payroll. Nevertheless, he’s the best system administrator

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• As I See It: The Gospel According To Dan Price

  November 9, 2015 Victor Rozek

  There is a Biblical parable in the gospel according to Matthew that touches upon labor relations. As the story goes, a vineyard owner sends his foreman out to hire laborers at daybreak. They agree upon a wage–one denarius in this instance–and off they go to toil in the soil. (“Toiling” is the biblically preferred term for work.) But the foreman goes out several more times throughout the day and hires additional men, telling them simply that they will be paid “whatever is right.” Apparently, they needed work more than clarity about wages, so off they went to join the daybreak

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