• Guru: One-Shot Requests and Quoted Column Names

  July 19, 2021 Ted Holt

  If I had a dollar for every time someone has asked me to query data for them over the years, I could have retired already. (I did not say I would have, but that I could have.) It’s nice when the users can retrieve the information they need to do their jobs without help from IT, but when a request is too complex for them, I’m always glad to help.

  I’ve used many tools over the years for one-shot requests for raw data. These days my tool of choice is the Run SQL Scripts tool, which is part of IBM …

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• Altova Updates Db2 for i Support Across Product Line

  July 14, 2021 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that use data and development tools from Altova will be happy to know that the software vendor has added support for the latest release of Db2 for i among several of its tools.

  Altova is a Beverley, Massachusetts, company that develops a series of software tools and utilities for developers. The company is arguably best known as the creator of XMLSpy, an IDE that allows developers to create XML-based Web services using standards like WSDL; it later added support for JSON data and the modern SOAP protocol.

  In 2010, Altova added support for IBM i in MissionKit, …

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• In Search Of Next Gen IBM i Apps

  June 28, 2021 Alex Woodie

  What will become of our RPG and COBOL applications? If IBM i chief architect Steve Will has his way, the core elements of them will evolve into what he calls “next gen” applications that can run in the cloud, if necessary.

  “We are not just focusing anymore on trying to help clients get past green screens to mobile interfaces or Web interfaces,” Will said during his recent COMMON NAViGATE session, titled IBM i PLUS Cloud is the Answer. “There are still clients and applications that need to get there. We understand that. But you can’t just stop there now. …

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• Guru: Understanding Database Performance Using The Performance Data Investigator, Part 2

  June 28, 2021 Dawn May

  This is the second in a two-part series on how you can use the Performance Data Investigator (PDI) to investigate performance of Db2 for i. While the SQL Performance Center in Access Client Solutions is more commonly known than PDI, using both tools is a good way to analyze database performance.

  In Part 1, I reviewed the Database content package, focusing on the charts for I/O reads and writes, SQL CPU utilization, and database locks. In this tech tip, I continue by reviewing the charts related to SQL Cursor and Native DB Opens as well as the SQL Performance …

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• Guru: Understanding Database Performance Using The Performance Data Investigator, Part 1

  June 21, 2021 Dawn May

  This is a two-part series on how to use the Performance Data Investigator (PDI) for investigating performance of Db2 for i. While the SQL Performance Center in Access Client Solutions is the tool of choice for Db2 performance analysis, there is valuable information that you can get from using PDI. PDI is often a useful starting point to help guide you in the correct direction when trying to identify performance issues. In my experience, PDI is under-utilized for Db2 investigation. For those not familiar with PDI, you may want to read the article, Getting Started with the Performance Data Investigator …

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• Guru: Use SQL To Replace Reports

  June 14, 2021 Ted Holt

  Does anybody write report programs anymore? If so, why? Reports are so twentieth-century. The people we serve want spreadsheets, Web pages, cell-phone apps and other modern conveniences. What we need is an easy way to make our report programs write the same information to modern interfaces without having to perform major surgery on them.

  Some 10 years or so ago, I built a scripting language to enable me to reformat spooled files into stream files in CSV format. I called my utility BASS. It was, and continues to be, a successful project.

  But BASS is not the only way …

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• Watson-Inspired Pattern Matching Drives IBM i Performance Breakthrough

  June 9, 2021 Alex Woodie

  What do human diseases and IBM i performance problems have in common? For starters, they both can generate quite a bit of data. In the case of the humans, it was enough for IBM to train its AI technology, Watson, to find patterns buried in the data and come up with diagnoses. Now the Danish software company iPerformance is using a variation on that approach with GiAPA, its Global i Application Performance Analyzer.

  When iPerformance founder Kaare Plesner saw a demo of IBM Watson developing medical diagnoses, he figured a similar approach could work for sorting through the reams of …

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• Modern Tools For A Modern IBM i

  May 26, 2021 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops may be in for a rude awakening when they suddenly realize their applications are not keeping up with the times. How can these IBM i shops get on the right track in the modernization department? A trio of IBMers offered some tips.

  Brad Bentley, Tim Rowe, and Kris Whitney took to the virtual airwaves last week to present “IBM Tools for Modernizing Your IBM i Applications,” a one-hour webinar from IBM. Application modernization is an extremely broad topic, as the 266-page IBM Redbook of the (almost) same name will attest to, so they obviously didn’t cover …

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• Guru: Generate SQL for Dependents

  May 24, 2021 Paul Tuohy

  Way back in October 2014, in the article Find A View Of A View Of A View. . ., I detailed a stored procedure that, given the name of a table or a view, provides the full list of dependent views and all of their dependents and all of their dependents, etc. This is a stored procedure that has served me well in the world of DDL, where it is common to have views of views of views.

  In this article I will describe a follow-on stored procedure that will generate the DDL for a given table/view and all …

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• Guru: Date Format Confusion

  May 10, 2021 Ted Holt

  Hey, Ted:

  I use the Copy to Import File (CPYTOIMPF) command to build a CSV file to be sent to a MySQL system. My colleagues are unable to import the file because of the format of a timestamp field. CPYTOIMPF puts a hyphen between the date and time (e.g. 2021-05-10-04.36.24.849555), but the other system wants a space between them. Other than writing a custom program do you know of another way to change the format of the timestamp output?

  — Richard

  You won’t need a custom program, Richard. There’s another way to handle this requirement.

  IBM has already very thoughtfully …

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