• Admin Alert: An Alternate Way to Port Image Catalogs Between Systems: QFileSrv.400

  August 10, 2011 Joe Hertvik

  In a recent article, I presented a technique for porting image catalog files between Power i systems. Afterward, a reader contacted me with an equally valid ways of moving image catalogs around that may even work better than my technique. This week, I’ll look at his suggestion and see how it can make life easier when porting optical media to remote systems. My Solution My original solution to porting an image catalog and its associated files from a source to a target machine consisted of the following steps: Create a virtual optical device that can be used to read

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• REPLACE to Replace Characters in a String

  July 27, 2011 Skip Marchesani

  In V5R3, IBM simplified the manipulation of character strings with the implementation of the INSERT and REPLACE functions in SQL. INSERT allows the positional insertion of one or more characters in a string and REPLACE scans for all occurrences of a target string and overlays or replaces the target string with a replace string. INSERT was discussed in my previous article, and now I will discuss REPLACE. Prior to the implementation of REPLACE in V5R3, scanning for the existence of a target string and replacing it with another string was not very easy. A positional replacement could be performed

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• Solving iSeries Access Data Transfer Problems and Detecting Disk Damage

  July 27, 2011 Hey, Joe

  I’m having a problem downloading a file using iSeries Access Data Transfer from System i. Whenever I perform my download, I get the CWBDB0099 and SQL0420 errors shown below. I can click OK and still download the file, but I’d like to get rid of this error. What’s going on and how do I fix it? –Laura Here’s the error message that Laura is referring to and what I did to solve it. After researching, I couldn’t find any references to the CWBDB0099 error with the SQL4020 sub-error. There were plenty of references to the CWBDB0099 error with sub-error SQL0181,

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• Admin Alert: A Starter Program to Find Damaged Objects in i OS 6.1.1

  July 27, 2011 Joe Hertvik

  After a damaged object prevented a full system production backup in my shop, I was asked to devise a technique for detecting damaged objects on the system. This week, I’m presenting my starter CL program that looks for damaged objects as a template for approaching the issue, in the hopes that others can add to and expand on this code. How Objects Get Damaged iSeries, System i, and Power i objects can get damaged in a variety of ways, including: Electrical outages where the power is quickly cut off before the hard drive has a chance to finish writing all

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• INSERT to Overlay Positions in a Character String

  July 20, 2011 Skip Marchesani

  In V5R3, IBM simplified the manipulation of character stings with the implementation of the INSERT and REPLACE functions in SQL. INSERT allows the positional insertion of one or more characters into a string and REPLACE scans for all occurrences of a target string and overlays or replaces the target string with a replace string. This article will discuss INSERT, and a future article will discuss REPLACE. Prior to the implementation of INSERT in V5R3, the positional insertion or update of one or more characters (alpha or numeric) in a character string was a challenge. You had to create a compound

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• Emulate RPG’s Pessimistic Locking in SQL

  July 20, 2011 Hey, Mike

  I’m writing a Java program to replace several RPG programs that access unjournaled database files. The current programs all use the same logic: obtain a lock on a record, allow the user to make zero or more changes on various “screens,” then save the changes (potentially not changing anything). I need to make my Java program behave like the original RPG programs. I have always been able to use SQL, but no transactions, due to the lack of journaling. I thought I found a solution today, but it didn’t work as I implemented it. I tried setting the isolation level

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• Admin Alert: Porting an Image Catalog Between Power i Boxes using FTP

  July 20, 2011 Joe Hertvik

  In a recent article about creating and using image catalogs in lieu of CDs and DVDs for i operating system installations and upgrades, I didn’t discuss how to move image catalogs between different i/OS partitions that can be located many miles or time zones apart. To plug that hole, this issue I present two simple programs that enable you to move pre-loaded image catalogs between systems. Why Move Image Catalogs? For many organizations, their iSeries, System i, and Power i partitions may reside in different cities, states, or even countries. The production system frequently resides in one location while its

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• Running Totals in an SQL Query, Take 2

  July 13, 2011 Skip Marchesani

  My article, Running Totals in an SQL Query, described how to write an SQL SELECT statement that generated a running total for each row in the result set and provided an example of the SELECT statement syntax to do so. While the SELECT statement was syntactically correct, it had an omission and did not work correctly in a certain data situation. Several readers figured this out and were good enough to send an email note to make me aware of the situation. I very much appreciate the emails. I want readers to know that the article was a test

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• The DB2 DBA: Identifying Indexes with Shared Access Paths

  July 13, 2011 Hey, Mike

  The SysIndexStat catalog view has the column Owning_Index_Owner (plus schema, system names, etc.). However, that catalog view does not include constraint-created indexes, nor does it include keyed logical and physical files that share the access path owned by an SQL index. The DSPFD command does show the SQL index that owns the access path for such logical files, but I have not been able to generate this information in an outfile format from that command. The information must exist somewhere (since it shows on screen) and I would think it would be in one of the file description APIs, but

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• How Do I Email a PC5250 Screen Shot?

  July 13, 2011 Hey, Joe

  I want to email a PC5250 screen shot. But when I press the Print Screen key, nothing happens. It doesn’t copy my screen to the Windows clipboard and I can’t paste it into my email. What am I doing wrong? I’m using the PC5250 product that comes with iSeries Access V5R4M0. –Jay By default, most Windows programs capture your entire desktop display image to the Windows clipboard when you press the PRT key (on some keyboards, you press the PrtSc key, instead). PRT copies the entire desktop image to the clipboard, including all visible Windows and the Windows toolbar. Alternatively,

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