• OLAP Is Simple, Once You Understand It

  May 9, 2012 Hey, Ted

  I have a problem that I solved with a simple RPG program, but I know it can be done with SQL as well. I needed to generate a simple table of employee ID, name, and average of the last five weeks paychecks. Is this simple or complicated to do with SQL? –Barry You are correct that SQL can do the calculation, Barry. However, you’ll have to decide for yourself if it’s simple or complicated. First, let’s get some data to work with. I’m going to simplify your question slightly by using a name only, without an ID, to identify an

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• CL Error-Handling With APIs

  May 2, 2012 Ted Holt

  Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. I had the great pleasure of meeting Brian Rusch in Milwaukee last month, when I spoke to the Wisconsin Midrange Computer Professionals Association (WMCPA). Brian told me about the method his shop uses to handle CL program exceptions. I’d like to share it with you. IBM has established an architecture for exception handling. When a program exception occurs, the system may send one or more diagnostic messages that give information about the error. The system does send an escape message, which summarizes the problem and cancels the program.

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• How Do I Format Date Literals? Let Me Count The Ways

  May 2, 2012 Hey, Ted

  I have a strange SQL problem. I have an SQL DELETE command that works perfectly in interactive SQL. But when I use Run SQL Statement (RUNSQLSTM) to execute it, it does not find any rows to delete. –Jabir Strange, indeed. I gave Jabir some suggestions, but none of them helped. Jabir found his problem himself. In one of those environments (he didn’t say which), the date format was *MDY, while the date format of the other one was *DMY. SQL was interpreting a date value in two different ways. It’s fortunate that Jabir did not test with a date that

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• Admin Alert: Secrets Of The IBM i IPL Parameters

  May 2, 2012 Joe Hertvik

  IBM i operating systems contain a number of attributes that are used to control IPL processing when you start or restart a partition. Some attributes (such as Start To Restricted State) are well-known, while others are seldom looked at. This week, let’s take a look at your system’s IPL attributes and how they can help you perform specific functions on your system. Viewing And Changing Your IPL Parameters You can view and change your IPL parameters by typing in the Change IPL Attributes (CHGIPLA) command from a 5250 green screen and pressing the F4 key. When you do this, you’ll

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• Getting PC5250 F1-F24 Keys to Work Correctly on HP Laptops

  April 25, 2012 Joe Hertvik

  Today’s tip comes from my own experience with a recent model HP Pavilion laptop that I use for my business. The problem occurred when I loaded up the PC5250 emulator software that comes with System i Access for Windows V6R1M0. I attached to and signed on to my production IBM i box with PC5250, executed a green-screen command, and hit the F3 key to exit the screen. Nothing happened. The F3 key didn’t work. Neither did F5, F10, F12, or any other F-key from F1 all the way up to F24. My PC5250 F-keys were dead. Experimenting with different keystroke

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• Specify SQL Table-creation Library at Runtime

  April 25, 2012 Hey, Ted

  I have an RPG programs that creates work tables in QTEMP. I’d like to be able to specify the library at runtime. I tried using a host variable for the library in a CREATE TABLE command, but that didn’t fly. I am using the system naming convention. Can you help? –Ben I wish CREATE TABLE would allow a host variable for the explicit qualifier, but it doesn’t. Here are a few ways that work. 1. Use dynamic SQL. Embed the library name in the SQL command. D SqlCommand s 256a varying D WorkLib s 10a /free *inlr = *on; SqlCommand

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• NOMAX? No Way!

  April 25, 2012 Hey, Ted

  I just read *NOMAX Does Not Mean Infinite Capacity and I politely beg to differ. I work at some shops with smaller and older systems with smaller disk capacity (70 GB, 140 GB). Some are already using more than 70 percent of available space. If I read the capacities correctly, a physical file can hold over four billion records. I did some calculations and I think I’d fill up a system before reaching capacity. For DDS-described files, I usually set some maximum number of records, as 10,000 seems ridiculously low. Now that you have mentioned SQL described tables, which I

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• Admin Alert: Planning An i 6.1 Upgrade

  April 18, 2012 Joe Hertvik

  As of this writing, my staff and I are preparing to upgrade the first of three System i 550 partitions from i5/OS V5R4 to i 6.1 on April 14. In an earlier article, I discussed getting started with a 6.1 upgrade. As a case study, this issue I’ll go over the planning process for actually performing the upgrade by reviewing my planning process for an actual IBM i partition. Completing The Pre-Upgrade Tasks At this point, we’ve completed most of the heavy lifting needed to perform the upgrade. With our Applications group, we’ve gone through and corrected all system

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• Have Your Cake and Eat It, Too

  April 18, 2012 Hey, Ted

  I did not take your suggestion to write a subprocedure and embed it in a service program. It seemed like too much trouble to me. I wrote a program instead. It does the trick and it’s a lot less complicated than all those hoops you told me to jump through. I guess ILE isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. –Chuck Chuck presented me with a problem. I suggested he write a subprocedure to solve it. He didn’t like the idea of creating a module, writing binder language, creating a service program from the module, adding the service program to

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• A Philosophically Engineered Approach to the Processing of Parameters

  April 18, 2012 Ted Holt

  Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. Too often we humans give little thought to what we do or why we do it, even though taking an organized approach to an activity has its advantages. In this article, I present one approach to the handling of parameters in programs and tell why I consider this a good way to process parameters. Parameters are data that are supplied to a program in order to affect the way it behaves. For example, the ability to supply file names, member names, and various options to the Copy File

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