In the first part of this series I discussed why I thought that RPGers should care about the new free-form support. Since you may have seen other articles on the basics of this support, I thought in this tip I’d focus on a few examples of how existing D-specs are converted to the new format so you can see how it all works.

Before we begin though, let’s have a quick review of the basics of this new style of data definition.

All definitions begin with a declaration operation code. For D-spec type definitions these take the form dcl-X where

Multimillion-row tables are more and more common in IBM i shops these days. Querying those monsters can be a strain on the system. Fortunately, IBM gave us some help in DB2 for i 7.1.

The help comes in the form of a new wrinkle in indexing. The smart people who produce the world’s greatest relational database management system found a way to store aggregate (summary) information in encoded vector indexes. Here’s an example.

Assume a table (physical file) of sales history, such as this one:

create table Sales
  ( ID                integer as identity,
    Invoice           dec  (9,0),
    Line              dec  (3,0),
    InvoiceDate       

Last issue, I started outlining how to set up an IBM i incident management plan, going through four of the seven elements that are crucial for IBM i monitoring and response. This issue, let’s finish up and discuss the final elements an IBM i incident management template should provide.

The Elements Of IBM i Incident Management, Revisited

As presented last time, here are the critical elements every IBM i incident management plan should include.

1. What type of monitoring are you doing: Manual, automatic, or hybrid?
2. What are you monitoring for?
3. Call trees: Who should be alerted when a problem