• Admin Alert: The Case of the Mysterious CPI0999 Storage Error

  May 10, 2006 Joe Hertvik

  Most i5 administrators know that system problems can occur when i5 disk units fill up. System degradation can occur when system storage reaches 90 percent, and the system can crash after storage usage passes 95 percent. But while disk drive capacity problems are fairly straightforward to handle, they are not the only storage problems that can occur on OS/400 boxes. There is a second storage issue–identified when the system starts issuing CPI0999 error messages–that is not as clearly understood as traditional storage capacity problems. A CPI0999 issue can also create severe performance problems on your system and it should

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• SQL Goodies in DB2 for i5/OS V5R4, Part 2

  May 3, 2006 Michael Sansoterra

  A few weeks ago, I walked you through some of the enhancements that IBM has made in the SQL programming language and its DB2/400 database with the i5/OS V5R4 release, which came out in January. As I explained in the first part of this story, I have been watching SQL enhancements like a hawk since OS/400 V4R2 was announced many years ago. I am always eager to put the improvements IBM has given us into practice. The SQL in V5R4 has lots of new stuff. But before I get into that, I want to remind you that IBM has a

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• V5R4 Improvements to the i5/OS OLE DB Providers

  May 3, 2006 Michael Sansoterra

  The code for this article is available for download. I’ve used the feature rich and reliable AS/400 ODBC driver for quite a while in my applications. When creating new applications, I would often switch to the alternative OLE DB providers to see if performance and features were comparable. However, I would always run into a limitation of some sort with the OLE DB provider (e.g., not being able to use the system naming convention) that would put me back to using ODBC. I’m happy to report as of V5R4 it looks like many of these limitations are gone. In

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• Admin Alert: Building a Better Experimental Automatic Deletion Technique

  May 3, 2006 Joe Hertvik

  Recently, I posted an experimental technique for the automatic deletion of inactive profiles. I cautioned my readers, however, to approach this task carefully, lest they accidentally delete needed profiles. I also invited any willing reader to fill in the gaps in the technique, and to point out where it needed improvement. Several readers responded, uncovering a few nasty trap doors in what I had created. Here’s what they had to say and how I think the technique can be improved to meet their concerns. The technique itself is too long to reprint here, so be sure to read the

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• Converting Unconvertible Dates Using SQL

  April 26, 2006 Ted Holt

  As much as I like SQL, I realize that it has its shortcomings. Fortunately, SQL’s shortcomings are not hard to work around. In the few paragraphs that follow, I give you a quick and easy way to get around the problem of converting invalid character data to the date data type. When I first began learning to program, System/34 RPG II was the most common programming language in my area. The S/34 had no database engine and RPG II had no date data type, so we stored dates in numeric and/or alpha fields. (Nowadays, dates are still stored in numeric

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• Auditing of Sensitive Users and Objects

  April 26, 2006 Hey, Steve

  My shop keeps running up against the process and data control requirements surrounding the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. We are continually told that we should be actively monitoring all accesses to the critical financial data that reside on our i5 system, as well as the powerful users that may be accessing the data. Of course, the first hurdle to compliance in this area is identifying which files are critical and then managing the users with powerful authorities. However, since there’s already someone in the IT security group breathing down my neck and our company already has a well-defined data classification scheme (rare,

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• Allowing User Profiles Without Passwords to Sign On

  April 26, 2006 Hey, Joe

  In your article about Setting Up User Profiles Without Passwords, you said that when you set up a user profile to have a password of *NONE, this configuration ” . . . essentially disables a user from performing any type of interactive work on the system.” In my shop, we have implemented Network Authentication Service (NAS), along with Enterprise Identity Mapping (EIM) and a Kerberos server, to create a true Single Sign-On environment. My profile has a password of *NONE and the Kerberos-NAS-EIM configuration handles the authentication to the AS400. I log into a 5250 session multiple times a day

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• Where’s the Other MBROPT Option?

  April 19, 2006 Hey, Ted

  I suppose everybody knows that the Copy File (CPYF) command can copy data from one database file to another. And I suppose everybody knows that, depending on the MBROPT parameter, the data in the source file (the “from” file) can either replace or be added to the data in the target file (the “to” file). Furthermore, I suppose that some people know that the MBROPT(*UPDADD) option causes the system to replace the records that have matching key values and add records with no matching key values. But does anybody know how to add the records that don’t have matching key

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• CL’s Null Value

  April 19, 2006 Hey, Ted

  I am writing a CL program in which I pass variables to the Change User Profile (CHGUSRPRF) command. The command fails when I try to use a qualified name containing a single value like *SAME or *NONE. If I use one variable for the qualified parameter, *SAME and *NONE work, but the compiler won’t allow me to put both library name and program name into one variable. How can I pass qualified names that allow single values as variables to commands? –Brian Use two variables for the qualified name in your CHGUSRPRF command. When you need to use a single

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• Admin Alert: An Experimental Technique for Automatically Deleting User Profiles

  April 19, 2006 Joe Hertvik

  I have recently received several emails asking about the best way to automatically delete user profiles that haven’t been used for a specific number of days. This is a requirement for several reasons, including Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. While I’m not sure any process for the automatic deletion of user profiles is perfect, here’s how I would approach this issue by using a home-grown technique. Please note that this technique is experimental and it is not bullet-proof. I offer it as an exercise to help you satisfy your own automatic deletion requirements. However, you should be extremely careful when putting an automatic

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