• A Database Union is Not a Join

  January 23, 2008 Hey, Brian

  We recently acquired a company that has had its own payroll system for many years. We are going to combine the two payrolls starting next year but in the meantime, we would like to be able to use some of our internal cost analysis programs on the combined data without combining the two files. We have created an earning master physical file in which we are staging the data that we will use to merge the two systems next year. This file has the exact shape as our current payroll master file. Without creating another file and physically merging them,

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• More About Blocking

  January 23, 2008 Hey, Ted

  Don’t Disable Blocking was a good article. I would like to offer two suggestions for improvement. First RPG ILE provides a BLOCK(*YES) file level keyword, which allows compiler-generated blocking when a random I/O operation is issued to a file processed sequentially using a READ. The most common scenario is “Keylist SETxx SomeFile” followed by READ. Note that READE is not treated as a sequential operation. Second, I am a little disappointed that after your breakthrough OPNQRYF to SQL article using a SPECIAL device, you didn’t recommend the same approach for this situation. SQL automatically generates efficient blocking instructions for

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• Admin Alert: Before You Buy That New System i, Part 2

  January 23, 2008 Joe Hertvik

  Last week, I began discussing the pitfalls you may encounter when buying a new System i server. This week, I’ll continue the discussion by looking at some other common System i purchasing issues, including the need for additional power in the computer room, operating system upgrade issues, and making sure that you have everything that’s needed for the new machine. Five Pitfalls When Buying a New System i While it’s hard to make a complete list of items to watch out for when buying a new System i machine, I’ve found that the following pitfalls can easily rear up

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• Bringing i5/OS Resources to the Web

  January 16, 2008 Erwin Earley

  This is the fourth article in a PHP on i5/OS series and it continues our discussion of the API toolkit included with the Zend Core product. In my previous article Use PHP to Bring i5/OS Resources to the Web, I explained that the API toolkit is a collection of APIs for accessing i5/OS resources from PHP applications. The Zend Core product splits functions for accessing i5/OS resources into two broad categories: a collection of functions for accessing db2 resources, and a collection of functions for accessing all other i5/OS resources. The following diagram provides an overview of the structure

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• Another Way to Sort a File

  January 16, 2008 Ted Holt

  I’ve been in the information business for almost 27 years, and sometimes it seems that I’ve spent half that time sorting data. Without question, putting data into proper sequence is a big part of our jobs. Card sorters are ancient history. Sort utilities (e.g., #GSORT and FMTDTA) still run, but hopefully not in new development. These days, logical files and SQL are the iSeries methods of choice for placing data into a certain order. Here’s another sorting method you may not be aware of. The Reorganize Physical File (RGZPFM) command’s KEYFILE parameter provides a way to physically order records in

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• Admin Alert: Before You Buy That New System i, Part 1

  January 16, 2008 Joe Hertvik

  It’s not unusual for some companies to upgrade their System i servers every three years, which means that an upgrade may be in your near future. To help navigate the upgrade process, this week and next I’ll present a list of upgrade pitfalls to avoid. These pitfalls can cause delays, compatibility issues, and budget overruns. For your sanity and job security, watch for these costly mistakes when upgrading to a new machine. Pitfall #1: Forgetting About Software License Transfer Fees As you create your upgrade budget, find out what license transfer fees are associated with any third-party i5/OS software that

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• Scrubbing Your Web Data with Elbow Grease and AJAX

  January 9, 2008 Bob Butcher

  Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. Our salespeople were complaining that they could never get at customer information when making customer visits. Everything was green-screen on our AS/400, the VPN was slow, and an initiative was presented to me to see if I could create something Web-based for the salespeople to use in the field. After three months, my project was complete. The new Website, written with Active Server Pages (ASP), connected to our AS/400, and had all the bells and whistles. I was so proud that I had enabled our sales folks to

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• Odds and Ends

  January 9, 2008 Ted Holt

  Happy New Year, distinguished colleagues! I hope everybody enjoyed the holidays and got to take some time off. Christmas was wonderful for me. I am blessed more than I deserve to be. To start off a brand new year is this collection of odds and ends. I hope you find something useful. –Ted Put FTP Information in One Place 1. Most shops do batch FTP this way: OVRDBF FILE(INPUT) TOFILE(QFTPSRC) MBR(mbr_name) OVRDBF FILE(OUTPUT) TOFILE(FTPLOG) MBR(nbr_name) STRTCPFTP RMTSYS(ftp_server) DLTOVR FILE(OUTPUT) LVL(*JOB) DLTOVR FILE(INPUT) LVL(*JOB) where QFTPSRC(mbr_name) looks something like: user_name password ftp command(s) quit This forces you to maintain the destination

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• Admin Alert: Making Educated Guesses on CPU Utilization

  January 9, 2008 Joe Hertvik

  In previous issues, I discussed how to activate and deactivate trial Capacity on Demand (CoD) processors on a System i 550 box. Once the trial ends, however, you have to decide whether the additional capacity helped system performance and whether your organization should permanently activate those processors. To help with that decision, I’ll demonstrate a rough method for comparing before and after CPU performance in a trial CoD situation. The Situation Continuing with the case study discussed in my earlier articles, I activated an additional processor on a partition that was going to experience extremely heavy increased demand

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