FHG Volume: 8 Archives - Page 8 of 13

Use SQL to Strip Out Tab Characters

May 21, 2008 Hey Ted

We have a system set up to import orders from a Website. Sometimes a field comes through from our Website with the tab character. We didn’t realize this is possible and have since started scrubbing the data before it is imported. The problem is that I already have some data in our System i tables that have the tab character in them. This is causing some odd things to happen later in our processes. I need some way to remove all of the tab characters from our database. Do you have a SQL statement or other magic way to find

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Admin Alert: Monitoring the Monitors

May 21, 2008 Joe Hertvik

Recently, my shop had to create a simple monitoring program to ensure that a critical subsystem was always running. This week, I’ll review the process that we used to create that program and I’ll also show you how to perform basic monitoring by using just a few simple CL commands. With some modification, these concepts can be applied to any situation where you can’t use an off-the-shelf monitoring program.

The Problem I Solved

The system problem this solution addresses reminds me of the old saying about who watches the watchmen. On one of our machines, we use a third-party monitoring,

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Writing Secure PHP Applications

May 14, 2008 Hey, Pat

My company has been playing around with PHP for a while. We are now designing real applications that we will deploy through our own Web server. What security ramifications do we need to consider in our design?

Thank you for your question.

Four aspects of PHP need to be considered to deal appropriately with security design in PHP applications:

PHP architecture on i5/OS
Web server application security design and configuration
Built-in PHP i5_* and db2_* functions
Your current object level access control methodology for i5/OS resources

The i5/OS PHP architecture consists of two Web server instances–the PHP core engine running

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Use PCOMM Scripts to Execute Remote PC Commands, Part 1

May 14, 2008 Michael Sansoterra

Over the years, much has been published in the AS/400 and System i community about how to execute remote commands on a PC from a 5250 emulation session using a variety of homegrown or IBM utilities. Most of the methods I have seen presented are good but require a fair bit of knowledge for installation, port numbers to open for the Windows XP firewall, calling an API from a high-level language program to retrieve the emulator workstation’s IP address and the like.

For those who use Windows and iSeries Access (now System i Access) or IBM‘s Personal Communications (PCOMM)

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Admin Alert: Things to Do When Adding Drives to a System

May 14, 2008 Joe Hertvik

My shop recently added 12 new disk drives to our i 550 development partition. While we outsourced the install to IBM, I found that there were a number of things I could do before and after the process to help the installation run smoothly. To share that knowledge with you, this week I’m presenting five things to think about when adding disk drives to a system.

Five Tips In A Nutshell

To help a disk drive installation run more like a gazelle and less like a hippo, I’ve found that the following five items can make a big difference.

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Accurate Program References

May 7, 2008 Ted Holt

I came across a situation recently that I thought some of you might find of interest. It has to do with program references (i.e., which objects a program uses) and conditional compilation. If you use a documentation package, whether homegrown or commercial, you may rely on program references without being aware of it.

Here is my situation. As part of a conversion project, I have an RPG program that uses conditional compilation directives to select one of two SQL commands, like this:

D zKey            s              3a
D zData           s              5a

 /free
     *inlr = *on;
 /if defined(SomeCondition)
     exec sql
        select key,

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Replace the Contents of a Physical File That Has Triggers

May 7, 2008 Hey, Ted

I need to copy the contents of a physical file from our production system to its counterpart in our development system, which is a separate logical partition. I have several ways to copy the file from the production system to the development system. However, error messages I get say that I cannot replace the data because the database file has triggers over it. Help!

–Tricia

You need to disable the triggers. Disabling triggers is most easily done if all of the triggers are active. Use Change Physical File (CHGPF) to disable the triggers.

CHGPFTRG FILE(MYLIB/MYFILE) TRG(*ALL) STATE(*DISABLED)

Then copy the

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Admin Alert: How to Recreate/Restore a System Distribution Directory

May 7, 2008 Joe Hertvik

In recent articles, I detailed how to change the communications identity of one i5/OS box so that it can impersonate another system and take its place on the network. However, I glossed over one important step: how to restore the i5/OS System Distribution Directory (SDD) from one machine to another. This week, I correct that error by showing you how to transfer an SDD from one machine to another.

What Is the SDD?

Although an SDD sounds like something you might catch when you’re not being too careful about the company you choose, the System Distribution Directory has been

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Multiformat SQL Data Sets

April 30, 2008 Hey, Ted

DDS-defined logical files can have multiple record formats, each one of them coming from different physical files of different types of data. I would like to do the same sort of thing in SQL. That is, I want to retrieve all the records from one file followed by all the records from a second file, grouped by one or more common key fields. This is not a join, and it doesn’t seem like a union either, because the two data sets are so different. Am I trying to do the impossible?

–David

What you’re doing may be unusual, but it’s

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Build Pivot Tables over DB2 Data

April 30, 2008 Hey, Ted

If you already know about these, then just hit the ol’ delete key on the message. I learned how to do this today. SQL is great for going “down the page.” It’s when they want data summed across that it gets to be a real kludge! Pivot tables are the answer.

It started with your article Load a Spreadsheet from a DB2/400 Database. I got it working! Sweet! Miracles never cease! Thanks a bunch!

Once the data is loaded into the spreadsheet via the SQL statement, make sure the column headings have decent labels. Open the Data menu and

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