• A Bevy of BIFs: %Dec to the Rescue

  May 20, 2009 Susan Gantner

  More and more in RPG applications these days, it seems we need to process data that comes from “the dark side.” Translation: from a non-i system. This data could be coming from a browser screen via an RPG CGI program, from a CSV (comma-separated values) flat file, from an XML document, or myriad other ways. One thing these dark sources often have in common is that data that should be numeric often isn’t–at least not by RPG’s definition. So common is the issue of invalid numeric data that one of the recommendations from IBM on using the XML-INTO operation code

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• Admin Alert: Four Ways to Encrypt i5/OS Backups, Part 2

  May 20, 2009 Joe Hertvik

  In the last Admin Alert, I started discussing four techniques for encrypting i5/OS backups for greater protection and to satisfy auditors and government agencies. Last week, I focused on software techniques. This week, I’ll turn my attention to hardware-based encryption techniques. I’ll look at what options are available when you purchase specific hardware for your system and how those devices affect your backup strategies. What Hath Come Before As I explained last week, you generally have four options to encrypt backup media from your i5/OS systems. Software encryption through IBM‘s Backup Recovery and Media Services (BRMS) licensed program (i5/OS

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• A Not-Quite-As-Sleepy RPG Program

  May 13, 2009 Hey, Ted

  Thanks for the information about the sleep API. On a recent project, we had a requirement to ensure that two operations were at least a microsecond apart, but a full second proved to be far too long. (Seconds add up quickly!) We created a DLYJOBSML (Delay Job for Small Duration) command and invoked the usleep API in the CPP. –Blair Like sleep, usleep also delays a job. The difference is that the usleep parameter denotes milliseconds, rather than whole seconds. You might say that sleep is like going to bed at night, whereas usleep only takes a nap. Here’s the

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• SQL’s Other Fetch Options

  May 13, 2009 Ted Holt

  I consider fetch a great word, and lament that it is no longer used in daily English, at least not where I live, except maybe when speaking to dogs. Fortunately, fetch is still used heavily in SQL. High-level language programs need it to convert set-at-a-time processing into row-at-a-time processing. Fetch can do more than read a result set from beginning to end. Do you know what else it can do? From Top to Bottom For starters, let’s look at the most common use of fetch–to read an SQL cursor from beginning to end. The following highly sophisticated demonstration program shows

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• Admin Alert: Four Ways To Encrypt i5/OS Backups,

  May 13, 2009 Joe Hertvik

  Part 1 Backup media encryption is becoming a rapidly growing concern for companies that are dealing with ever increasing regulatory, legal, compliance, and identity theft prevention requirements. This issue and next, I’ll look at four techniques that i5/OS users have for encrypting backups for greater protection and to satisfy auditors and government agencies. I’ll explore what technologies are available, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of using each technology. What To Encrypt? Your first encryption decision involves specifying what you need to encrypt. In general, one or more of the following items need to be encrypted as they are

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• Treasury of New DB2 6.1 (V6R1) Features, Part 6: Miscellaneous Enhancements

  May 6, 2009 Michael Sansoterra

  As the saying goes “all good things must come to an end.” And alas, this is the last in my series of tips on improvements to DB2 for i in V6R1. This final tip will cover the hodgepodge of remaining notable features added since the V5R4 that haven’t been covered in the prior tips. Stick around because there is some good stuff in here. ALTER FUNCTION Statement V5R4 gave us the ALTER PROCEDURE statement and now, at long last, DB2 has the ALTER FUNCTION statement. Prior to 6.1, when a function needed a modification, developers were forced to drop and

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• Having Fun with Javascript

  May 6, 2009 Paul Tuohy

  Over the last couple of years I have spent a lot of time playing around with Web pages. You can see the results of my efforts at www.systemideveloper.com. One of the really fun parts of getting to grips with Web pages has been learning about some of the weird and wonderful things that can be done with Javascript. In this article, I want to share two of my favorite Javascript functions. Hopefully, you might find them useful or they might spark you on to something even better. Fighting the Spam Bots When I first set up the System i

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• What Happened to my i5/OS Crypto Access Provider?

  May 6, 2009 Hey, Joe

  My vendor wants me to install IBM licensed program 5722-AC3 (128-bit Cryptographic Access Provider). However, I can’t find that product in my i5/OS V5R4 partition. I could have sworn it was there before we upgraded from version V5R3. What happened to 5722-AC3? –Sam With i5/OS V5R4, IBM made some changes to the way it manages encryption. After a V5R4 upgrade, you will notice that the following IBM licensed program products (LPP) are no longer available on your system: 5722-AC3–Cryptographic Access Provider–In earlier versions, this was referred to as the 128-bit Cryptographic Access Provider, because there also used to be a

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• Don’t Ignore the View

  April 22, 2009 Paul Tuohy

  I recently had a discussion with some of my colleagues about the increased use of Data Definition Language (DDL) in SQL to define a database as opposed to traditional DDS. One of the items that came up in the discussion was that while people were using DDL to define tables and indexes, there seemed to be very few views being defined. In this article I will discuss some of the benefits to be gained from using views–both within your applications and as a means to make data more readily accessible to your users. What Is a View? Those of us

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• Releasing File Member Locks With QSH

  April 22, 2009 Tom Van Looy

  Sometimes our users just keep their sessions open when they go home. At times, such as when we need to install software updates, this is a problem. It is possible to write a CL that cleans up the file/member locks without getting too complicated? You’ll be happy to know it is. Unix to the rescue! All you need is to quickly hack together a small nine-line QSH shell script to do the job. See this example file named unlock that lives in my /home/tvl directory on the IFS: for file in $@; do system "WRKOBJLCK OBJ($file) OBJTYPE(*FILE) MBR(*ALL)" 2>/dev/null |

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