FHG Archives - Page 23 of 144

What Should I Monitor For On My IBM i Partition?

March 12, 2014 Hey, Joe

I want to shore up my IBM i monitoring plan but I need ideas on what to monitor for. I know a problem when it hits me, but I’m not always sure what to look for. What should I be monitoring?

–Victoria

IBM i and Power i system monitoring is an important topic because like a shipping manager, your number one priority is to keep the production lines running. You need to find problems both before and after they occur. Here are the general areas I believe every IBM i administrator should be watching on a daily basis. In the

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DB2 For i Scalar Function Performance Considerations

March 5, 2014 Michael Sansoterra

I love using user-defined functions (UDFs) in DB2 for i. They encapsulate business logic, provide for code modularity and improve code reusability. But they can also flush performance down the drain. So in this tip, I’d like to use a sample UDF to analyze how it can affect the performance of an SQL statement.

For this illustration, I’ve exported the Microsoft SQL Server Adventure Works sample data to DB2 for i. There are three main tables to consider in this query; SalesOrderHeader (31465 rows), SalesOrderDetail (121317 rows) and ProductCostHistory (22680 rows; I dumped in some extra randomized data into this

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Use Wireshark To Diagnose IBM i Communications Problems

March 5, 2014 Ted Holt

Troubleshooting communications problems is akin to dealing with teenagers. There’s plenty of room for blame and finger-pointing, and resolving a problem sometimes seems impossible. I don’t have anything to help you with teenagers, but I can recommend a free tool for communications problems. It’s called Wireshark, and here’s how to use it with IBM i communications traces.

First, visit www.wireshark.org to get Wireshark. It is a network protocol analyzer that runs under Microsoft Windows and several operating systems of the Unix flavor. Like the best things in life, Wireshark is free.

Next, install the QSPTLIB library. This is a library

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Admin Alert: Setting Up IBM i TCP/IP Host Routes

March 5, 2014 Joe Hertvik

On an IBM i partition, you may need to route IP traffic for a particular server over a specific IP address. You could be doing this to segment network traffic or because you can only reach a host server through a specific interface (say an interface that has access to a firewall). Here’s the drill for modifying your IBM i TCP/IP routing entries to set up host routing.

The Situation

The best way to demonstrate how to set up IBM i host routing is by showing you an example. So let’s start with a single IBM i partition with a

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The Case Of The IBM Systems Director And RBAC

February 26, 2014 Jeff Waldbillig

It was a dark night on a network that knew how to keep its secrets. Actually, that was last night. Today was going to be a busy day working on the network that knew how to keep its secrets. I’d been temporarily moved from my nightshift role at the help desk to the daylight hours to cover for a coworker who was out with an extended illness, but I was beginning to wonder if my late-night auction surfing had attracted some attention I did not need.

My phone rang, and I paused for a moment as I considered that this

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The ADO Client Side Of Default Parameters And Named Arguments In DB2 For i

February 26, 2014 Michael Sansoterra

In Stored Procedure Parameter Defaults And Named Arguments In DB2 For i, I covered two new related features in DB2 for i 7.1 that were implemented in Technology Refresh 5 (DB2 for i Group PTF Level 18 or higher). In this tip, I’m going to cover a surprising limitation of this feature when coding in an ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) environment, whether using an IBM DB2 OLE DB provider or the iSeries Access ODBC provider.

Recall that stored procedure parameters now support a DEFAULT keyword that can be a literal, subquery, or expression (with limitations):

CREATE PROCEDURE DEV.CREATE_ORDER (

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Auto-Answering Record Lock Errors And More On Returning An IBM i Box

February 26, 2014 Hey, Joe

My Power i system is driving me crazy with RPG1218 record lock messages. Because of the way one of our applications was written, we receive RPG1218 messages several times a day. The record lock only lasts a minute. When we enter a retry on the locked record, the system is always able to update the record. Is there any way to auto-answer these record locks?

–Bert

Well the first thing I’d do is have your applications staff figure out why that program is causing so many record locks and fix it. (Ha.) Barring that, I may have a solution that

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Four Reasons RPG Geezers Should Care About The New Free-Form RPG

February 12, 2014 Jon Paris

By now you have probably heard that with the latest V7 changes to RPG IV, we can code completely free-form programs. But why should you care? Maybe you saw the benefit of free-form calcs and have been using them for some time, but you still can’t see why you should bother with learning this new way of coding D, F, and P specs. What’s the point? Well, I’m going to share my thoughts on that subject.

On my last birthday, I officially became a geezer (i.e., senior citizen if we want to be polite), so with some 45-plus years of

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DB2 For i Odds And Ends

February 12, 2014 Michael Sansoterra

IBM i 7.1 and its various incremental releases have introduced many great new features in DB2 for i. Many of the features have been covered in Four Hundred Guru tips. This tip will cover some of the less exciting, yet important features that may have gone unnoticed. Best of all, many of them are even available in IBM i 6.1.

Specify System PROGRAM NAME Keyword When Creating An SQL Trigger To Prevent Naming Conflicts For System Names

Consider the following CREATE TRIGGER statement that features a long SQL name:

CREATE OR REPLACE TRIGGER ADVWORKS08.UpdateSalesOrderHeaderModifedDate
AFTER UPDATE ON ADVWORKS08.SalesOrderDetail
REFERENCING NEW_TABLE

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Admin Alert: Saying Goodbye To An Old Power i

February 12, 2014 Joe Hertvik

IBM first introduced Power 7 servers running IBM i on February 8, 2010. So if you leased one of those machines, chances are good that it’s either coming off lease soon or about to come off lease. If you’re ready to say goodbye to an old Power i, here’s seven things to do before you return that old machine to the leasing company.

The Big Seven

There are seven things you need to do before you can return an end-of-lease machine to a leasing company.