IBMi DB2 Field Procedures A few years ago, DB2 for i introduced a new feature that can be used to apply security/encryption to our columns within our database. This enhancement is called Field Procedures, or FieldProcs throughout this article. DB2 FieldProcs have been around since 7.1 of IBM i in April 2010.
Featured Aggregated Ethernet – Faster & More Resilient Networking Have any of you ever lost connectivity to your server because someone accidentally disconnected the wrong cable? It is so annoying as in many cases even if the cable was plugged back in you still had to answer a message on QSYSOPR to tell your system that it’s OK
IBMi WRKJOBSCDE – Working with Job Scheduled Entries OK, OK, OK, I know this command has been around since the beginning of time but there are a couple of things I find that most people I work with do not realise about this command that can be really useful. So, just bear with me here and check that
IBMi DB2 Row and Column Access Control Introduction DB2 for i has a fantastic feature that is fairly new, Row and Column Access Control, or RCAC, for ease. This feature has been around since 7.2 of IBM i in April 2014, but doesn’t get a lot of exposure, so hence my interpretation of how it
IBMi Great Tech Events … but how do you convince the boss to send you? There are many great technical events and conferences throughout the year. Now, maybe you’re sold on the idea of going to one of these conferences. But how do you get the boss to agree it would be a good idea for you to attend? After all, there’s the
IBMi Keep an eye on your cache batteries with QSMBTTCC Those of you who have suffered from an unexpected cache battery failure (SRC nnnn8008) will know how much pain it can cause. Whilst there is never any danger to your data, in many cases the performance of your server can be reduced by a factor of ten! So this month
IBMi IBM i SNTP – Automatic Time Adjustment Last month I wrote about how you could get your IBM i to automatically adjust its clock for Daylight Saving Time adjustments, this month we take it one step further and see how its trivial to get your clock to keep itself in sync constantly with other services on your
IBMi Corporate Inertia Resistance. Inertia. It’s hard to understand why people don’t do what they know they should be doing. This inertia isn’t just for people who really need to go to the gym or stop losing hours on Facebook. There’s also such a thing as Corporate Inertia. When
IBMi RPG 2017 Updates During the latest round of IBM i Technology Refreshes, TR2 for version 7.3 and TR6 for version 7.2 enhancement, IBM also introduced three enrichments for RPG. These changes will be released as individual PTFs, around the April 2017 timespan, as with the Technology Refreshes. Let us take a
Featured IBM i Daylight Saving Time Management Spring is on its way (Halleluiah!) and next month the clocks with be springing forward an hour. As a boy (and the youngest of my clan) I remember it was always a job given to me to go around the house and change the dozen or so clocks that we
Featured IBM i 7.3 - Authority Collection Services One of the great new functions IBM has built into IBM i as standard, and free of charge in 7.3, is the Authority Collection Services. This works a little like the performance collection services, in that you start it for one or more users to monitor access to objects
IBMi Application Runtime Expert – Worth a Look? IBM recently announced that their product, Application Runtime Expert (ARE) for IBM I, is now free of charge, along with a host of other products. The IBM announcement can be found here if you are interested. ARE is a licensed program, 5733ARE, which will work on any IBM i Version
IBMi Deleting Old Spool Files - DLTOLDSPLF OK, so nobody likes tidying up, not at home, not in the office and certainly not on their computers. How many spool files are there sitting on your system right now that deserve a “Long Service Award” because of the amount of time they’ve been in your company? It’
Featured RPG – What's New in 7.3 As you probably know, IBM released 7.3 of the IBM i operating system in April 2016. So now it has been over six months since the new release, let us take a look at what has changed in RPG for this release. Remember that SEU has not been updated
Technical Articles Automatic PTFing I was once asked by a good friend “if I could change one thing about IBM i users what would it be?” I know, I have some strange friends, trust me this is not even close to the weirdest conversation I’ve had with this particular bearded Irish individual, but
Featured RDi & IFS Local Source – Worth a Look? Introduction. As I’m sure you know, Rational Developer for IBM i was enhanced to Version 9.5.1 recently. This update gave us the ability to store our source members, RPG, CL etc. on the IFS and to have the ability to store a local copy on our PCs.
Featured What is eating my IFS? The most common question I get about disk usage is about the IFS, specifically “what is using all the disk space allocated to it?” Most recently I was asked this question during a PTF install by the good people of RPL in Telford. So, thanks to them for putting food
AIX Running an Old AIX Version? At an IBM event recently, the presenter asked for a show of hands of companies that are still running AIX 6.1. Quite a few, even though the last service pack for AIX 6.1 is scheduled for April 2017 … not too far off. Then the presenter asked about AIX
IBMi Detecting Damaged Objects With IBM i being as robust as it is, for most of us damaged objects are a rare thing but the problem is that they tend to turn up at the most inopportune moments. So, in this article I wanted to share a little known tool called areVerify that IBM
Featured Git – A Free SCM? In my previous article I gave you an insight into the new open source editor Orion on the IBM i. If you haven’t yet read my Orion PowerWire article, it can be found here. As promised in that article I said I would now move on to Git, which
Featured Orion – An RDi Alternative? Introduction – Are you not yet using RDi for your RPG development, but are fed up with SEU lagging behind in releases and complaining of syntax errors when using the latest programming features? Then maybe Orion is for you. In this article, I would like to run you through a new
Featured Reclaim DB Cross-Reference (RCLDBXREF) As we all know, DB2 for i is pretty darn tough and is rather good at both healing and optimising itself but every now and again you need to give it a little helping hand. One example of this is the need to run a repair command to fix one
IBMi Time Travelling with DB2 for i – The Follow Up Introduction In my last article, on Temporal Tables for DB2 for i, which can be found here, I gave a quick insight on how easy it was to create and report on time travelling queries. Since this time, I gave the first workshop on Temporal Tables at the highly successful
Featured VIOS SSP creation using the HMC Enhanced+ GUI Every now and then you see something which takes you completely by surprise. This is even better when it’s something new to Power systems and makes life a whole lot easier. The HMC Enhanced+ GUI is getting a lot of stick, mostly from people who are used to the
IBMi IBM i 7.3, little things mean a lot Much has been spoken about the key new features in IBM i 7.3 that it’s really easy to overlook some of the smaller new features, some of which can be really useful. To quote Edith Lindeman, these “little things mean a lot!” So in this article we explore
