Planet i

The Assistant Director of Facilities and Asset Management, Operations implements program directives relating to the administration of the Districts maintenance and custodial care of facilities. The As...

The announcement of the IBM POWER7 systems is really exciting! This announcement is primarily a hardware announcement though. You and i covers this announcement from...

Today’s blog is guest written by Ian Jarman, Power Systems Software manager. Today IBM is announcing the first of the POWER7 processor-based systems that, compared...

Three years ago, when I first began developing with Grails, I benefited from a book by Jason Rudolph called "Getting Started with Grails" The book was well written, short, and available as a free PDF. I recommended it to everyone interested in Grails. But, as Grails rapidly improved, the book began to become outdated.

No longer.

Jason Rudolph teamed up with Scott Davis (author of "Groovy Recipes") to update the book. It now covers Grails 1.2 and, once again, I highly recommend it.
You can download the book from:
http://www.infoq.com/minibooks/grails-getting-started
But note that InfoQ will ask you to register with their site before you can download the PDF. But it is well worth it as InfoQ is a great site with lots of technical information, in form of articles and videos, on application development.

Draft Redpaper, last updated: Mon, 8 Feb 2010

- Featuring the POWER7 processor providing advanced multi-core technology
- Available Power 780 MaxCore and TurboCore modes redefining performance
- Designed to provide Enterprise-level RAS in a midrange footprint

his IBM® Redpaper is a comprehensive guide covering the IBM Power™ 770 and Power 780 servers supporting AIX, IBM i, and Linux operating systems.

Draft Redpaper, last updated: Mon, 8 Feb 2010

- Featuring the POWER7 processor providing advanced multi-core technology
- Available Power 755 model for High Performance Computing
- Designed for leading mid-range performance

This IBM® Redpaper™ publication is a comprehensive guide covering the IBM Power 750 and Power 755 server supporting AIX, IBM i, and Linux operating systems.

Half my work is creating Web solutions for my clients.
The other half of my work is getting it to work on Internet Explorer....

In the past 3 years I've developed 7 Grails applications for a variety of customers. And I have to make an observation: Maintaining Grails applications is a breeze. It is far more easy than with any other development platform I've used. I've had to revisit Java applications that I had written. But it always takes me a while to figure out the design strategies. For instance: what MVC pattern did I use?

With Grails applications -- whether written by myself or not -- the MVC is always the same. The directory structure is always the same. It is fabulous being able, in Eclipse, to switch workspaces from one Grails project to another and have the structure look identical. They look so similar sometimes, when I come back from lunch or something, I have think "OK, what project is this."

This is an observation of the benefits of the Grails philosophy of "Convention over Configuration." This Grails feature provides a huge ROI when someone else can take over a Grails project and know where everything is. In fact, I benefited from this myself two years ago when I joined an existing Grails project team. The project was Circuit City's return system (I have some gift cards if anyone would like to buy them). The return system had been in production for a year and it was very complex (for example it had DB connections to Informix, Oracle, and DB2i.) Yet I was able to be productive in a very short time after joining the project. By the way, that Grails app is the only Grails app that I worked on that is no longer in use -- for obvious reasons....

Grails makes life easier.

It's been 5 months since my last post. I have dozens of times thought "I need to post this." But -- as I was working 12X7 on a major Grails-based order entry system and two other smaller Grails projects and authored 3 articles on Grails and delivered a multi-city seminar tour on Grails -- I simply didn't have the time. But things are slowing down now.

I recently burned through The Pragmatic Programmer's new book: "Grails: A Quick-Start Guide" by Dave Klein. I was impressed. Attendees to my seminars and Grails mentees usually ask "What's a good book to buy on Grails?" Well, "The Definitive Guide to Grails" authored by the creator of Grails, Graeme Rocher, is a bit too long for beginners. I think of it as the Grails bible. "Grails in Action," by Glen Smith and Peter Ledbrook, is fabulous as it is very written. But its 487 pages can be a bit daunting. "Grails: A Quick-Start Guide" is very approachable. It is just barely over 200 pages and it very succinctly written. It is now my recommended book for Grails beginners.

The last post PHP for ‘i’ #4 showed how you could use the i5_ functions to display the details of a record in an additional page. We have also posted about how to use the db2_ functions to get a faster response as we found the i5_ functions were very slow (the i5_pconnect() functioned cleared More >

I have ordered a new 520 system which we will use for our development and testing. I placed the order as usual through IBM in Canada and received a notification of how to track the shipment in due course. I checked the shipment details on the 1st February and to my shock it said it More >

We have moved all of our PHP installations to the new ZendServer installs and removed the old ZendCore product. The new ZendServer install no longer requires an additional PASE HTTP Server as Proxy for PHP requests but uses FastCGI technology to service those PHP requests. The page responses using this method are greatly improved More >

Many times you need to find the source (file/library/member) that was used when an object was created. When you use the display object description command dspobjd to retrieve the service related attributes the resulting information for the source member and source file and library is sometimes blank. According to the dspobjd source file help, for ILE *PGM and *SRVPGM objects the source file/

List of current articles How to easily find source information Quick message file search Debugging submitted batch jobs Getting the most out of IBM PDM Any reason to use ADDTRC while debugging? Improving source comparisions with cmppfm options Simplify with the Operational Assistant How to insert a record using DBU Easy way to view & select data Retrofit source code with MRGSRC Getting

Redbook, published: Wed, 3 Feb 2010

- Follow the best practice guides to simplify report development
- Take your reporting to the next level of Business Intelligence
- Learn DB2 Web Query by using the easy-to-follow tutorials

The DB2® Web Query for i product is a Web-based query and report writing product that offers enhanced capabilities over the IBM® Query for iSeries® product (also commonly known as Query/400).

I've been an environmentalist ever since I was part of Woodsy the owl's target audience, but I never worried much about water. It's easy to...

Unless you have spent the last two weeks incommunicado in the Australian Outback, you must know by now that the Apple iPad has arrived. And...

I was browsing the ZendServer forums looking for a solution to the speed issue we have commented on when using the i5_connect() function. There were a number of others who have noticed the dire speed issue when using the i5_toolkit API’s. Zend responded with a note saying that using the i5_pconnect() function would resolve the More >

While working with message file descriptions you have probably noticed the lack of a built-in search facility. With wrkmsgf you can 'position to' a message id but many times the need is finding the message id based on some or all of a message description. This limitation can be easily overcome with the two step process of printing the message file and using the spool file search bar. The real

In entry 00bh The doctor remembers Craig Johnson.

You may want to determine what jobs or objects are responsible for generating journal entries in a journal's receiver chain, for example, if you notice that many receivers are being created for the journal.To determine what jobs or objects are responsible for generating journal entries in a journal's receiver chain, create an outfile from the DSPJRN command and run an SQL query on the

I did a bit of digging around to find out why the response times were so bad with the test PHP programs we have written so far. Turns out the toolkit API’s have a large overhead attached to them and you should use the DB2 functions where possible for DB2 access! I wrote a simple test More >

It is always good to get feedback about how you are perceived and how your products are working in the market place. We recently went through a major new install of our Receiver Apply program(RAP) product for a very large fast food chain in Germany. The install was not the easiest and we did have More >

In this post we will add the same functionality we added in the C for i #4 post to the PHP Project. The way we will display the details of the user will be different to a 5250 screen, we don’t monitor for Function Keys in the Web Browser so we need to find an alternative More >

The next part of the project will add the ability to add records to the database file. The F6 key will be used to prompt the user for the data to be added to the file. Once the file has been updated we need to cause a refresh of the list to contain the More >

After looking at several options, we've narrowed it down to Manta Technologies and Lab400.  Both courses are CD based although Manta offers an all-you-can waych online in a year package for a reduced rate.

I preferred the yacht and Jim method mentioned earlier alas its winter up here in the midwest and I'm certain the lake is frozen.  More reason to go ice fishing this weekend...what a great idea!

Back to the choices.  Lab400 offers a self-paced iSeries Operations course which includes touting that upon completion I will be able to:

• Identify the hardware components and peripherals that can be attached to an iSeries.
  
  
• Identify the basic library and object structures of the iSeries.
  
  
• Use the OS/400 menu and command interfaces to perform system functions.
  
  
• Startup and shut down the iSeries.
  
  
• Locate, create, change, and delete objects.
  
  
• Initiate, monitor, and control jobs.
  
  
• Send and display messages.
  
  
• Backup and restore objects using tape and diskette.
  
  
• Configure local devices.
  
  

Manta's couse is the Introduction to the i Environment which contains the following:

• Getting Started on IBM i
• Integrated File System Concepts
• Using IBM i Commands
• Using System i Navigator
• Accessing an IBM i System from Your PC
• Introduction to the IBM i Environment Competency Exam

They are a whole dollar apart on pricing.  Rochester Initiative is offering a $100 Visa card with the purchase.  Will this make a difference?  I have no idea.  The purpose is to be educated and come out of this knowing which commands perform certain functions and to be able to hold a decently technical conversation which, until now, I've never had to do.  Will people even recognize me with all of the newly acquired tech-speak?

We'll make a decision tomorrow.  If anyone happens to have an opinion or an experience to share, please let me know.

 

Are you looking for support with your IBM ‘i’? If so we have skills we can offer. We have been working with the IBM ‘i’ since it announcement and have developed indepth skills for High Availability, Systems Management and Programming for the IBM ‘i’. Our hope is to find small companies who are running More >

As I’m sure you’ve all heard by now, the IBM i community lost an advocate and friend with the death of IBM i Product Manager,...

As part of the PHP for i series we will be using a MySQL database as well as the DB2 database to show how to interact with each. When we installed ZendServer we also took the default MySQL install, once installed we started the servers using the menus provided before starting a QP2TERM session where More >

I was going to title this “Say Goodbye to Craig,” but I don't want to say goodbye. Rather, I want to remember all of the...

As many of you know by now, Craig Johnson, my partner in writing this blog, died in a weather-related car accident on Monday, January 25....

We were busily preparing today's blog when we received the sad news that our friend and longtime IBM i apostle Craig Johnson had been killed...

This post will cover the start of adding a UIM interface to the C Project. The UIM interface adds a CUA compliant interface to the project which is important when you later add the LookSoftware interface over the 5250 screens we are developing. We have a stock method which we tend to use for the UIM More >

I engaged in a round of discussions on open source on the Midrange-L list regarding the use and merits of open source software in the enterprise.  I wasn’t really surprised all that much by the content of the discussion, there seems to be some folks who naturally share code and those who don’t, and there isn’t really any way to convince either side to switch. But that discussion did surface some licensing discussion that opened my eyes a bit to the issues of using open source.  Some of that information may influence my projects so it was worth participating.

I play in both camps.  I have some “proprietary” solutions that use open source code and I have some projects that I share freely.  The one “proprietary” solution I sell may eventually become open source when fully completed and if there are enough customers to sustain a “support only” business model.  I estimate that I would need about 50 individual school districts to be licensee’s in order to have a critical mass to move to a purely open source model.  But that is a guess.  The first step is to get 50 customers!  The ASAAP product is basically done after two years of solo work and although I have a long list of things I want to add and much code I want to rewrite, it is “ready to market”.  Just in time (barely) to be considered in this (bleak) budget year.

If you need a new attendance solution for your school district that will handle absence recording, substitute dispatch and time card management, drop me a line.

There's a new command, Analyze Command Performance (ANZCMDPFR), in IBM i 6.1 that, well, analyzes the performance of a command. This is a very simple...

I had left the testing for a while as I have a functioning install of the original PHP server, but I finally bit the bullet yesterday and installed it on our second i520 running V5R4. Installation instructions were a bit sketchy only because there is a lot of information to go through. First problem was the More >

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But sometimes, to old codgers like me, it’s difficult to know just how far to go. In previous posts I have written about my vaguely negative feelings about freeform RPG, and I have written very clearly about how I feel about IBM’s unwillingness to implement the MOVE instruction in freeform RPG, pointing out how this can only hinder conversion of old code and diminish acceptance of the new RPG dialect.

Case in point, a program I was working on today. I was writing code to implement formatting of a six-digit account number based upon the rightmost 6 digits of an 11-digit number. It was based upon some old code (the usual situation where I work), but the old code was hideous. The old program consisted of about 15 lines of MOVE and MOVEL statements. I said, this has got to go.

So I contemplated the best way to do it. I could set up a data structure and put pieces of the account number into that, using EVALs or MOVEs,with dashes embedded as needed. But that didn’t seem quite elegant enough. I have been working harder to modernize my own code, so I finally broke it down to these two possibilities, as illustrated in this test program. The result I am aiming for is the number formatted as 01-234-5.

     H DFTACTGRP(*NO)   ACTGRP(*CALLER)
     D BACTNO          S             11  0 INZ(99999012345)
     D ACC6            S              8    INZ(*BLANKS)
     D NUM6            S              6  0 INZ(0)
     D ACCW            C                   '0  -   - '
     C/FREE
       EVALR ACC6 = %EDITW(%DEC(%SUBST(%EDITC(BACTNO:'X'):6:6):6:0):ACCW);
      /END-FREE
     C                   MOVE      BACTNO        NUM6
     C                   EVALR     ACC6 = %EDITW(NUM6:ACCW)
     C                   EVAL      *INLR= *ON

One way mixes the old and the new, with an old-fashioned MOVE to the smaller field, followed by a new-fangled %EDITW BIF using a predefined edit word. The other goes full-bore new age, with one grand set of embedded functions. To get the 11 digit number in string form so I can substring it, I use %EDITC with an X edit code, which does the conversion. Next, I %SUBST (substring) the last six characters. I then use %DEC to convert those six characters back to numeric. Finally, I apply the %EDITW function to format those six digits as desired. (I would be interested in finding out about a shorter way to do it.)

But I have a problem with it. In an earlier post, I pointed out that the ability to create long, complex functions in freeform is not necessarily a virtue. The mere fact that I felt the need to explain it here indicates that I am not comfortable with it. The code is short, but I do not feel that it is clear. On the other hand, while the the two-line version using MOVE is short and sweet, and uses a BIF, it would force me to get out of freeform to use the MOVE; stylistically, that also seems wanting.

Since the thrust of my thinking is in trying to modernize the code so future generations of converted C programmers won’t be freaked out by the C in column 6, I am leaning toward the one-line version. But I don’t like it. It’s ugly.

So far what I learned is that there are several ways to learn, and several prices for the same method.  I didn't expect the range to be from $500 to $4000 for a similar curriculum.

So should my decision be made strictly on price?  No, not at all.  What method works for me - what will be the most successful way to retain the information?

Online/classroom or online/solo - because an in-person option is not available...that's I'm aware of within driving distance.

So if classroom is the way you learn best, then you have to pay 8x more.  And as for me, I'm probably going to choose the online attend as you can 24/7 option so I can sit at my computer late at night as I don't sit here enough during the day.  Ha!  My payoff will be the geekability factor that is praised so highly around here.  I can't wait.

 

In a perfect world - option 3 - I have a private instructor from Gateway Tech in Racine, WI holding a weekend crash course on his yacht while the Lake Michigan waves lap gracefully up on the bow. Hey Jim, how much would that option be??

 

This week we're trying something a little different. We're deferring this blog for a day or two so that it can be published on the...

Just thought I would post up the code to access the database using the i5Toolkit classes. <DOCTYPE EN? Transitional 4.0 HTML DTD W3C ?- PUBLIC> <HTML><HEAD> <META content=”text/html; charset=iso-8859-1″ http-equiv=Content-Type></HEAD> <BODY> // use the toolkit classes include(“i5toolkit/Toolkit_classes.php”); // include the file which holds the user info include(“../scripts/config.php”); // connect to the i5 try { $conn = new i5_Connection($server, $usr, $pwd); $conn->set_options(‘PHPPROJ’); $conn->connect(); } catch (Exception $e) { echo(“Failed to connect. “); echo($e->getMessage()); die(); } // More >

This is serious hardware,  Where does one go to learn more about its operation?  I thought I'd begin at RCTC, the community college here in Rochester but no....the courses are all gone.

I'll try vendors and other colleges today listed on the IBM website.  

 

When I started working on IBM Systems Magazine last fall, I never imagined that one day IBM servers would constantly be on my mind. While...

In this post I will describe how to connect to the DB2 database files we have created in the C for ‘i’ project and output them into your browser. When you install the ZendCore product it creates its own base website in ‘/www/zendcore’ and within this directory is a set of PHP classes (i5Toolkit_classes.php) that More >

Service tools user IDs were introduced in V5R3. When this change was made, you were required to have separate user IDs to access service tools;...

OK so this will be a quick post to introduce the ability to add a file into the mix. The file will be created using DDS source and we will add some data to it before reading the file in a C Program. We will add a couple of other items into the mix to More >

We have started to create an introduction to C programming for the IBM ‘i’ in a separate post so I thought it would be fun to add a PHP perspective to the project as well. Not sure how this will turn out and what we will add into the mix but our initial thoughts are More >

OK this is the first attempt and providing a simple introduction into using C programming language on the IBM ‘i’. You are encouraged to get involved and place your own code and suggestions. We will try to build on the topices as we go. As most of the language is the same across most platforms More >

Hi I have been thinking of doing this for a long time now but never really get the time to do it justice, my intention would be to provide some basic lessons in how to code in C for the IBM ‘i’? Not sure if it needs to go back to the basics such as More >

I was experiencing a lot of problems with my system after a recent upgrade to Windows7. A lot of the applications would not respond to mouse clicks and the application would fail to show some of the content such as tree views would start to miss folders and files?? I had suspected the mouse and keyboard More >

In order to debug submitted jobs on the iSeries first submit the job with the Hold parameter set to *Yes, or submit the job to a job queue that is not attached to an active subsystem. Work with submitted jobs WRKSBMJOB to get the job number, user name, and job name. STRSRVJOB job number/user/job name STRDBG (Set a breakpoint at the beginning of the calculation specifications or in the *inzsr

Welcome to 2010. It will be a busy one for us with the introduction of POWER7 processor-based servers and the next release of IBM i....

Stant USA Corp in Connersville, Indiana has an opening for an experienced MAPICS (Infor XA) Systems Analyst / Programmer. This is an opening for a full-time employee. We’re looking for someone who...

This has been a slow news week, at least on the IBM i front. So instead of commenting on news items, we thought we'd give...

The iSeries Programming Development Manager or PDM (including the workhorse Source Entry Utility or SEU) is one of most widely recognized tools for the iSeries. In order to continue getting the most from PDM this article is a review of PDM and the many powerful features. Obviously newer alternatives exist (and will be discussed later) but PDM is time tested, robust, and works for beginners and

Over years of debugging you've undoubtedly heard the mention of 'trace' many times. However, with RPGLE programmers it seems this feature is very seldom used. Why? Maybe because the source debugger does such a good job of setting (conditional) breakpoints, displaying variable values, and stepping through a program (visually) that a tool that prints or displays statement numbers and values is

We have finally taken the plunge and moved most of our PC’s to the Windows7 operating system. Some of the systems were previously running Vista Business 64bit so moving to Windows7 64bit Ultimate was fairly simple to carry out because we could use the upgrade process. We didnt try upgrading from 32bit Vista [...]

The latest updates for JobQGenie are now available for download from the members section of the website. These updates significantly improve the performance and data collection capabilities of the product and should be installed by ASAP.

Job Queue content is crucial when a role swap or system recovery has to be performed using a High [...]

In V5R3, IBM i introduced watches as a way to automate the ending of traces. In 5.4, watches were supported independent of the trace commands....