Category: Technical Articles
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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 look at these. These are: Nested data-structures…
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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 had around the place. Nowadays…
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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 in one or more Libraries or…
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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 6 or above. It was…
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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’s a pain I know, removing spool…
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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 since Version 6.1 way back…
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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 enough of that right now, back…
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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. This is not to be confused with the…
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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 on my table and I…
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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 5.3. It was a shock…
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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 created to detect damaged objects…
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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 is closely integrated with Orion, and…