Category: Technical Articles
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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 addition to IBMs open…
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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 or more of the Database…
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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 International i Power 2016 conference…
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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 classic GUI and don’t want to…
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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 a few of the smaller features that…
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The Business Impact of Losing Your Critical System
The more critical a project is to a business, the greater attention it deserves. Which is why it puzzles me that many companies have little or no appetite for discussing the most important IT project of them all: disaster recovery. DR is the set of policies and procedures that will allow vital technology and infrastructure…
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It’s about time! – Time Travelling with DB2 for i
Introduction – In this article, I want to run though a great new feature of DB2 that was released as part of the Version 7.3 announcements last month. As the title of this article states ‘It’s about time’! IBM introduced a new feature within the database called temporal support. So, what is temporal support? Temporal…
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Customisation for the VIOS CLI
Something I’ve discussed previously but have refined recently is customising the VIOS CLI take make using the CLI and navigation a little easier. Whenever I install a VIOS LPAR the first thing I do is add in a couple of files I keep handy to do a few things for me: ● Amend the CLI…
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Say Hello to IBM i 7.3
Last week saw both the announcement and shipping of IBM i v7.3, just three days apart, this statement in itself tells you something about the new management style of the IBM i team, as in years gone by it would have taken weeks if not months to get from announcement to shipping. This slicker, faster…
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Using PHP and RPG to Communicate Together With DataQueues
Continuing my articles about PHP and RPG communicating together, this time I will show how these two languages can talk with each other using data queues. If you missed the other parts in this series, you can find them here. Part 1 Part 2 DataQueues If you know all about dataqueues, you can skip this…
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ObjectConnect – Using SAVRSTLIB
More of us than ever find ourselves working on more than one system. There are a whole range of reasons for this. Quite often we have separate LPARs on the same physical server for Development and Production or perhaps separate physical servers for High Availability solutions to replicate our Business Critical Environments or maybe like…
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Creating and Mapping multiple LUs in SSP
If you’ve read any of my previous articles you’ll know that I’m a big fan of VIOS shared storage pools (SSP). I have been lambasted by a number of IBMers for using SSP instead of NPIV but my arguments are: SSPs are fast and will cope with 95%+ workloads on Power Why continue to use…