Holidays should be fun! With CL-based variables, at least they're not a headache.

By Bruce Vining

In the last column in this series, we looked at how to calculate a date such that it would be a minimum of 60 days from an arbitrary date and ensure that the calculated date did not fall on a Saturday or Sunday. We accomplished this using the i5/OS APIs CEEDAYS, CEEDYWK, and CEEDATE. We noticed, however, that holidays were not being handled. When avoiding a Saturday or Sunday calculation, we would use the following Monday, which might be a holiday. In today's column, we'll look at one possible solution for bypassing holidays. Note that there are many, many possible ways to handle holidays. This is simply one: one that may be better or worse than other methods, depending on your situation.

IBM's sale on tape library configurations is so good, you'll think you're on a game show.

By Chris Smith

There is nothing like a sale to get your juices flowing, but for the sale to be exciting, it has to be on something you need and want.

Let's say, for instance, that you've been dreaming about something really sweet-- something like a tape library storage solution! This could be your lucky day, because, through June 10, IBM is having a sale on specially configured tape library packages.