Minimize your application development costs by moving your timestamp logic into the DB2 for i database engine.

Written by Kent Milligan

Many applications have logic to capture and record a timestamp that indicates when certain business events occurred, such as when an order was placed or changed. While this application logic is fairly simple, there is still a cost to coding, testing, and maintaining this code. You can reduce these application development costs by instead moving this timestamp logic into your DB2 table definitions and relying on DB2's "automatic" timestamp support.

The native IBM i utility provides for running numerous automated disk cleanup jobs to help improve system performance.

Written by S4i Systems

Editor's Note: To download and try DASD-Plus at no obligation, visit the MC Software Center.

DASD-Plus is a utility that allows iSeries/System i administrators to schedule more than 27 automated cleanup jobs. These jobs can be run either in a "what-if" scenario to check out what will be cleaned up if the process is actually run or in a "commit" mode to clean up history logs, alerts, message queues, spool files, etc. Administrators can run surveys to monitor changes in libraries, objects, directories, and entries as well as monitor for spikes in disk utilization.

Automate your backups with save-while-active.

Written by Tom Huntington

Although the save-while-active feature for backups has been around for many years, a lot of customers are afraid to use this parameter in their save commands. They may have heard something bad about the process at a conference, or they may have tried it and it didn't work. I've found the parameter to be very helpful, but you have to understand how best to use it.