The first part of this article series showed how DSPOBJD can easily provide statistics to manage a general recompilation project. But it only touched the surface of all the things you get with the DSPxxx commands.

Written by Jean-Paul Lamontre

Let's start with a review of the information we gathered in Part I by just using DSPOBJD.

Objects by Type and Year

This data is concerned with counting objects by type and by year of source update (for those that have a source, of course).

If we had used ODCCEN plus ODCDAT (i.e., the object creation date) instead of ODSRCC plus ODSRCD, we'd have gotten a report on recompilation instead of a report on source update.

Not a good idea!

Written by Tom Huntington

Several months ago, I was visiting customers and reviewing their computer operations. A question that comes up more than I can believe is, "What do we do with all of the reports that are sitting on output queues?" This question always amazes me. There are companies with reports that have been sitting on output queues for five years or more!

Managing and tracking DB2 tables just got a lot easier, with metrics such as table size and number of rows at your fingertips.

Written by Kent Milligan

On other database servers, database administrators have to keep a close watch on the size and number of rows in a table to make sure that enough disk space has been allocated for the table object. While DB2 for i automates the storage allocation administrative task, it's helpful for IBM i users to know the size of a table to estimate how long a query or copy operation might take. Typically, the more rows a table contains, the longer it takes perform operations against the table.

Are your powerful users accountable for their actions?

Written by Robin Tatam

One of the greatest challenges an organization faces when securing an IBM i environment is protecting the system from the very people who are charged with its care: programmers, administrators, and security officers. While these power users often need access to restricted objects and commands, they rarely need that level of access 24 hours a day—and definitely not without accountability.

This series started with the pie chart, a useful tool that graphically summarizes data. However, pie charts only provide a "snapshot" of a moment. This tip focuses on bar charts, which show the data's evolution.

Written by Rafael Victória-Pereira

In the previous TechTip, I provided an example of a pie chart similar to the one below, which shows, with a little humor, the most common uses of cell phones:

Get data from external servers and Web services easily.

Written by Jan Jorgensen

It's been a long time since I wrote Part 1 of this TechTip. I hope you've been eagerly looking forward to learning a bit more about jQuery and how to parse XML data using it.

Meanwhile, Rafael Victória-Pereira has done a marvelous job of covering the GeoNames Web services, so I encourage you to read his great tips (you can start here and work your way backward).

For anyone whose backed up data couldn't be restored when needed, Servergraph Professional offers assurance that you will not suffer that experience—ever again.

Written by Rocket Software, Inc.

Servergraph Professional is an agentless Web-based backup reporting, alerting, and monitoring tool that identifies—and even prevents—missed backups while it finds wasted space, boosts performance, and improves the reliability of backup servers. It also can create compliance reports and, optionally, charge-back reports showing the relative costs of storage and data protection services. Servergraph identifies storage and backup problems before they affect operations.

Monitor and control your data warehouse processes.

Written by Tom Huntington

One great thing about my job is that I get to speak to thousands of customers each year and discuss the issues they encounter automating, monitoring, and managing their servers. Often people are unaware they even have an issue because they don't know that anything better is available.