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!

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.

Don't like column separators in iSeries Access when you use yellow or turquoise? Here's how to easily remove them.

Written by Sam Lennon

Column Separators occur automatically when you use yellow or turquoise on a 5250 color terminal. (When was the last time you saw one of those?) iSeries Access faithfully reproduces this behavior, as in Figure 1.

Column Separators have always mildly annoyed me, and I avoided using yellow and turquoise. They annoy me a more now, because I'm maintaining code in which the original developer liked to use yellow. There is no way to change the 5250 data stream, but iSeries Access gives you a preference setting where it is very easy to turn off column separators in a session so that Figure 1 turns into Figure 2.

In the first of this series of TechTips, find information about each object in each library.

Written by Jean-Paul Lamontre

Recently, a friend called me for help. His boss asked him two questions:

• How much lost or forgotten old RPG or CL do we have?
• What is the status of the "general review of all the ILE programs" project?

He added, "I don't want a bullet-point listing. If you can give me a report in Excel in a normal table with normal filters, such as used by normal users every day, that would be better."

Is your data warehouse out of date again, or did a Windows job run late?

Written by Tom Huntington

I'm convinced that sometimes the only reason a Windows or UNIX server is alongside an IBM i server is for better data reporting or a data warehouse.

For example, at your site, a process periodically sends data from the IBM i server to the other server. Usually, the IBM i process that builds the data starts at 7:00 p.m. and the Windows process grabs the data at 8:00 p.m. Over the years, you've never had a problem because the IBM i process started one hour before the Windows process. But your business has grown and so has your data processing. The result is that the IBM i process runs longer each day.

Enjoy flexible IFS backups with Robot/SAVE.

Written by Tom Huntington

On the IBM i server, we all store data that needs to be backed up in the Integrated File System (IFS). Are you struggling with a lack of flexibility for IFS backups because you have to back up the entire IFS? Would you like a more selective approach that allows you to save certain directories and files? How easy is it to restore specific IFS directories?