Join the Midlands Midrange User Group, IBM and MSI Systems Integrators as we welcome Bob Schuster from IBM’s Rochester Executive Briefing Center to discuss iSCSI and Blade integration for System i. IBM has extended industry-standard iSCSI technology to attach selected BladeCenter and System x models to the System i platform so you can exploit System i virtual storage, networking, and tape resources to help simplify the operations of your Windows or Linux Server system infrastructure.

Download the pdf file for further details.

When : Thursday, October 24, 2006
Time : 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 0 p.m.
Where : MSI Systems Integrators
14301 First National Parkway, Ste 400
Omaha, NE 68164
NE corner of 144th & Dodge

Registration : Visit the MSI website to register at http://www.msiinet.com/events

Agenda
10:45 a.m. Registration
11:00 a.m. Welcome & Introductions
11:15 a.m. iSCSI Technologies by Bob Schuster, IBM and Patrick Bingham, MSI
12:30 p.m. Question & Answer Session
01:00 p.m. Wrap-up

Grand Prize Drawing : Attendees will be eligible for an Omaha Steaks prize package drawing complements of MSI

After an excellent presentation on last Tuesday by Leonardo Llames on PHP on iSeries, we are pleased to share his presentation slides with our members. Just click here to download the file in PDF format.

If you cannot download the file, please contact us using this form:

Join IBM and High Plains Technology to learn about the recent announcement that customers can now implement PHP on the System i and i5/OS. PHP is the leading scripting language deployed on the internet. See how this technology can be deployed on the System i and how it can be used to access i5/OS resources. In this session, IBM’s Leonardo Llames from the Rochester Advanced Technical Support Team (ATS) will review:

Zend Studio for i5/OS

Zend Core

Access to i5/OS Resources

DB2 for i5/OS

Program Call

Data Area

Data Queue

Message Queue

Zend Platform

Support

System requirements

Installation

Each session will include a complimentary lunch and an opportunity to stay after to ask Leonardo your in-depth questions. Each session will begin promptly at 11:00 a.m.

Thank you to the Omaha (MMUG) and Fargo User Groups for co-sponsoring the sessions in Nebraska and North Dakota! We appreciate the close partnership with these organizations.

MMUG received an email from a iSeries user about data mapping. If some one has dealt with this problem before and can help this user, please contact us or post the solution by clicking on Comments.

We are looking to see if there are any tools available or maybe 3rd party software available that other iSeries users have used and have been successful in a data move.

We will be migrating to an ‘off the shelf’ software package. Prior to the move, we want to have as much as possible, “clean data” to migrate into the new software package. We have currently been using queries and sql statements to identify the bad data, fix it, then use the CPYF command in a CL to copy the data into our staging files. These staging files will then be used to migrate the data into the new software. We are thinking there is a “better way” or a more efficient way.

What we have been running into is that if you run the CPYF CL first, it will stop on the first record that contains bad data (the staging file has been set up with more constraints than the file that we are copying from) and then not continue through the other records but end out. It would be nice if it would write out the bad record to some type of log file (it does write out the record number in the QEZJOBLOG) and then continue on with copying over the other good records . The type of error the CL throws is an unrecoverable read/write error and therefore won’t continue on.

Have you been through any kind of data moves that you may have used a third party tool or a way on the iSeries to accomplish this feat? Any suggestions or advice is appreciated.

We received a request from Jeff Willer from CSG Systems, which is as follows:

(Please note: Any questions about this system must be directed to Jeff Willer of CSG Systems. Midlands Midrange Users Group and it’s officers are not responsible and are not involved in any transaction related to this sale. This information is provided as a service to our members.)

Attached here is spec sheet on the machine we will have available for sale. The machine is three years old and is located in Omaha. It will be available in mid-September. I can appreciate the policy of guarding the names and contacts of your membership, and therefore will ask that you share this information with your membership and ask them to contact us if they have any interest. Contact information is included in the spec sheet. We will consider any reasonable offer.

Spec-Sheet is as follows:

IBM iSeries Model 825

Hardware
Basic Machine: iSeries 9406 Model 825 Enterprise Edition 7418
Serial Number: 10-2695C
Purchase Date: August, 2003
Processors: 3/6 way (3300/6600 CPW); 5 processors activated
Operating Systems: Version 5 Release 2
Configuration: 3 Partitions: Primary, Production, Test
Memory: 22.5 GB
0.7 Primary
10.2 Production
11.6 Test
Disk: 2.1 TB
0.00 Primary (2 – 35.16 disks, mirrored)
1.06 Production (16 – 35.16 and 9 – 70.56 disks, RAID 5)
1.09 Test (22 – 35.16 and 8 – 70.56 disks, RAID 5)

Tape Drive: IBM Model 3590-H11Enterprise (10 cartridge)

Software
5722BR1 IBM Backup Recovery and Media Services for iSeries
5722PT1 IBM Performance Tools for iSeries
5722QU1 IBM Query for iSeries
5722SS1 Operating System/400
5722ST1 IBM DB2 Query Manager and SQL Development Kit
5722WDS IBM Websphere Studio Development Suite
5722XW1 IBM eServer iSeries Access Family (40 licenses)

Original Purchase Price (reference only): $680,000

If interested, please contact:
Jeff Willer 402-964-1519 Jeff_Willer -at- csgsystems.com
-or-
Dennis Smid 402-963-8600 Dennis_Smid -at- csgsystems.com

Here is a utility that will convert any iSeries database file to CSV (Comma Seperated Values) format with a delimiter of your choice. You can choose the delimiter
because it is very possible to have a comma in a description. So choose wisely.

I was forced to write this utility and here is why. I had a project to transfer data files from the iSeries 400 to a server that was running California Software Baby 400 system.

Seems simple enough just use the CPYFRMSTMF command or the CPYFRMIMPF right?
Yeah I thought so too. Well as I tried to use these commands as I have used them before and they work just fine if you have a good database file. But IBM did not think of everything
that programmers can do to a database file.

In my case I ran across (and not in just one file) packed numeric data. So what is the problem you ask? The data length of these packed fields were 1 bytes and 2 bytes. Why would you pack a 1 byte numeric field or even a 2 byte numeric field? The above mentioned command did not stop but they did not work either. Can you guess what they did? ……. Ok times up, they took those fields and extended them by 1 byte so the 1 byte packed became 2 bytes and the 2 bytes became 3 bytes. No matter what I did I could not get the file converted correctly on iSeries.

So either I can write a 100 or so programs (which I decided not to do) or write a utility to do all the work for me. Which is what I did and I am sharing this with whoever wants to use it. Feel free to use it and to make what ever changes you need for your use.

All the work is done in QTEMP. The process creates a work file call CVFILEO and a
temporary library with QRPGLESRC and a temporary program called CVPGM. The temp library is the use name with a ‘@’ in front of it. Example: if the user name is kfoland
the library name will be @kfoland.

So we have one work file called CVFILEO.
One command called CVF2CSV. Compiled to call CV0CL.
Two CL programs CV0CL and CV1CL.
Two RPGLE programs CV1 and CV2.

The simple process is as follows:

1. Delete temp files
2. Create duplicate object CVFILEO into QTEMP
3. Display field description on the incoming file into a file called CVFILE
4. Call CV1 to get the record length and call CV1CL to build the flat file with the given
record length.
5. Create the temp library.
6. Create QRPGLESRC in the temp library
7. Add the physical file member CVPGM to QRPGLESRC in the temp library
8. Call CV2 to read the incoming file and to create the temp program CVPGM.
9. Compile CVPGM
10. Call CVPGM
11. Copy the flat file from QTEMP to the out going file.

To get started, compile the file, command and the programs.

Prompt up the command and fill out the parms or just call CV0VL with the following parms.

PARM(&FILE &LIBR &TFILE &TLIBR &DEM)

where

&FILE = database file to be converted
&LIBR = library were the database file is located
&TFILE = name you want for the converted file
&TLIBR = library where the converted file will be
&DEM = the delimiter you want to use. Choose wisely

After the process runs you can check out the temp library and the program that was created in QSYS as the library will get deleted at the beginning of the process. You can change this if you want to delete the library at the end of the process. The process will delete any files or libraries in QTEMP as it runs.

This has help me so I hope it can help others as well.