Use an IBM i Service to Find Your Technology Refresh (TR) Level
With another new IBM i Technology Refresh upon us, here’s a quick reminder how to find your server’s current TR level.
It’s getting easier and easier to do. An IBM i Service using DB2 and SQL provides the TR level more cleanly than older approaches. I love that we can use the universal SQL to expose the innards of our beloved system!
IBM i services comprise a collection of DB2 and SQL objects that provide a wealth of system information, not just your TR level.
The GROUP_PTF_INFO view is the service that displays an IBM i’s Technology Refresh (TR) level to the user who runs this SQL statement:
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SELECT CURRENT SERVER CONCAT ' is running ' CONCAT PTF_GROUP_TARGET_RELEASE CONCAT ' with TR level: ' CONCAT PTF_GROUP_LEVEL AS TR_LEVEL FROM QSYS2.GROUP_PTF_INFO WHERE PTF_GROUP_DESCRIPTION = 'TECHNOLOGY REFRESH' AND PTF_GROUP_STATUS = 'INSTALLED' ORDER BY PTF_GROUP_TARGET_RELEASE DESC, PTF_GROUP_LEVEL DESC FETCH FIRST 1 ROWS ONLY |
When run on my server, the result was a single column, TR_LEVEL, with the value:
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SEIDENI is running V7R2M0 with TR level: 3 |
Time for me to upgrade, yes?
We’ve worked with several organizations lately who want to ensure that their PHP components are not affected by their IBM i upgrade.
If you’d like our help, too, let me know.
Display the IBM i Technology Refresh with the following commands:
on IBM i V7R3M0 : DSPPTFGRP PTFGRP(SF99727)
on IBM i V7R2M0 : DSPPTFGRP PTFGRP(SF99717)
on IBM i V7R1M0 : DSPPTFGRP PTFGRP(SF99707)
The level displayed is the technology refresh level.
Thank you, Emile. Yes, your approach is a good way to display TR levels from a 5250 screen. I wanted to show the power of SQL to perform the same task from any interface supporting SQL and how to customize the output as in the example above, “SEIDENI is running V7R2M0 with TR level: 3.” Thanks again for the commands you provided. Always good to know more than one way.
Alan
Great Info, but to take it one step further, try this:
With iLevel(iVersion, iRelease) AS
(
select OS_VERSION, OS_RELEASE from sysibmadm.env_sys_info
)
SELECT P.*
FROM iLevel, systools.group_ptf_currency P
WHERE ptf_group_release =
‘R’ CONCAT iVersion CONCAT iRelease concat ‘0’
ORDER BY ptf_group_level_available –
ptf_group_level_installed DESC
Not only will you see your TR level, you will see what the current version available is, and also for All PTF Groups that you have. And again, many thanks to Scott Forstie for these tools.