Join me for the 2016 COMMON Annual Meeting and Exposition, May 15-18, with pre-conference workshops May 14. Don’t miss New Orleans!
Learn about IBM i 7.3, open source languages, security, and more.
Alan will speak about PHP, SQL, performance, and how to relax your neck, back, and shoulders at the keyboard. Also looking forward to spending time with the gang from “Club Seiden.”
https://www.common.org
Join me and 27 other speakers at the Wisconsin Midrange Computer Professional Association (WMCPA) spring technical conference, March 15-17, 2016, at the Lake Lawn Resort on the shores of Delavan Lake.
Featured speakers: Alison Butterill, Tim Rowe. Speakers: Robert Andrews, Jim Bainbridge, Aaron Bartell, Stacy Benfield, Larry Bolhuis, David Brault, Chris Bremer, Jim Buck, Tom Cremieux, Gus Delgado, Richard Dolewski, Von Enselman, Byron Franz, Charles Guarino, Scott Klement, Richard Milone, Floyd Del Muro, Greg Patterson, Mike Pavlak, Trevor Perry, Jim Ritchhart, Richard Schoen, Alan Seiden, Grant Smith, Matt Staddler, Paul Tuohy
This year’s ZendCon has a new location—Las Vegas—and more IBM i speakers than ever, including:
Tutorial day, Oct. 19, is recommended at this premier PHP conference. I’ll present “Db2 and PHP in Depth,” a three-hour tutorial of techniques for using IBM i’s native database, which can help make PHP applications more secure, easier to write, and faster. I’ll also present new features of Db2 and PHP’s Db2 interface that were inspired largely by comments and requests of past ZendCon attendees. Special guest Tony Cairns from IBM is expected, too, for a lively discussion about practical PHP development on IBM i. Bring your questions.
Later in the week I’ll present “Create a welcoming development environment on IBM i,” based on my experience leading PHP projects for IBM i, and “Strategic Modernization with PHP,” which shows the possibilities on the IBM i platform and the strengths of various approaches. Expect to hear valuable advice from your colleagues, too.
I’m looking forward to attending talks, talking to sponsors, chatting with many of my blog and newsletter readers, meeting clients, and getting to know Rogue Wave, the company that recently acquired Zend.
Information about ZendCon: http://zendcon.com
At last Friday’s OCEAN conference in Costa Mesa, Calif., IBM’s Dawn May and I presented “The Art of Performance Diagnostics,” showing how we’ve used tools that are free (Performance Data Investigator) and low-cost (Job Watcher) and included with IBM i to identify and resolve performance bottlenecks that would have been difficult using traditional green-screen tools alone.
One audience member said, “Developers should know about these tools! They aren’t just for system administrators.” With these tools and with documentation such as the IBM i Performance FAQ, performance expertise is within reach of developers as well as sysadmins.
How do IBM i performance tools help developers to be more effective? Developers can:
Alan Seiden and Dawn May presenting The Art of Performance Diagnostics for IBM i at the OCEAN conference, July 17, 2015. Photo by Matthew Murtha
Join me and 23 other speakers for this unique west-coast conference. Get a jump-start on your challenges and opportunities by talking to experts in the world of IBM i and Power Systems. SQL, DB2, RPG, PHP, Ruby, more, more, more… http://ocean400.org
Update: a recording of the webinar is available to all registrants. See the link below to register.
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I’ll be presenting a free webinar, “How to ensure speedy PHP applications on IBM i,” on Thursday, June 11, 2015, at 1pm Eastern/New York time. The webinar is sponsored by BCD. Registration and more information: http://www.bcdsoftware.com/bcdtracks/webinars/ondemand/php-performance-alan.htm
“Our process now runs 30-50% faster, thanks to one tip from Alan’s presentation.”
— Mike Meszaros, Software Developer, Specialty Pipe & Tube
The 2015 COMMON annual meeting and expo, now in its first day, is helping speakers and attendees create innovation through IBM i integration: open source, closed source, IBM and vendor solutions. For example, of my six presentations during this conference, two are collaborations:
The Art of Performance Diagnostics, with IBM’s Dawn May, allows us to show, among other topics, how IBM i’s integrated performance tools complement green-screen tools and third-party tools (in this case, Zend Server) to pinpoint and solve performance issues (here, PHP-and DB2-based applications).
PHP Tricks for RPG Developers, a talk jointly created by RPG and SQL expert Birgitta Hauser and me, combines RPG, PHP, and DB2, allowing RPG to achieve graphical (charts and graphs, PDF and Excel files) and internet (json-based web services, flexible email) functionality using native functions.
Conferences such as COMMON serve a need that’s difficult to replicate back at the office—brainstorming and sharing possibilities among interdisciplinary peers, or sitting side-by-side with like-minded colleagues who work for different employers, to try something new. This week, for example, some of us plan to share knowledge on compiling binaries in PASE and to further the potential of open source on IBM i. I’m looking forward to presenting my talks (both joint and solo) and helping to realize new ideas with forward-looking colleagues during the conference.
Birgitta Hauser and Alan Seiden collaborate on their talk at COMMON 2015
Join me and 20 other speakers at the Wisconsin Midrange Computer Professional Association (WMCPA) spring technical conference, March 10-12, 2015, at the Lake Lawn Resort on the shores of Delavan Lake.
Speakers: Aaron Bartell, Rob Bestgen, Larry Bolhuis, Tom Cremieux, Floyd Del Muro, Raymond Everhart, Margaret Fenlon, Susan Gantner, Charles Guarino, Scott Klement, Chris Koppe, Jon Paris, Mike Pavlak, Jim Ritchhart, Debbie Saugen, Alan Seiden, Dr. Frank Soltis, Robert Swanson, Robin Tatam, Jeff Tickner, Steve Will
Details: http://wmcpa.org/index.php/conference-2015/ibmi-conference-2015
Between major IBM i releases, IBM ships frequent enhancements using the Technology Refresh (TR). Particular features are present with specific TR levels. SQL offers an easy way to identify the latest TR level on an IBM i system.
IBM i services comprise a collection of DB2 and SQL objects that provide a wealth of system information. The GROUP_PTF_INFO view will display an IBM i’s TR level to the user who runs this SQL:
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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, PTF_GROUP_LEVEL DESC LIMIT 1; |
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?
Here is my original post with older techniques:
I recently needed to know if a client’s IBM i 7.1 system had Technology Refresh 4 (TR4). If it did, I could use the relatively new INSERT with remote SUBSELECT technique, which allows a single SQL statement to copy DB2 data from one partition to another. Such are the benefits of keeping current with Technology Refreshes.
After reading an article on TRs by Steve Will, I decided to document how to determine which TRs are installed on an IBM i system.
TRs, which were introduced with IBM i 7.1, are packaged as Program Temporary Fixes (PTFs). They can be found with the DSPPTF command.
First, determine the product number of the licensed internal code of your system. For 7.1, the product number is 5770999.
Then use the DSPPTF command followed by this product number. For example:
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DSPPTF 5770999 |
When run on my test system, this command produced a list of PTFs that included MF99007, MF99006, MF99005, MF99004, MF99003, MF99002, and MF99001.
Because Technology Refresh PTF numbers follow the format MF99nnn, where nnn is the TR number (bolded above), I knew that TR7, TR6, TR5, TR4, TR3, TR2, and TR1 were available. I was pleased to learn I could use TR4’s enhancements to DB2.