Program to alert when elapsed CPU percentage becomes too high

When I published my article about Program to alert when jobs' CPU percentage becomes too high someone messaged me asking could I think of something that would do the same when the total CPU exceeded a certain percentage. The answer is, of course, "Yes".

Before I create a program we need to consider the whether the partition that the program will be run on is "capped" or "uncapped". What does that mean?

When a partition is capped it cannot use more than its allocated processing units, in other words it can never exceed 100% CPU usage.

While an uncapped partition has its base entitlement of the processing units, but can borrow unused processing power from the other partitions if available. This means that its CPU usage can exceed 100% of the partition's resources.

This means that 90% CPU utilization could be more concerning on a capped than an uncapped. Keep this in mind when you look at my example program.

I always use ACS's Run SQL Scripts, RSS, to develop the SQL statements I will be including in a RPG program. I can get the elapsed CPU percentage from the SYSTEM_STATUS SQL table function:

New model of IBM Power 11 announced

Along with the announcement of the latest Technology Refreshes came another announcement for the smallest of the IBM Power11 servers, S1112.

I am not a hardware geek, more of a software one, but having read the announcement document I think it is something worth reporting upon.

S1112 is in the P05 software tier that can run IBM i AIX, Linux, or hybrid workloads on one server.

It comes in two configuations:

First TR of 2026

The deferred first Technology Refreshes of 2026 PTFs, IBM i 7.6 TR2 and 7.5 TR8, have been announced.

The first thing I do when any new TR announcement is made is to check out what enhancements have been made to Db2 for i (SQL) and RPG. Do note that there are a number of changes and additions made to IBM i 7.6 that have not been made to 7.5.

The SQL that have caught my eye are:

Spring 2026 Performance Guide available

A new version of IBM's "IBM i on Power – Performance FAQ" was published at the beginning of this month, and is available for download.

The guide provides us with tips on how to measure, and improve, the performance of your IBM Power server, IBM i partitions, Db2 database, and programs that run within it.

You will find the document here.

I always download it and read the passages I feel are relevant to my situation. I recommend you do the same.

More information regarding IBM Bob Premium Package

IBM made an announcement yesterday, Thursday July 9, with more information about the new IBM Bob Premium Package for i. This includes some more information about the additions to it.

I am not going to repeat what is says. Just provide you with the link to it here.

Using SQL to retrieve information from the internet

There are many different web sites that offer information that would be useful to consume in IBM i. I have seen several examples of doing this, and I thought I would show my example, which I think, shows how simple it can be.

In my example I want to retrieve the share prices for the three biggest technology companies in the city I live in:

• Dell, stock symbol: DELL
• IBM, symbol: IBM
• Tesla, symbol: TSLA

July's presentations

July is the month of OCEAN’s TechCon 2026. TechCon is one of my favorite events of the year, and it is the IBM i event of the year in the western United States. The event consists of two days, a virtual day, Thursday July 23, and an in-person one, Friday July 24. I have been asked to speak on the Friday, and will be giving four presentations.

If you want to learn more about the "best in the west" you can check out the TechCon website to see who else is presenting, and register here.

Earlier in the month, Tuesday July 14, I will be virtually visiting with the IBM i Midwest User Group, iMWUG, to make two presentations about things to make tracking changes to your database easier.

You can register by clicking on the link on this page.

Later the same evening, Tuesday July 14, the Central Texas IBM i User Group, will be hearing from IBM Champion Gregory Simmons, who will be debuting a brand-new presentation to us, about using the three-part name in SQL. Come and learn what this is, and how you can use it.

The event is online, free, and you can register here.

I hope to see you at one of these events.

Retrieving the value of a column from a previous row

I was sent a copy of a job log from weeks ago, and had been asked to identify which parts of the job had run the longest. Fortunately, the spool file of the job log was still available so I could do some SQL magic to extract useful information from it. The first thing I want to do is to determine is how long each program or command took. I can extract the timestamp from the spool file, but I need to be able to retrieve the timestamp for the previous entry too. How can I retrieve that information for the previous entry?

After a bit of searching I found a SQL function that would allow me to do this. Rather than go straight into showing what I did with the joblog spool file, I am going to start with a simpler example. I have a DDL table, TESTTABLE, that has a decimal column, TEST_NUMBER, and nine rows of data. I can show the data using the following SQL statement:

01 SELECT TEST_NUMBER 02 FROM TESTTABLE

Which returns:

Migrate While Active Redbook

Migrate While Active, MWA, is one of the more exciting features recently introduced for IBM Power hardware and the IBM i operating system. It is tool that helps me to move IBM i workloads to new servers, data centers, or the cloud with near-zero downtime.

Basically MWA is performed in three steps:

1. Background Copy: A copy of the partition is made, while the source partition is fully online and active.
2. Data Sync: It constantly synchronizes all data changes from the live system to the copy.
3. Cutover: Once both match, I make the switch to the new partition.

This results in almost no interruption in service.

IBM Bob Premium Package for i released

Today the first significant update for IBM Bob, the AI-development tool for IBM i has been released.

It is called IBM Bob Premium Package for i

You can read the announcement, that gives you all the details on the new features, here.

There is also an Overview page, that includes the link to download it, here.

You do have to be using IBM Bob 2.0.0 to use IBM Bob Premium Package for i.

After the first paragraph in the Overview document is a button to "Copy Markdown". I strongly recommend you do. I clicked the button and then pasted what was copied into Notepad. The markdown contains all kinds of useful information to successfully install the new version.

Within markdown are some paths to further documentation. As paths do not include the domain I have for your convenience done so below:

Calculating the number of seconds for a time

I have to admit this was a strange request. Interfacing data to another application is no big deal, but the way it wanted its date and time data formatted was. It wanted a character date, in *MDY format with the date separator characters, character time, with dots as the separator character, and an integer of the number of seconds that the time represented.

I could calculate the seconds as:

TotalSeconds = (Hours x 3600) + (Minutes x 60) + Seconds

Fortunately I stumbled across a SQL scalar function that would do this for me: MIDNIGHT_SECONDS. This returns the number of seconds that the time represents. Which is exactly what I am looking for.

I can demonstrate this with the following SQL statement:

Another anniversary for IBM i and IBM Power

Yesterday, Sunday June 21 2026, was the 38th anniversary of when the ancestor of the IBM Power and IBM i, AS/400, was first announced. Excitement was high as the advancements made to create AS/400 were ground breaking, many other maufactures spent years developing the equivalent technologies into their hardware and software.

Over the past 38 years a lot has changed, the AS/400 evolved through different forms, and names, before becoming the IBM Power server back in 2008.

Does this mean that the "AS/400" is old and outdated? The Power servers can run several different operating system, including IBM i. With the modern IBM i operating system we can emulate the AS/400, and this advanced operating system can do so much more than the AS/400, and its operating system OS/400, ever could.

I think I did a good job describing this history for the 35th anniversary. If you are interested in learning more what AS/400 was, and what it has become, read the story here.

Happy birthday IBM Power and IBM i! May you have many more!