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Wednesday, April 13, 2022

ACS improves by 0.0.0.2

Update November 11, 2022: New version is currently available for download here


A couple of times a year IBM gives us a new release of Access Client Solutions, ACS. It would appear that Scott Forstie, Db2 for i Business Architect, has a similar sense of humor as mine, as I was amused by his announcement of the new release:

IBM i Access Client Solutions just improved by 0.0.0.2!

The previous version was 1.1.8.8 and now we have the brand new 1.1.9.0!

You can check which release you currently have from the "Access Client Solutions" window. Click on "Help":

And select "Check for Updates". This window will display your current release and if you are not up to date, the most recent available version.

Downloading the latest version is as simple as clicking on the "Download update" button. If you don't want to use that link, or if that button is not displayed you can go to: http://ibm.biz/IBMi_ACS (this URL is case sensitive).

Both of these will take you to the IBMid login screen. If you do not have an IBMid login create one by clicking on the link.

You will be taken to a Privacy and Licensing page. Click on the "Agree" button and you will be taken to the download site.

Click on the "Download" link next to the "IBM I Access Client Solutions (1.1.9.0)" and a zip file will be downloaded to your computer.

Find the downloaded file and extract its contents.

This is where things will differ depending on your computer and operating system. There is a HTML file in the root folder called "QuickStartGuide" this gives you the instructions for each of the supported operating systems: Windows, Apple Mac, and Linux. You will need to right version of Java for your operating system, that information can be found here.

I am using 64 bit Windows 11, therefore, I go to the "Windows_Application" subfolder and I double click on the "install_acs_64". The install process is fairly quick.

If you are installing ACS for the first time you will be presented with a series of dialog boxes asking if you want various ACS features installed. My recommendation is to "OK" them all, then you can decide which features you will want to use.

When the install has finished you can check that it is really the new release by using "Access Client Solutions" window. Click on "Help", and then "About". If it was successfully installed you should see this:

A list of the enhancements for this release can be found here.

The only one I found caused me to go "Wow!" was the ability to open multiple tabs in Run SQL scripts.

If you click on the first icon on the tool bar, named "New", it will open a new tab for you. That is something I know I am going to use a lot.

If you think you do not have to update your ACS you are missing out on a lot of cool new features that have been added in the last few releases. I have also found that if you have a really old version of ACS you will not be able to attach to a partition running IBM i 7.4!

Go install it, have a play, and if you find a feature that I have not mentioned please post it in the comments below.

4 comments:

  1. Another thing that is cool... before if you had a long running script that you made changes to, you had to save the changes before or after it was done running. Now you can save it while it is running. Also there are some changes under the "performance " tab that have been consolidated from earlier versions.

    ReplyDelete
  2. pity that all tabs must run on the same machine

    ReplyDelete
  3. It would be nice to have a f9 kind of functions, to add a copy of the last/current sql statement again.
    Or is something like that possible without select/copy/go to end/paste ... ?
    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  4. You can drag and drop a folder now into that window from Explorer and it and all .sql files open in an extra tab. So now you can easier manage lots of sql statments, copy parts of them on the side for some variations and so on.

    ReplyDelete

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