Retrieving specific audit journal data by SQL table functions

As part of the latest round of latest Technology Refreshes for IBM i 7.4 and 7.3 are four SQL table functions that allow me to be able to easily get the following information from the system audit journal:

• Authority failures (journal entry type AF)
• Authority changes (CA)
• Ownership changes (OW)
• Password entries (PW)

The syntax for all of these table functions is the same:

New columns added to Job Info table function

The latest round of Technology Refreshes sees the addition of the same three columns to the JOB_INFO table function as were added to the ACTIVE_JOB_INFO table function.

These new columns break apart the full job name placing its parts into three new columns:

• JOB_NAME_SHORT
• JOB_USER
• JOB_NUMBER

For example I can get the information about my job by leaving out the parameters for the table function:

Additions to the Active Job Info table function

In the past few Technology Refreshes there have been additions to one of my favorite Db2 for i table functions. I use the ACTIVE_JOB_INFO a lot, I have even created a program to display jobs in message wait in a subfile using it.

The first change I am going to show makes it easier to search for all jobs that have the same job name. Three new columns have been added, "breaking apart" the full job name into its individual parts:

SELECT JOB_NAME,JOB_NAME_SHORT,JOB_USER,JOB_NUMBER FROM TABLE(ACTIVE_JOB_INFO()) ;

Combining data from the same file in multiple libraries into a view

When anyone asks for information that they are going to "pull" from the IBM i into another database or to interface to another application on the IBM i I do not want them to access the "live" files for several reasons:

1. Control the information they can get to, don't show them what they do not need
2. If there are calculations or other mapping that needs to be performed perform them, rather than rely on them to do it and then find they have not done so in the right manner
3. Map data from the files and tables into the type of data format they want
4. Prevent them from being able to insert, change, or delete data from files and tables

In my opinion the perfect tool for this is a SQL View. I can build it the way I want and tell them to use that.

Getting data from User Spaces made easy with SQL

The only way I have known how to write data to a User Space and read it has been by using APIs. With the last round of Technology Refreshes for IBM i 7.4 and 7.3 came an alternative to using an API to read.

There are two additions to SQL to help with User Space:

• View to list all User Space
• Table Function to view the data within an User Space

 

QCMDEXC scalar function added to SQL

I am sure everyone who has programmed using IBM i has encountered QCMDEXC. Most of us have used the QCMDEXC API, or the QCMDEXC procedure in SQL to execute CL commands from another program or a SQL statement. Included within the latest round of Technology Refreshes for 7.4 and 7.3 is a QCMDEXC scalar function.

A scalar function has to be executed as part of a SQL statement, a Select for example, rather than called directly. Like all the other scalar functions I know, it will return "1" when it executed successfully, and "-1" when it did not.

I have to admit I had to think for a while of a situation I could use this in. Then I remembered one where this could be a perfect fit.

Many years ago I came across a couple of programs that were part of a month end job to release and hold job queues that were used by the month end. There was a file that contained a list of job queues, the library they are found in, and what was called the "flag" field. All the flag was used for if it was not "1" the job queue was not processed.

I have built a SQL table to mimic that file:

Providing the same date in different formats using SQL

I have been working with a group of Windows programmers to interface data from an IBM i partition to a Microsoft SQL database. The biggest issue I had was the formats of the dates. These Windows programmers insisted I pass all the dates as character format including the slash character ( / ) as the separator, which is no big deal. What had us going around in circles was that the same date would need to be provided in different date formats depending on the part of the interface. As I am in the USA most of the time they wanted me to pass the date in MDY format (MM/DD/YY), sometimes in USA format (MM/DD/YYYY), and for a couple of dates I need to pass them in the European DMY format (DD/MM/YY).

The date was coming from a DDS physical file. To illustrate how I could simply provide the date in the formats they desired I have created a file, called TESTFILE:

01 A R TESTFILER 02 A TEST_DATE L 03 A TEST_STAMP Z

Getting results from dynamically built SQL statements

I have written about executing dynamic generated SQL in a RPG program before, all of the examples were to do something and not to return results from those statements.

This post will show how you can build SQL Select statements in a variable, execute them, and get the results returned.

I need to give credit to Hassan Farooqi for providing me with the information to show a simple way to do this. The code is based upon examples he shared with me. His were far more complicated than what I am showing here, but I just want to show simple of examples of what you can do. You can make yours as complicated as you like.

All of the examples have three steps:

Getting to message queue data faster

Prior to the latest round of Technology Refreshes for 7.4 and 7.3 if I wanted to get the data from a particular message queue I would need to use the MESSAGE_QUEUE_INFO SQL View. Being a View it contains all the data from all of the message queues, not just the one I would be interested. If I wanted to retrieve the messages from one message queue it would take a while for the results to be found and returned.

There is now a MESSAGE_QUEUE_INFO Table function. Table functions are faster than Views as they are sort of like an API, I pass the message queue name to the Table function and only that message queue is searched for the information I want.

The results returned by the View and Table function are almost identical. The only difference is that the View returns columns for the name of the message queue and the library it resides. As I pass that information to the Table function it is irrelevant to its results.

MESSAGE_QUEUE_INFO Table function has four parameters:

Happy 8th birthday!

Wow! Another year has passed and RPGPGM.COM celebrates its eighth birthday today. I know I act surprised every year, I do so for two reasons:

1. I cannot believe that another year has passed!
2. There is more interesting IBM i stuff I have not written about yet

Despite lockdowns and COVID I have an exciting year:

Send messages to the QSYSOPR message queue with SQL

One of the many things that caught my eye in the latest round of Technology Refreshes for 7.4 and 7.3 is a way to send messages to the System Operator message queue, QSYSOPR, using a SQL procedure, SEND_MESSAGE.

Before I used the Send Message command, SNDMSG, to do this:

SNDMSG MSG('Message from SNDMSG command') TOUSR(*SYSOPR) Additional Message Information From . . . . . . : SIMON Severity . . . . . : 80 Message type . . : Information Date sent . . . : DD/DD/DD Time sent . . . . : TT:TT:TT Message . . . . : Message from SNDMSG command

This new SQL procedure, SEND_MESSAGE, must use a predefined message that must have one substitution parameter that is defined as *CHAR *VARY 2.

My first thought was to use the CPF9898 message, but that has a severity of 40, and it is fixed length of 512.

I decided to create my own message I could use. To avoid any confusion with any existing messages in any messages files I created my own message file, and added my message to it:

Creating PDF using SQL

Update Novmber 23, 2022: Simplification of the values I can use for the parameters, see here.

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Several years ago I wrote about how to convert spool files to PDF in the IFS. It still remains one of the most popular posts in this blog. With the latest round of Technology Refreshes for 7.4 and 7.3 there is now a way I can generate PDF from spool files using SQL.

I have several spool files I can see using the Work With Spool Files command, WRKSPLF:

Work with All Spooled Files Opt File User Queue User Data Sts _ QPRTSPLQ SIMON MYOUTQ RDY _ QSYSPRT SIMON MYOUTQ Testing RDY _ QPQUPRFIL SIMON MYOUTQ RDY _ QSYSPRT SIMON MYOUTQ RDY

I can get the same information using SQL too using the View OUTPUT_QUEUE_ENTRIES_BASIC, which gives me a subset of the columns that are available in OUTPUT_QUEUE_ENTRIES, which makes it faster to return the results: