I am planning an operating system (OS) upgrade. How do I find out what I need to do for Help/Systems products?
Call us before you update your OS to a new level. Some product versions may not be compatible with the upgraded OS. Each product needs to be reviewed to see if it needs updates before you update the OS.

What is the easiest way to set up a Report Set in Robot/REPORTS?
Use Robot/GUIDE. Robot/GUIDE ensures you don’t make typos when defining comparison information and prevents you from missing steps in the setup procedure.

Send jobs Host-to-Host or Node-to-Node with Robot/NETWORK 10.0

If you haven’t discovered Robot/NETWORK packets, you are in for a treat. You can use Robot/NETWORK packets to centrally control and maintain:

* Robot/SCHEDULE job setups

* Robot/CONSOLE message sets, message tables, and message groups

* Robot/REPORTS report sets

Once you start using packets, you no longer have to sign on to multiple systems and create the same objects over and over. Not only do packets save you time, but they also reduce errors caused by repetition. You create an object once and use it many times.

Here’s how to cut through the clutter in QAUDJRN and learn more

You hear the same complaints again and again: The security audit journal, QAUDJRN, contains too many entries. It’s too hard to make sense of all the details. Do you really care that you have 1592 program adopt entries one day, and only 450 the next? Do you need to copy the journal receiver to a database file every day? What exactly do all the different entry types mean?

When you use SEQUEL ViewPoint on your system, you can have it track who is using what and when. You can see if access paths are created, which files are queried, and how many records are retrieved. You can do all this with SEQUEL auditing.

What is SEQUEL auditing?
You access auditing through the ViewPoint Administrator. Auditing allows you to monitor your investment in SEQUEL. Its inquiries and reports help you get the most out of SEQUEL by showing you where SEQUEL is used most heavily and how it affects your system’s resources. Using the auditor’s inquiry and analysis tools, you can effectively manage the query environment.

Not many companies can say they manufacture fun, but that’s exactly what Polaris Industries, Inc., does. A leader in the motor-sports industry, Polaris designs, engineers, and manufactures ATVs, snowmobiles, RANGER utility vehicles, and Victory motorcycles. The common denominator for these vehicles is that they let people escape from their busy lives to a world of freedom and fun. Since 1954, when the first Polaris snowmobile made its appearance, Polaris riders have been finding “The Way Out.”

I have two files on my System i. One is a parts list that includes prices. The other contains new prices. Is there an easy way to get the new prices into the parts list?

Use SEQUEL to do a JOIN UPDATE. When you do a JOIN UPDATE you automatically update a System i file with data from another System i file! (We believe this is unique in the System i world.) Here’s an example:

UPDATE SET((LSTPC.1 NEW_PRICE.2))
SQL(’FROM PARTMAST, NEWPRICE JOIN PRDNO.1 = PRDNO.2′)

Important note: The file you are updating must be the primary (first) file in the SQL statement.

Help/Systems recently conducted a survey of Robot/NEWS readers. Readers who completed the survey had the option of entering their names in a drawing for a Nintendo Wii game system. When the survey closed on November 16, the winner was:

Mike Kammer
Sunrise Senior Living, Inc.
McLean, VA

Our congratulations go out to Mike. We thank everyone who responded to the survey.

Four-step process can be totally automated

Monitoring and adjusting your IBM System i for maximum efficiency and operations can be time-consuming and difficult. Add the complexities of coordinating resource movements for business processes in a logically partitioned System i, and you can have difficult operational issues. What you need is an easy-to-use interface to your Hardware Management Console (HMC) that helps you move your partitioned resources for maximum performance. That interface is Robot/LPAR, the software package that works with the HMC to move processor, memory, and I/O devices among your partitions interactively or in batch mode.

Here’s a rundown of some ways to use SEQUEL’s CVTDATE function

At some point, almost all SEQUEL users need to work with dates that are stored differently in several databases. This article looks at some uses of the CVTDATE function to help you handle this common problem.

Using the CVTDATE function
SEQUEL has a unique date conversion function called convert date (CVTDATE). This function converts numeric or character date fields into System i date data-type fields. When you convert numeric or character values to System i date values, the system recognizes the values as dates. The System i then can handle all kinds of date calculations, such as counting days between dates, subtracting dates, or sorting by dates. Not only can you perform calculations on dates, but you can present difficult date formats (such as Julian dates) in more readable formats. The general syntax is:

Adds Web-based access to more Robot products

Help/Systems, the world’s leader in automated operations and business intelligence for the IBM System i, announces the release of Robot Browser Interface 2.0, Help/Systems’ Web browser-based interface for the System i. The Robot Browser Interface provides Web-based access to five Robot products: Robot/SCHEDULE, Robot/NETWORK, Robot/REPORTS, Robot/SPACE, and Robot/ALERT.

Robot/SCHEDULE users can use the Robot Browser Interface to view and filter the status of Robot/SCHEDULE jobs, view colored icons for a quick visual reference of the job type and status of each job, and view their Good Morning Report.