Re: Command Defaults and Query -- MIDRANGE-L

From MacWheel99@aol.com (Alister Wm Macintyre) (Al Mac)

Some questions might be better answered by other folks on this list, but I 
find these whole discussions highly educational - many people supply puzzles 
& we struggle through with solutions that also help ourselves.  I am in the 
habit of attempting some solution then running up against a stone wall so I 
also am always thinking ahead - if this does not work then what try next.  Of 
course one disadvantage of listening to me, I always have many more ideas 
than can be implemented in any reasonable time period - you have to pick & 
choose which of my ideas are the best to pursue.

We have been changing message members to be more user-friendly & we have a CL 
to reinstate our versions.  But this is more oriented to our applications - 
when the vendor sends updates of our ERP software, it is like IBM OS4, a lot 
of stuff reverts to vanilla whether we want it or not, so our CL reinstates 
some of our tailoring.

From command line you can WRKOBJ then name of some object & I usually * 
asterisk wild card on end, also in PDM vs. source you can 8 I think it is, to 
get at statistical information on any object.  This stuff can also be sent to 
an *OUTFILE to analyse which objects exhibit certain characteristics.  

Once Upon a Time, IBM had some bit or byte flag saying "This is still vanilla 
out of the box" as opposed to "The client has messed with this."  Now if we 
knew where that is stored & I am sure IBM consultants & software modification 
places know that, we perhaps could do an *OUTFILE to a query to list all such 
IBM objects that have been tweaked since delivery.  That would be too simple.

What is stored that gets to *OUTFILE varies somewhat by type of object, but 
what I would want to find out is if any allegedly IBM objects in their 
external definition contain identity of person to have last changed them & if 
IBM staff "names" are distinguishable from our staff names.  This assumes 
that SOMEONE at your firm can look at these names & identify some former 
staffer.  For all you know, some of those names are hackers.

We had one employee on his exit interview tell us that we ought to know that 
he had "discovered" the master security officer password & changed himself to 
a master security officer & "discovered" some more interesting things, and 
experimented with some of them.  He originally found out due to some 
indiscretions by a consultant.  Like you, he did not know how things were 
supposed to be done, so while he made some great enhancements, they were all 
lost in our last OS/400 upgrade.  

Until this volunteered information I was oblivious to this, because I was 
covered up in security problems, many of them due to our friendly helpful 
consultants.

However, some objects *OUTFILE  do not contain name of last user to change 
them so this may need multiple solution approaches.

Presumably you still have the original CD for the OS4 version now installed.  
If there was some way to compare data on CD with data on hard disk to locate 
creation & change DATES of the external definitions, but hey if you know WHEN 
you installed the old OS4, then any change date SINCE that date would be 
suspicious unless it came via a PTF.  In our case we have upgraded our box 
since our last OS4 upgrade, and a lot of stuff, that really has a vintage to 
before the box upgrade, shows it started at the date we copied stuff into the 
new box.

If your other AS/400s can talk to each other, perhaps their *OUTFILEs of IBM 
objects can be compared to identify which are different.  If they are on the 
same OS/400 version you would expect any differences to be due to errors of 
omission by computer staff, security problems you did not know you had, and 
real needs for different applications.

Of course knowing WHAT COMMANDS etc. got changed is only part of the battle - 
you do not know HOW they were changed or WHY they were changed.

IBM has various services, many of them free.  Here is something for a wish 
list.  Using the performance monitoring resources over the ECS line, get a 
report from IBM that identifies for us what all we have changed that 
originally came from IBM.  Until IBM gets around to this, I am sure some 
consultants will ask if there is a market for the service.

You can WRKSYSVAL F4 & take the option to *PRINT ... it will tell you which 
values have been changed at your company to other than how they were shipped 
from IBM.  There may be other options like this, that I am oblivious to, that 
will tell us about other things we have that are now different from how they 
were shipped from IBM.

The way things are done should be documented some place some how some way to 
help future staff, but different people are comfortable with different ways 
of documenting.  I am on green screen so all my in-house documents are via 
PDM in places like QDOCSRC as TXT members.  I also have some work-related 
documents on my home PC & I periodically remind co-workers that if I get run 
over by a union truck tomorrow, here is how to find those documents on my 
home PC.

You are new to Wesfarmers - are you also new to AS/400?
While this is a great AS/400 list, there are also many other similar services.
I have links to many on my IE Favorite Places & just learned how to get them 
to a transferrable attachment ... have not actually done so yet, but plan to 
use the technique to reorganize my Favorite Places & perhaps offer secondary 
lists of just AS400 connections.

>  From:    Dwayne.Lindner@writ.wesfarmers.com.au (Dwayne Lindner)
>  
>  Thanks for the tips Alister.  
> We actually found an old CL written back in 97 to do exactly that - 
> it was last run when the company upgraded to V4R3 -
>  unfortunately I've only been here two months so I'm not fully aware of the
>  ways things are done as yet.  However, as always, danger lurks.  We have 
two
>  other As/400's that are being upgraded here in the next few weeks, and we
>  don't believe the CL solution has been implemented - is there any way to
>  discover the changes that have already been made so we can create a CL to
>  change the new system when it's upgraded ?
>  
>  Thanks!!
>  
>  Dwayne Lindner
>  Senior Analyst - Data Centre
>  Wesfarmers Rural Division
>  184 Railway Parade, Bassendean WA 6054
>  Ph: (08) 9273 5365
>  Email: dwayne.lindner@writ.wesfarmers.com.au

MacWheel99@aol.com (Alister Wm Macintyre) (Al Mac)
AS/400 Data Manager & Programmer for BPCS 405 CD Rel-02 mixed mode (twinax 
interactive & batch) @ http://www.cen-elec.com Central Industries of 
Indiana--->Quality manufacturer of wire harnesses and electrical 
sub-assemblies - fax # 812-424-6838

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