IBM i Services Update
I am happy to announce that IBM delivered another round of updates to IBM i Services with the Db2 Group PTF released earlier this month. This blog reviews my favorite enhancements.
QSYS2.COMMAND_INFO is a new service to return command information similar to DSPCMD. With no WHERE clause, you can populate a list of all commands you are authorized to use in just a few seconds.
QSYS2.HISTORY_LOG_INFO is one of my favorite services; it’s very useful to summarize information from noisy messages such as CPF1124, CPF1164 and CPIAD09 to understand the overall workload on your system. Previously, you had to parse out the job name from the FROM_JOB column. With the latest updates, the service now returns the job name in individual columns.
The QSYS2.ACTIVE_JOB_INFO table function is now enhanced to include workload group information. This is useful to know if a job has its CPU resources limited by a workload group.
The QSYS2.SYSTEM_STATUS_INFO view and the QSYS2_SYSTEM_STATUS table function are now both able to return additional information about jobs on the system.
The audit journal entry services are helper functions to review audit journal entries. It’s nice to see IBM adding more of these operational aids. This latest update added support for AD, DS, IM, PG, SK, SM, ZC and ZR audit journal entry types. I must take humble credit for the Socket Connections (SK) journal entry being included in this list. I worked with a client who needed to identify the TLS levels and ciphers being used. With *NETSECURE auditing, the SK audit entry contains this information. I asked IBM to include this audit journal entry type to make it easier to review these audit entries.
For further reading regarding reviewing audit journal entries, my post “Explore the Security Audit Journal with Navigator for i” reviews the new support in Navigator.
If you haven’t already, I suggest bookmarking this page to find the latest information about these services.