Sunday, August 30, 2015

Bloomberg API and Google Spreadsheets

Bloomberg API documentation

http://www.bloomberglabs.com/api/content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/blpapi-developers-guide-2.54.pdf

http://www.bloomberglabs.com/api/libraries/

ISBN Lookup

Here is a spreadsheet using http://isbndb.com to lookup book title, author, edition, and price.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZajeZni_W9m5bbfPgwuXtYwIcwYFpyaNIoZo9z5TQUI/edit?usp=sharing


from : http://shadowrasp.blogspot.com/2015/08/it-was-of-some-interest-to-be-able-to.html
and
https://brettlwilliams.wordpress.com/2013/05/30/isbn-title-lookup-google-doc-spreadsheet/

Thursday, August 27, 2015

Programming: A very good SQL tutorial site

SQL
SQL is a very widely used language for accessing databases. 
There are some minor variations in the SQL language used for DB2, mySQL, etc.

Here is a very good way to acquire sQL skills - it is an online interactive tutorial - 
you actually get to try out your own SQL statements on the fly. Visit http://sqlzoo.net/.

Programming: An Illustration of Stacks

Stax

http://secondratesnacks.com/

Pringles: "Once you pop, you can't stop."

Yeah, but the only way to eat Pringles or Stax is to
eat the topmost "Pringle" or "Stak".
This is how stacks work -
they're Last In - First Out (LIFO).

In stacks, there is also the push and pop operations.

What are stacks used for?

You're probably using a browser now.
Your browser probably has a Back and Forward button.
That button probably uses a stack implementation.
And how is this so?

You may test the following in another browser window.
Don't close this yet! Hahaha!

Imagine your browser back-forward stack as a snack container.
At first it is empty - it's still in the snack factory.
You just opened your browser, there's nothing to go back/forward to.

After getting to number 5, your stack looks like this, with website # 5 on top:
Now doing a "pop" would require clicking on the back button.
Notice what happened to the forward button. It's now "clickable".
After clicking the back button, this is our stack:

Notice that we have another stack!
This is for the.....
you guessed correctly! the forward button.
And as you may notice, our current location is where the
top of the back stack is.

If we try going to a 6th site while we're on site # 4,
what happens? Let's enter on the address bar:
    6. http://www.fizzbook.com/

What just happened?
We just pushed another chip into our back stack.
This is how our stack looks like now:

And we popped everything in our forward stack.
Try it after clicking on back many times.
Go figure it out! :)

The stack implementation is also used in
Undo/Redo buttons.

Can you think of other implementations of stacks?

SOX and J-SOX Compliance for IBM i

Check out this site for 2 good reads about SOX (or JSOX) compliance on the IBM i or AS400:

https://sites.google.com/site/iseriesontheweb/sox-compliance

Two PDFs are included:

  • Software Development Guide from Chaos to Control - guide to achieving CMM level 3
  • The IT Manager's Working Guide to SUSTAINABLE SOX Compliance- with COBIT objectives and Softlanding Tools to use 
SOX compliance for IT is more about governance and control, the focus of these 2 e-books. 
Enjoy!

Image result for sox


Tired of replying to MSGW Status Jobs on IBM i? Use E-Police!

Whenever your jobs end in error, do they go on MSGW status,
blocking other jobs from running?

This was our common experience before we implemented
use of E-POLICE. E-POLICE is a free! and open source software
for the IBM i to automatically reply to jobs on MSGW status.



This software will monitor the QSYSOPR message queue for you.

From the website of easy400, the listed software components are:

E-Police is a collection of iSeries utilities dealing with out-of-line situations:
  1. Program Error Monitor
    gets control over ILE-RPG program errors, sends an e-mail message to the appropriate application developer providing complete documentation (error profile, joblog, program source).
  2. Receive Message Queue
    There are installations that are regularly bothered by system messages requiring actions (expecially from message queue QSYSOPR).
    In most cases, the causes of the messages are very well known, and the actions are always the same.
    Then, why not an automat taking care of these cases and documenting what was done?
  3. Mandatory activities
    Some installations need some subsystems and/or some jobs be always active.
    Command epolice/chksbsjob provides a way to implement such a requirement.
  4. Command EDBG
    Boost up your debug.

You can download the software at the easy400 website:
http://www.easy400.net/epolice/html/start.html

I would rank this software as #1 in terms of reducing the
IBM i administrator's work.

Circa - 2009 List of Web-Enabling Technologies for IBM i


Below are of the some technologies that were available during the year 2009 for web-enablement of IBM i.