Friday, January 22, 2021

Using Metabase Database Analytics Open Source Platform with IBM i AS400 DB2

What is Metabase?

It's an open source analytics platform. 

Enabling you to connect to various databases and extract the data from those in the form of charts, tables, Excel downloads.

 



From the website:

Anyone on your team can get answers to questions about your data with just a few clicks, whether it's the CEO or Customer Support.

When the questions get more complicated, SQL and our notebook editor are there for the data savvy.

 

It supports some databases natively, such as PostgreSQL, mySQL, SQL Server, etc. For unsupported databases, you can write your own plugin or driver or use 3rd party developed ones on github called Community-built database drivers.

 https://www.metabase.com/docs/latest/developers-guide-drivers.html

 

For AS400 / IBM i DB2, there are some drivers already developed /maintained for this available on github:

https://github.com/dludwig-jrt/metabase-db2-driver/network/members 

and gitlab:

https://gitlab.com/itssophie/metabase-db2-driver-project

You can use gitlab to build the drivers


Specific instructions how to build a driver:

v7r1 iSeries DB2 Driver for Metabase

Prereqs: Install Metabase locally, compiled for building drivers

cd /path/to/metabase/source
wget desired version of metabase source from: https://github.com/metabase/metabase/releases/xxxx...
unzip / untar
lein install-for-building-drivers

Build the DB2 driver using the newly-built metabase as a dependency

git clone this repository
cd /path/to/db2-driver-code-from-github
lein clean
DEBUG=1 LEIN_SNAPSHOTS_IN_RELEASE=true lein uberjar

Copy the newly built driver to your plugins dir and restart Metabase

along with the jt400.jar from IBM's sourceforge project page depending on your OS: https://javadoc.midrange.com/readme.html

cp target/uberjar/db2.metabase-driver.jar /path/to/metabase/plugins/
cd /path/to/metabase/plugins wget sourceforge jt400 applicable driver version (in this case 8.5): 
jar -jar /path/to/metabase/metabase.jar

or:

cp target/uberjar/db2.metabase-driver.jar /path/to/metabase/source/plugins
cd /path/to/metabase/plugins wget sourceforge jt400 applicable driver version (in this case 8.5)
cd /path/to/metabase/source
lein run

Thursday, January 2, 2020

SONY Service Center Contact Details


Address and Contact Details of Sony Service Centers
SONY HANDYCAM SONY DIGITAL CAMERA REPAIR SONY XPERIA REPAIR SONY PLAYSTATION REPAIR SONY TV REPAIR CENTERS


Main / Pasig:

CI Tower #61 West Capitol Drive Corner Stella Maris Street
Barangay Kapitolyo Pasig City

1-800-1853-7669


ALABANG:

104 Southgate Bldg. Finance Drive
Madrigal Business Park, Ayala Alabang
Muntinlupa City

02-87722541
02-87721846


SAN PABLO LAGUNA:

Maharlika Highway Brgy San Roque San Pablo Laguna

049-5620823

Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Tips for Passing AWS Solutions Architect Associate Exam (How to Study to Pass)

First, what not to waste time on -
Resources that Did Not Help:

  • AWS Generic Explanation / Training Videos per topic - very bland, makes one sleepy (however the Re:invent were good)
  • Exploring the Console without tutorials
  • Looking at all the services - only specific services would be tested
  • Memorizing limits - it helps for Databases, S3, number of VPCs (but not for others)


Resources that Helped: 

Below are the resources that helped, 
I suggest you start from the top (most basic) to bottom
  • ACloud Guru Training video (videos were good for intro, chapter end review useful, labs were useful, however, the sample exams of Jon Bonson were better). Most valuable chapter is the VPC chapter. Play the videos at 1.5x speed with subtitles ON
  • Re:invent - the Generic AWS videos could make me fall asleep, the Re:invent is anything but. Tip: Play the videos at 2x play speed to save time though. 
  • Jon Bonson's cheat sheets / Tutorial Dojo cheat sheets: https://tutorialsdojo.com/aws-cheat-sheets/ -> very very useful especially the comparison cheat sheets. EFS vs EBS, etc. 
  • Jon Bonson Udemy Practice Exams (very comprehensive, especially the answer explanations)
  • AWS Console for following along with the labs
  • AWS FAQ pages
  • AWS Exam Review Android App (watch out for it though, some of the questions are old)

What to Watch Out For:
  • Reviewing outdated information - 
  • example: some services did not have cross-region capabilities previously, but now do. 
  • limits of some services have increased
  • tricky questions - each word in the sentence should be read
  • You can flag questions in the actual exam for review, but you have to answer each question before proceeding to the next question
  • Noisy testing centers
  • The test is long and you cannot stop once it has started. Must pace self, eat a snack beforehand and drink enough water (but not too much to cause a bathroom break mid-exam). 

How Long To Study before taking the Test:
  • I allotted around 1 month of studying, most of it watching videos really.
  • It's best to study before sleeping so you can dream about it
  • 2 hours per day in the weekdays (x 24 days) and 9-12 hours on the weekends (x 4 weekends)
  • A total of ~48 + 44 hours = ~92 hours of study
  • I took 3 sample exams 
  • I used multiple tries on the AWS Exam Review Android App (take note some questions use outdated information) - the app can be used anywhere on the commute, etc. 

Thursday, August 8, 2019

Great IBM i - AS400 sites and blogs


Here I list some of the blogs and sites written by great iSeries people:

  • Scott Klement's siteWe had a problem recently with service program use
    signature violation

    so always use a hard-coded signature, not the one generated - great article by Scott Klement

    http://www.scottklement.com/presentations/Pattern%20to%20Good%20ILE%20with%20RPG.pdf


http://www.ibmsystemsmag.com/ibmi/enewsletterexclusive/32135p1.aspx


  • TOOLS -Epolice site by Giovanni
easy400.net

  • CRAIG RUTLEDGE tools - includes a free converter to free format RPG ILE
http://home.windstream.net/craigru/



My Favorite IT Books of 2019


Here are the books I've read this year

1) Building Microservices
2) Enterprise Architecture
3) Flexible Input, Dazzling Output with IBM i
4) Zero to One
5) Enterprise Architecture as Strategy

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.