Last October, IBM introduced the world to a new type of processor. The silicon-on- insulator (SOI) chip, announced with V4R5 of OS/400, outperformed any other processor in the industry. Along with the SOI chip came a whole new line of hardware, and IBM renamed the AS/400 product line to iSeries. Although there were many important enhancements and features to the operating system, one can safely conclude that V4R5 was more of a hardware release than an OS/400 upgrade. For those who deal primarily with software (application development, systems administration, networking, e-commerce), V4R5 was a rather boring release. But V5R1 contains a little bit of something for everyone,

including some significant enhancements in the area of systems administration and operations. It is one of the most exciting and largest releases of OS/400 since V1R1. Let’s take a look at a few of these enhancements.

Library Lists! Oh, My!

If you’ve ever installed a vendor package, then tried to integrate its library list with your own, you’ve probably hit a “library-list wall.” That is, you’ve discovered that you cannot have more than 25 user libraries in the library list. Actually, 25 libraries is a lot. Still, there have been many times when I have wanted to add a couple more. Because I couldn’t, I created some nifty little library-list-handling routines to save libraries, add new ones, run my apps, and then restore the old library list. What a pain.

With V5R1, it’s unlikely that you’ll ever have that problem again. IBM has increased the number of libraries in the user portion of the library list from 25 to—get this—250. Wow! Just imagine the fun you’re going to have trying to figure out which physical file, in which library, your logical file is now pointing to. Suddenly *LIBL takes on a whole new meaning.

In the area of OS/400 security, there are some significant enhancements and some brand- new functions for you to consider. How many times have you had users call your help desk and complain that they’ve forgotten their passwords? Now you will be able to create so much confusion that your users may never be able to get onto your system again! With V5R1, you can turn on a new system security value, QPWDLVL, which allows users to

Security

enter a password of up to 128 characters! What’s more, the password can contain embedded blanks, as well as any character you can type from your keyboard.

Why would IBM add such a confusing option? It was done to make passwords stronger (harder to guess), and to allow OS/400 password compatibility with Windows 2000 passwords. You don’t have to use this option, but if you do, you need to understand what the impact will be on your system. In addition to the 128-character password, you have a couple of options for storing passwords on the client PC for NetServer users. (Check out “Security Patrol” on page 98 for more information on the new QPWDLVL system security value.)

Also new with V5R1 is the ability to digitally sign OS/400 objects. In fact, V5R1 will ship with all IBM OS/400 objects and programs digitally signed. IBM is using this feature, which is very much like digitally signing objects in Windows 2000, to maintain operating system integrity. For example, it was possible in the past for a less-than-honest software vendor to “patch” an OS/400 object, even at security level 40, to make it run in the system state. That is, OS/400 would recognize the object as a system level (operating system) program. With digitally signed OS/400 objects, you will be able to verify, at any time, that your version of OS/400 is secure and has not been tampered with. (“Security Patrol” also has more information on digitally signing objects.)

Program Creation Data Templates

Remember the fun you had moving from CISC to RISC?

Remember discovering at the last moment that the programs wouldn’t migrate cleanly because someone had removed their observability? Remember the fun you had frantically searching libraries on your AS/400, trying to find the program’s source code? Wasn’t that fun?

I didn’t think so, either. Apparently neither did IBM, because, beginning in V5R1, when you (or your vendor) remove program observability, IBM will store the program creation data necessary for retranslation, in a compressed form, with the program object.

This data, known as the program creation data template (CDT), contains all the information IBM needs to retranslate (notice I didn’t say recompile) the intermediate code back into a program object.

What impact will this have on your systems? Not much. The size of the program object without observability will be slightly larger than a program object in a previous release without observability, but the difference will be negligible. More important, by storing the CDT with the program object, IBM can now change the hardware again, if it needs to, or provide enhancements to the program translator without impacting your systems. By the way, if you were thinking that this change might provide a way for you to decompile programs, think again. There won’t be any tools or methods available for you to access the CDT stored with the program object.

Much, Much More...

V5R1 brings some exciting new tools and enhancements to the iSeries community. And

with them comes a whole new world of challenges for you and your shop.

Shannon O'Donnell has held a variety of positions, most of them as a consultant, in dozens of industries. This breadth of experience gives him insight into multiple aspects of how the AS/400 is used in the real world. Shannon continues to work as a consultant. He is an IBM Certified Professional--AS/400 RPG Programmer and the author of an industry-leading certification test for RPG IV programmers available from ReviewNet.net.