Isaac Mcmahnus

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since Jan 08, 2007
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Recent posts by Isaac Mcmahnus

Like I said, this forum has many great features. I've learned many things just from browsing through the posts over the years. But in recent years, it seems there are far more posts moved, removed, or just plain left unanswered or answered with useless "moderator" info or non answered answers.

Like anything, if people refuse to adapt, it will fall by the wayside just like anything else. I've visited this forum for years now and have learned many things from various users. I've never felt harassed. But it is obvious when I visit various other posts and questions that half of the questions seem to go unanswered lately. Or half the questions are either moved, sent to some other part of the forum or a user is being told to change their name. Regardless it becomes a forum that isn't that user friendly.

If you have time to check each and every user's post, time to move the posts around, time to complain about a users name, time to complain about removing the companys name, and so on, then it's obvious you are spending more time "spying" on people rather than really maintaining the site.

It's one thing to remove users, remove posts, and maintain the site. That is a needed occurrence and I'm sure the mods spend a lot of their free time doing this. And that is great. But then again, you volunteered for this. If you don't like doing it, then stop doing it. Plain and simple.

Some people post tons of blogs or podcasts or whatever every week or even every day for free. It takes tons of time for them to do what they do, but if suddenly they start whining about the time it takes to write and edit them, there is nothing to stop them from cutting back or stopping altogether. If it's something they started as a hobby but it turned into something that becomes more burdensome, then cutback or stop.

If you don't have the time to volunteer anymore, do something else. Don't whine to the users about the time it takes to do something. Nobody wants to hear that. Especially on a tech forum where most people are probably overworked or have no free time.

As I said, I learned many things from this site, but lately, when every other post seems to have a similar feeling of "moved" or "CHANGE YOUR NAME" then it becomes obvious the moderators feel the need to "impress with their authority". Power goes to many people's heads.


A few months back it was the whole, "can't post company name info", then the whole problem where the search wasn't working half the time or it worked but no results would come back. The issue with harping on people about using their real name. As I said, does it really matter if somebody is Joe Smith over Joe Sonofwhoever. Not really.

From an outside perspective, it seems the moderators spend too much time complaining about nonesense rather than listening to what the users want.

And in the end, who knows where it all will end. But it's all been seen before. Many people go to other forums speaking about job lists now. People go around to the various other forums now. This forum is great, but when half the posts have no real answers, then it becomes a vast wasteland of unanswered questions.

If it takes too much time to operate, improve, and maintain a mostly volunteer forum and site then it will fall by the wayside if the volunteers and mods refuse to listen to the users.

Just like in the business world. If the user starts to dislike your product, they eventually go someplace else.

I really dont want to see that happen, cause as I've said, this forum has many great features and posters, but lately there are far too many user complaints, unanswered questions, lost questions, and various moderator's complaints in half the posts. When the mods seem to answer or have issues with half the posts, it is never a good thing.
17 years ago
I cut the SQL down to just one parameter and then built it upon it from there. the SQL statement worked using unix and some mainframe program that runs with DB2. But i'm creating a web version of the mainframe app so besides a few changes here and there, there are some things that need to be changed. Formatting, quotes, and so on.

In the end, I guess the problem was I didn't have enough ))) or placed a Period in the wrong place and so on.. But i finally got the query working and for all intensive purposes I just did it line by line and in the end, it worked.. Time consuming, but not as bad as I originally imagined.

Like I said, i must have misplaced a quote or paranthesis or period and so on. But i finally got it to work.....

thanks for the replies though.
What is this nonesense?

There could be certain features used to better the site, but as has been said, the moderators have a life outside of the forum. End of story.

My only problem with that statement is in the fact that it seems every other posting is either "MOVED" by moderators or "DEMAND TO USE A REAL NAME" by the moderators.

When you refuse to upgrade a site because of time constraints, that is all fine and dandy and completely understandable. It's time consuming, a lot of work, and when it's on a volunteered basis, it gets pushed to the back burner.

But at the same time when half the posts are moved, deleted or users are bothered by the Moderators to "CHANGE NAMES" it seems the moderators spend a lot more time looking down on others than actually improving the site.

You can't say your too busy to add an expanded SEARCH feature, but at the same moment find plenty of time to move, delete, or harass users all the time.

Who knows why they won't upgrade a feature or two or a whole upgrade process. But just like anything else, if the site becomes slower than others, more burdensome than other forums, people will just move onto other faster more usable forums like anything else. Then the moderators will have plenty of free time to do what they want.
17 years ago
I'm having a problem executing this QUERY from my web. The Query works inside DB2, but for whatever reason, inside the javabean or within JSP, it comes back as a Failed SQL statement.

I tried to play around and I think it has something to do with the COUNT(*). When I test each and every select, it works. When I test Count(*) by itself it works. But when I try to Mix SELECT A, COUNT(*) it doesn't work from jsp or my java bean.

The Query looks something like this, and like i said, it does work within DB2, but it does not work when i call it from the JSP page.



String SQL= "SELECT S.SYSTEM_SITE, " +
"M.MATL_LOC, "+
"DATE(CAST(R.RTST AS CHAR(7))) AS RTST_DATE, " +
"R.MCC, " +
"R.REC_ID, " +
"M.MATL_TYPE, " +
"COUNT(*) AS QTY, " +
"R.ABCOFF_STAT, " +
"R.ABC_STAT, " +
"'DB2DB', " +
"V.VNDR_NAME, " +
"DAYS(DATE(CAST(R.NXT_RTST_DTE AS CHAR(7)))) - DAYS
(CURRENT_DATE) AS DAYS_TO_RETEST, " +
"DATE(CAST(R.REC_REJ_DTE AS CHAR(7))) AS REJECT_DATE, " +
"DAYS(DATE(CAST(R.REC_REJ_DTE AS CHAR(7)))) - DAYS
(CURRENT_DATE) AS DAYS_TO_REJECT, " +
"R.PGM_ID, " +
"R.VNDR_BATCH, " +
"CASE R.REC_REJ_DTE_OVRDE " +
"WHEN 'N' THEN 0 " +
"WHEN 'Y' THEN " +
"CASE MC.CONT_DTE_BASIS " +
"WHEN 'M' THEN DAYS(DATE(CAST(R.REC_REJ_DTE AS CHAR(7)))) - (DAYS(DATE(CAST(R.MFG_DTE AS CHAR(7)))) +
MC.SHELF_LIFE) " +
"WHEN 'S' THEN DAYS(DATE(CAST(R.REC_REJ_DTE AS CHAR(7)))) - (DAYS(DATE(CAST(R.SHPT_DTE AS CHAR(7)))) +
MC.SHELF_LIFE) " +
"WHEN 'R' THEN DAYS(DATE(CAST(R.REC_REJ_DTE AS CHAR(7)))) -
(DAYS(DATE(CAST(R.REC_DTE AS CHAR(7)))) +
MC.SHELF_LIFE) " +
"END " +
"END AS daysPastOrigRjct, " +
"R.P_O_NBR " +
"FROM ABCDEFG.LOCATION AS L, " +
"ABCDEFG.MATERIAL AS M, " +
"ABCDEFG.MATL_CONTROL AS MC, " +
"ABCDEFG.RECEIVAL AS R, " +
"ABCDEFG.SITE_UNIQUE AS S, " +
"ABCDEFG.VENDOR_NAME AS V " +
"WHERE MC.LOT_NBR = 'ABC' " +
"AND R.MCC = MC.MCC " +
"AND R.REC_DISP_STAT = 'I' " +
"AND M.REC_ID = R.REC_ID " +
"AND M.MATL_DISP_STAT = 'I' " +
"AND L.LOCATION = M.MATL_LOC " +
"AND S.SYSTEM_ID = L.SYSTEM_ID " +
"AND V.VNDR_CODE = R.VNDR_CODE " +
"GROUP BY RTST_DATE, S.SYSTEM_SITE, R.MCC, R.REC_ID,
M.MATL_LOC, " +
"M.MATL_TYPE, R.BUYOFF_STAT, R.RTST_STAT, V.VNDR_NAME,
R.REC_REJ_DTE, R.PGM_ID, " +
"R.VNDR_BATCH, R.REC_REJ_DTE_OVRDE, MC.CONT_DTE_BASIS,
R.REC_REJ_DTE, R.MFG_DTE, MC.SHELF_LIFE, " +
"R.SHPT_DTE, R.REC_DTE, R.P_O_NBR " +
"ORDER BY 1, 2, 3 DESC, 4";

I changed some of the names around, so if the names don't seem to match up, its cause i just changed them to display on this forum. And the statement does get lined up with correct quotations and all, it just didn't seem to line up inside this forum. Maybe I missed a comma or something, but I'll check that.

Like I said, the SQL statement works in DB2....... The SQL statement works from JSP and/or the Javabean if i get rid of the COUNT(*) and GROUP BY statements.
The SQL statement works if it's just SELECT COUNT(*).. But for whatever reason within JSP and JDBC, when I combine the two, the SQL statement doesn't execute.

Any ideas on what the problem is? I'm stuck at this point.

Thanks,
Thanks for the .applyPattern. It seems to work.
17 years ago
I'm having an issue with a web app I'm working on where it reads in a date from a mainframe DB, parses it, then displays it on a page.

The problem is the date comes in as a resultset string. the Format is "2006111"

Where it's the yyyy and Day of the Year.

I can read it in, parse it, and then display it on the jsp page and table.

However I need it to display as 4/04/2006 and not 2006111.

I'm stuck on how to convert day of year into the correct format..

I've did format it, but it comes out like 20/06/1111 and so on. Not what I need.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
17 years ago
It's great learning new things. It's great building new concepts and things.. I give all the respect to those who work on and build all the various open source products that are widely used across the world.

But in my world, projects need to get done.. I'd love to spend a month or two or three figuring out the the deep core knowledge of a framework or software package, but there are only so many hours in a day and days in a week.

And I'm not 25 years old anymore either when 100 hours a week was a good week and then I'd figure other stuff out on my own by working on my or other people's side projects.

while I continue to keep up to date and learn new things, those days of working all night and then working on my own side projects just for fun are sort of in the past for me.

I might work long hours to finish a project, but digging deep down into Linux or Windows or one of the millions of open source projects out there isn't an everyday occurrence anymore. I just don't have the time or desire to do that anymore.

Learning new things is one thing, figuring out how something works is one thing, but learning practically every new open source and commercial product that comes out every week just isn't gonna do it for me anymore.

It takes a lot of effort, brains, time, emotion, and stress when you are designing, researching, building, developing, testing, deploying, mantaining, and training new systems or reengineered systems that the idea of not only learning but figuring out to the bits and bytes on almost every new open source project that comes out has long lost it's luster for me and many people.

Maybe if i maintained a system where i played solitaire all day more than anything else, then i guess I'd have the energy to work on side projects, dig deep down into every open source that comes out.

But that isn't my world. I know people in IT that are in that world and i guess it's good for them, but i like being busy and I also like doing things outside of the computer world.

I learned a long time ago about balance and life.

Working 100+ hours a week was nice, but if you worked for one of the millions of dot com companies that crumbled, it wasn't exactly worth it in the end.

Yeah tons of things were learned about technology, programming, design, computers, and business. And I wouldn't replace that for the world, but on that same note, when a stock is worth less than the paper it is on, those long hard hours spent staring at a computer, figuring out how to get things working, how not to do things, and so on and basically having no social life or family life or working all the holidays and in the end having really nothing to show for it but....well i guess experience.

But missing out on most of my twenties I can't say was well worth it. The money would have been good if I worked at microsoft or an amazon and so on where stocks made people millionaires, but not for a crumbled dot com companies.

I like what I do, but i've learned to balance my life....

If I were in my twenties maybe I'd put all the time in to learn every bit and byte of most open source material, but at the present time, i will learn how it works, figure out how to use it within what I'm doing, get it to work, and move on.
It would be nice to learn everything, but if you use that same music analogy, most muscians these days and over the past 40 years rarely go back and re-learn Beethoven, Bach, Mozart and so on piece by piece, line by line and become near experts in it. And then move on to the Robert Johnson's, BB King'sand so on.

Most music over the years is kind of like programming. It's reused over and over but in a different way and a different light to create something newer, updated or different.

And time constraints play a huge part in everything. If I have 6 months to complete a project, but it might take me 3 months to learn everything about struts, JSF, spring, hibernate, and so on, my management probably wouldn't be happy. Yeah I'd become a near expert in a lot of 3rd party software or frameworks I would be using, but I probably wouldn't get the project done on time.

And in today's IT, many business people rarely know what IT people do and when it comes down to it, they want to see a return on investment. And if they don't understand IT, it'll be very hard to explain how a budget for 6 months is now 10 months because I or anybody else needed to learn the frameworks down to the bit and byte level. They'd either not give me good projects in the future, not trust that I'd get things done on time, get rid of me, or outsource the work for cheaper and quicker. No matter what, I'd be up the creek.

So yeah, it would be great to learn everything down to the last raindrop about a framework and whatver opensource you are using, but as you get older, the time constraints dont allow it, new projects many times means new frameworks you don't know, and family obligations limit your ability to learn something 24/7.

And as you get older burning out isn't something you want to do anymore. Especially when many of the lastest and greatest frameworks used become obsolete or fall by the wayside for whatever reasons.
Thanks for your reply.

Right now, I've basically set it up to where if the user needs to access the mainframe DB, they have to login. The login portion sends them to a login page where they have a set username and password and it's using j_security_check in websphere.

I've looked at other ways that it can be done, but management and the admins use something called RACF and it's setup to work inside of websphere with j_security_check.

So basically user logs in the web, j_security_check reads something in websphere which is then sent to the mainframe via Racf.

That all works fine.. There are better ways to do it, but this is the way the system works and they don't want to change that part of it.

But the major issue is to where i use the JDBC connection to retrieve, update, change records in the DB.

I can do all that stuff now using a connection pool, but the management wants to have each user connect to the DB..

They charge each user for CPU time and so on. If there were one connection only, it becomes hard to charge each user who logs onto the mainframe system because for all intensive purposes, it's just one DB connection.

And i haven't really found a way to track a user session or ways to use cookies or logs to know when a user logs on and off with j_security_check.

That might get around the whole connection pooling issue. Because like I said, they charge each customer/user every time they use the mainframe system.

Right now, with one connection pool, it would just show "ROLE A" always uses the mainframe. Problem is if ROLE A has 50 people doing different things.

I'm stuck on this issue.
I'm having the same sort of problem as some other poster regarding JDBC.

I've tried some examples, but the problem I have is in the fact that every example seems to show hard codes of the url and password.

That's great, but is there a way to get a database connection where the url and password from the users who log on can be used to connect to the database?

I can have the users log on to secured areas on the web, then connect them to the DB using a connection pool where it's basically a standard non-expiring password/url JDBC connection to connect to a DB.

The problem is, the project i'm working on needs to know who is connecting to the DB, for how long, and for what. The DB is on a mainframe system and if a user connects to it, that is how the customer's are charged.. For mainframe usage and such.

If they log in to the website, connect through the standard connection pool, there really isn't a way to charge them without making it a drawn out difficult process that will be left to whoever is maintaining the system. For all intensive purposes, it would just look like the connection pool should be charged. that won't work.

Right now i'm using j_security_check for loggin users into secured area's on the web and because that what was recommended to me, and it's already been setup on the app server to work with the mainframe db and users/password combos. So it was the best way to get users logged in.

I need to know or need some help on a way for Me to login through j_security_check, where it checks if i am a valid user, and then it connects to the DB using their username/password and not the standard conneciton pools username/password.

If that can't be done, I could just make it where anytime somebody connects to the mainframe DB, they have to log in.

But is there a way, with j_security_check, to be able to log or follow how long a user has accessed or been logged in so the customer can actually be charged for mainframe usage.

That is the way it is done and that' s the way they want to keep it. Be able to charge the user for mainframe usage.

Maybe it's not entirely a JDBC issue, but it is a combo of JDBC issues where i need a way to connect a user to a DB using their username/pw combo and not a standard JDBC connection pool username/password and on top of that, if that isn't possible, then I have to figure out a way with j_security_check to keep a log or something.

Any help would be great. Thanks.
it deals with security access to mainframe systems.

it stands for Resource Access Control Facility.
17 years ago
JSP
I'm trying to create a jsp login page where my authentication uses Racf on the mainframe system. But I'm not sure how this works and I haven't really had any luck finding many topics on this.

Anybody do something similar to this or have a clue how RacF and JSp login can interact?

thanks
17 years ago
JSP
What do you want to do?

It really depends on what kind of website you are building, what database your using, what data you are actually getting and posting.

If you build a bank app, you use certain logic, themes, and data while if you built some sports website with updated scores you'd gather different data.

While there is similarities, it really depends on what you are trying to build.

Building a sports website or even manufacturing website would rarely require mortgage rates, loan requests, massive amounts of numbers and calculations that a band application or stock app might use.

However, If you just want to gather some data and display it, all you need to do is look up some tutorials on google.

Create a simple web services like web app where you build a site and then update the stock reports.

Build some simple app where you connect to a database and grab reports or data and use the whole CRUD theory. Create, replace, update, and delete some data of that DB and then display the updates, changes and so on on the jsp or html page.
17 years ago
JSP
Maybe he meant that the server uses java 1.4 and not 1.5.

Who knows. Learn the new things, implement them if you have the time to learn JSF and so on well. If you don't have the time, learn the new things, but implement what you know well.

While new technologies are great, if you are on deadline, it's not worth creating an applicatin, system, website or whatever where it looks cool but it's not coded well or written well and it becomes a maintenance nightmare for you or anybody else involved in the future.
17 years ago