It has been almost a year that IBM acquired SPSS. Still many business users ask how to get more out of BI tools such as Cognos. Quoting IBM:

The combination of C8 BI and SPSS predictive analytics gives IBM customers more power and accuracy in answering the question of What should I be doing in the future? The combination of the powerful C8 BI analysis of current and historical data with the predictive analytic capability of the SPSS portfolio provides IBM customers with the predictive ‘brains’ for the next generation of decision making and business optimization.
The addition of the SPSS portfolio allows customers to leverage and extend their C8 BI investment by enhancing their analysis capabilities with predictive analytics. More specifically, the addition of SPSS predictive analytics helps analyze patterns found in historical and current transaction data as well as attitudinal survey data to predict potential future outcomes and proactively act upon that insight to drive better business outcomes.
Together with the market leading reporting and dashboarding capabilities of C8 BI, this predictive intelligence can be broadly distributed ensuring that decision makers across the organization gain those insights to drive business performance.

This may sound abstract, but in practical terms, with the ability to build sophisticated data models, SPSS enables extracting the essence of the heaps of data available today, and as a result dramatically reducing the time to present actionable information to decision makers. Still too abstract? By deploying models built with SPSS, decision makers can get answers to questions that otherwise might have required massive IT investment in more infrastructure, such as storage, memory and processing power. Want to know more? Don’t hesitate to contact us at +1-303-423-4500 or 888-642-7874.

The home page for IBM’s main security testing tool is IBM Rational AppScan

Since Windows Vista (that includes Windows 7), the place where programs store some of their information has changed. This makes finding the DB2 log files (equivalent of db2diag.log) more difficult.

Solution

The log files have moved under the directory tree node C:/Program Data/IBM/DB2/DB2COPY1/DB2. Under that directory there is a log and an events directory. This being Windows, the events directory has the logs that on Linux/Unix are the equivalent of the db2diag.log.

References

Windows Vista: Where is db2diag.log location?

When the domino server caches an MX record, and that record changes, it may take time before the cache is refreshed. In some instances it is desirable to have the DNS cache refreshed on demand.

Solution

On the Domino console (IBM Domino Administrator -> Server… -> Status -> Server Console) run the following domino command:
tell router update config
If you need the cache to be refreshed more often, you can set this command to run on a schedule as well.

The explain tables allow to create access plans and visualize them. Before the explain feature of DB2 can be used, the EXPLAIN tables need to be generated.

Solution

To create the EXPLAIN tables, the following command needs to be issued while connected to the database that the access plain needs to be generated in:
CALL SYSPROC.SYSINSTALLOBJECTS('EXPLAIN','C',NULL,'EXPLAIN_SCHEMA')


When using SMTP TLS, the IBM Domino server shows the following error in the log file:
SSL Error: Keyring File access error

Solution

When engaging the STARTTLS command, the Domino server looks in the default location for the Keyring file with the default name: keyfile.kyr and keyfile.sth. The location is the data root specified for the Domino server.

References

Notes/Domino 6 and 7 Forum

When using a complex email infrastructure, multiple email servers are involved usually. The core servers typically take care of managing the data that users access in their day to day activities. Other servers can be used for SPAM/Virus filtering, archival, store and forward functions. It is important for all these servers to be able to synchronize the list of valid users. The IBM Domino Server is perfect for this. For each organization, email administrators can configure a virtual LDAP server that handles the needs for authentication and user list synchronization.

Solution

In order to authenticate the the LDAP server on IBM Domino, the following steps are needed:

• In the server configuration, under Web / Internet Sites, configure an LDAP server for your organisation
• In the LDAP client that you want to connect from, specify the admin user for the connection as follows:
CN=User Name of Administrator/O=Organization Name
• To retrieve the valid email users, you can use this query:
Srtring: (|(mail=*@%s)(proxyAddresses=smtp:*@%s))
Attributes: mail, proxyAddresses

Writing efficient SQL SELECTqueries for DB2 can be tricky. Some general SQL guidelines apply, and there are also specific practices that apply only to DB2.

Solution

Here is a list of tips you can use to write good SELECT queries:

• Avoid SELECT * in your queries. Instead, state the columns you want to select.
• Use the consistent acronyms to alias your table names (makes it easier to read joins)
• Use FETCH ONLY x ROWS to limit the results set
• Use CASE or MERGE instead of UNION ALL

References

• Efficient SELECT statements
• Writing and Tuning Queries for Optimal Performance

One of our IBM Domino servers all of a sudden decided that it couldn’t get an exclusive lock on its database files any longer. The databases happened to be on a NetApp head, and even after rebooting the server, the locking problem would persist. I other words, Domino’s nfslock was failing. As a result Domino wouldn’t start, and would send out errors to the domino startup log file similar to:

“Directory Assistance failed opening Primary Domino Directory names.nsf, error: This database is currently in use by another process”

Solution

Turns out that the NetApp lock table is sensitive to the server name and not the IP address. As a result, a lock from domino12.domain.com isn’t the same as a lock from domino12. To make matters worse, a Red Hat Linux machine might present itself either way depending on the config file details (even the order of the short name vs long name in the hosts file matters).

How to confirm the problem? On the NetApp, list the locks with

lock status -f

Now that you know the client name under witch the lock shows up, you can clear the lock with

priv set advanced
sm_mon -l clientname
priv set

Finally, you can check the the lock is gone with:

lock status -f


References

• Netapp Oracle Migration
• N series Snapshot: A Technical Discussion
• Best practices for Implementing Lotus Domino in a Storage Area Network (SAN) Environment

Patching AIX can be intimidating at first for someone coming from the Windows / Linux world. AIX has capabilities that natively support production quality operations. One of these qualities is that one can install patches on an alternative volume, make that volume bootable for testing and allowing an easy way out if something doesn’t work right. Since AIX 5.3, it is also possible to install patches on the same volume as the boot volume and define boot profiles to boot at a certain patch level. In this post we will just look at the basics of patching, emulating the equivalent of “yum update” or the “windows express update” (taking Linux / Windows as analogy).

Steps

• Download available patches for current technology level:
smitty suma <Enter>
Download Updates Now (Easy) <Enter>
Download All Latest Fixes <Enter> <Enter>
• Install patches:
smitty update_all
specify INPUT device: /usr/sys/inst.images/installp/ppc <Enter>
go down to "ACCEPT new license agreements?" <Tab> (to switch to "yes") <Enter> <Enter>

That’s it. You can reboot in case there were kernel updates or APARs that recommend a reboot. To check the current patch level, you can run oslevel -s.