FAQs

What are the benefits of insure/RESOURCES

insure/RESOURCES allows you to dramatically increase your ability to protect the availability and performance of core business applications with minimal time investment or expertise. By letting IT take charge of when and how queries are run, system slowdowns caused by queries can be minimized or completely prevented.

What query interfaces are supported by insure/RESOURCES

insure/RESOURCES allows you to define policies for Query/400, Open Query File (OPNQRYF), Interactive SQL (STRSQL), Run SQL Statement (RUNSQLSTM), and ODBC/JDBC.

How does insure/RESOURCES help me manage my environment?

insure/RESOURCES allows you to proactively manage queries with default policies built into the product or policies that you define. Once policies are in place, insure/RESOURCES enforces those rules freeing you from constantly monitoring your system and worrying about impacts to your production applications.

How does insure/RESOURCES give me the power to manage my environment?

At the most basic level, you can restrict the use of query interfaces to specific times of day. This allows you to guarantee that queries can only run when they will not impact higher-priority work. At the more advanced level you can control resource settings very precisely for any given situation. Since you are busy, insure/RESOURCES does the day-to-day work of protecting your system. You simply define policies and let insure/RESOURCES to the rest.

How do permissions work within insure/RESOURCES?

insure/RESOURCES allows you to grant users permission to access query interfaces such as Query/400 during defined periods. For example, if month-end processing will finish at 3:00 on Thursday, you can prevent specific users from running queries until 3:00. If users access the temporarily restricted commands or interfaces they are presented with a message telling them when access will be granted again.

How do you define permission policies?

You simply choose a user profile, group profile, or all profiles and a time period. Once you decide whom to define rules for and the time period of interest, you simply either grant or revoke permission to access the interface.

How do resource controls let me stop queries from monopolizing my system?

Resource controls let you decide what job and query attributes are used when a query interface is used. These attributes fall into two categories - those used by default when a query interfaces is started and those used when a query is estimated to exceed a predefined time limit.

How do the query time limits work?

insure/RESOURCES allows you to define actions when a query is expected to fall within defined time ranges. For example, you may wish to downgrade a job from normal interactive priority to batch priority when a query is expected to take more than five minutes. This allows the user to run the query but lets you limit the impact it will have on other work being done on the system.

What options are available when insure/RESOURCES estimates the amount of time a query will take?

You have options to record the fact that the query is expected to take more than a predetermined amount of time, inform a system operator the query is about to run, adjust the job's priority, call a program you have written, or simply cancel the request. You can also choose perform actions for certain job types (e.g. batch or interactive) or only if the AS/400's CPU utilization is higher than a percentage you choose. The bottom line is that you can be very specific when defining rules for users and query interfaces but at the same time have great flexibility over the actions taken when the rules are enforced.

Does insure/RESOURCES ever "upgrade" a job?

Yes, insure/RESOURCES will restore a job's attributes back to their original settings once it is determined that a query or query command is no longer running. The means that insure/RESOURCES protects your production work while being as non-disruptive to users as possible.

How do I know what insure/RESOURCES has done?

insure/RESOURCES optionally logs all of the actions it takes so you can see the historical pattern of query use and how many times policies have been used in order to stabilize your AS/400 environment.

What if I want to do something not supported in the product?

If you wish to accomplish other tasks related to query processing, you can define a program to call when resource thresholds are exceeded. This gives you the ability to implement your own actions or rules that extend Leftfield Technology's built-in rules.

How does insure/RESOURCES relate to insure/INDEX and insure/ANALYSIS?

insure/INDEX and insure/ANALYSIS are designed to help you utilize different tools to take the next step in your performance management activities. They include powerful tools to help you do in-depth performance analysis, reporting, and tuning. It is intended for AS/400 shops with a need to not only monitor and control their environment but a need to take the next step and successfully improve the performance of their ERP, Data Warehouse, or e-commerce applications.