How to access objects that are in Auxiliary Storage Pool (ASP) ?

[ranga543]

I'm not a RPG developer but we are trying automate some using ansible on IBM I and we came across an issue to related Auxiliary Storage Pool. We have our libraries or programs in ASP and we are trying to access them via itoolkit. Is it possible to access via itoolkit ?

If it's not right place to ask this question, please close the issue.

[kadler]

If you call the SETASPGRP command as the first action, does that work?

[ranga543]

@kadler I didn't try that but If you want I can give it a try.
Is it like itool.add(iCmd('command', 'SETASPGRP(TEST)'))

[kadler]

Yep, exactly. You'll have to do that at the same time you call your programs as every time you make a call, you'll get a new job.

[ranga543]

@kadler I tried below snippet didn't work it's throwing following error Library X not found for data area

asp_group='TEST'
conn = dbi.connect()
itransport = iDB2Call(conn)
itool = iToolKit()
if not asp_group:
  itool.add(iCmd('command', "SETASPGRP({})".format(asp_group), {'error': 'on'}))
itool.add(iCmd('command', command, {'error': 'on'}))
itool.call(itransport)

[kadler]

Looks like the code as written will not call SETASPGRP unless none is set. I think you mean:

if asp_group:
  itool.add(iCmd('command', "SETASPGRP({})".format(asp_group), {'error': 'on'}))

[ranga543]

@kadler sorry we fixed that and we are getting following message

ASP group TEST not set for thread X'0000000000000001'.                                     
Cause . . . . . :   An attempt to set the auxiliary storage pool (ASP) group                                       
for the current thread failed. The reason code is 1. The reason codes are: 1                                       
- Set is not allowed by an active operating system function. For a list of                                       
these functions, see the help for the SETASPGRP command. 2 - Commitment                                       
control with uncommitted resources is active. 3 - The thread has an SQL                                      
connection with pending work or the thread is running an SQL stored                                    
procedure, user defined function or trigger. Recovery  . . . :   For reason                                      
code 1, use the set ASP group operation in some other job. For example, do                                      
this through use the Submit Job (SBMJOB) command. 

[ranga543]

@kadler any ideas ?

[kadler]

My guess is that because it's coming in through a stored procedure and the default is to run in that job instead of using a spawned job, it won't let you run SETASPGRP. You could try using the SSH, HTTP, or direct transports which don't have that problem.

[kadler]

Though truthfully, I'm not an ASP expert, so I'm not sure if that will work either.

[kadler]

Or instead of connecting to *LOCAL database, you could use the RDB name for the IASP you want to use.

[ranga543]

@kadler It worked when I used DirectTransport. Thank you

[ranga543]

@kadler Noticed when we use DirectTransport it's not returning actual command stand output instead it just shows success but when it's fails it's showing up actual stand error output.

{u'success': u'+++ success SETASPGRP ASPGRP(TEST)'}

we don't need stand output for this particular command but we have other commands that requires stand output to do some operation based on that.

Is there way to get around the problem ?

[kadler]

Do you want the display output? Not sure what you mean by "stand output", but for display output you can use iCmd5250.

[ranga543]

@kadler I tried with iCmd5250 but it seems to be throwing some kind of error
test.py

from itoolkit import *
from itoolkit.transport import DirectTransport

itransport = DirectTransport()
itool = iToolKit()
itool.add(iCmd5250('aspgroup_cmd', 'SETASPGRP ASPGRP(TEST)'))
itool.call(itransport)
cmd_out = itool.dict_out('aspgroup_cmd')

if 'error' in cmd_out:
  print ('test')
  print (cmd_out['error'])
  exit()

{'aspgroup_cmd': {'error': {...}}, u'error1': u" ?xml version='1.0'? xmlservice /sh /xmlservice ", u'error': u'*BADPARSE'}

[kadler]

Please open a new issue for this.