It’s been quite a while since I’ve written about something that’s not really new. I thought it might be nice to review how you can display history log messages via the Navigator graphical user interface.
In the Navigator Web console, the history log is found in the System navigation area, as the screen capture below shows:
When you display the history log on the GUI, the default behavior is to list messages from the past hour. If you need to see messages from other timeframes, take the Actions → Include option. The panel that is displayed allows you to input the parameters similar to that of the DSPLOG command – beginning and ending date and times, specific jobs you may interested in, as well as specific message IDs you may be looking for.
As with all tables in the Navigator GUI, you can sort on any of the table columns. You can also customize the columns; what’s very nice with the history log is the ability to include the From user column. This is the job current user – which we all know is very useful to have! On the green screen interface, you have to go into the message details to see the From user; on the GUI you can get the From user included as a column in the table.
Here is an example of my customized table:
Another really nice feature is the Work with job column (which is shown by default). It provides a link to the job (if it still exists in the system) so you can easily access the work management options for the job that sent the message. You can also right-click and get a pop-up menu where you can select the work with job option as well as the ability to display the detailed information (properties) about the message.
In case you were not aware of it, there is an API interface to the history log. The Open List of History Log Messages (QMHOLHST) returns information about the messages that were sent to the QHST message queue. This API was introduced in the 6.1 release.
I also wrote about a few other history log secrets some time ago in The Secret History Log Enhancements.
This blog post was edited for currency on March 29, 2020.
This blog post was originally published on IBMSystemsMag.com and is reproduced here by permission of IBM Systems Media.