Skip to Main Content
IBM Power Ideas Portal


This portal is to open public enhancement requests against IBM Power Systems products, including IBM i. To view all of your ideas submitted to IBM, create and manage groups of Ideas, or create an idea explicitly set to be either visible by all (public) or visible only to you and IBM (private), use the IBM Unified Ideas Portal (https://ideas.ibm.com).


Shape the future of IBM!

We invite you to shape the future of IBM, including product roadmaps, by submitting ideas that matter to you the most. Here's how it works:

Search existing ideas

Start by searching and reviewing ideas and requests to enhance a product or service. Take a look at ideas others have posted, and add a comment, vote, or subscribe to updates on them if they matter to you. If you can't find what you are looking for,

Post your ideas
  1. Post an idea.

  2. Get feedback from the IBM team and other customers to refine your idea.

  3. Follow the idea through the IBM Ideas process.


Specific links you will want to bookmark for future use

Welcome to the IBM Ideas Portal (https://www.ibm.com/ideas) - Use this site to find out additional information and details about the IBM Ideas process and statuses.

IBM Unified Ideas Portal (https://ideas.ibm.com) - Use this site to view all of your ideas, create new ideas for any IBM product, or search for ideas across all of IBM.

ideasibm@us.ibm.com - Use this email to suggest enhancements to the Ideas process or request help from IBM for submitting your Ideas.

Status Not under consideration
Workspace IBM i
Categories Db2 for i
Created by Guest
Created on Jul 18, 2018

Generate an error in the event of memory corruption

We would like an enhancement to protect or ensure that the storage areas that are used
by DB2 are not corrupted by a cobol program or RPG program / or if
there is corruption that an error is generated ( rather than returning
an sql code like +100).


This is related to PMR 37880-122-000 in which we found out an RPG
subroutine corrupted the db2 memory area used by the application.
It was an RPG or a cobol program that calls an RPG subroutine and the RPG
was populating the field passed in the linkage area and using the incorrect length.
The other situation we had was a cobol program calling an cobol subroutine with
(subroutine had a larger linkage field receiving value being passed
and then moved data into that field to be sent back.
Since then we have came across other errors during system testing that
linkage areas between subroutines are incorrect, and other sql errors
have been generated.

We want the system to confirm that the sql
memory area was not damaged by a rpg/cobol program prior to running an
sql statement. For example a checksum digit or something to confirm the
integrity of this storage. We realize our applications are partially
at fault but it seems like this area of storage should be protected.

We are also concerned that possibly we could get a sqlcode +000 and the
wrong account was updated or our application will falsely report there
are no accounts with that criteria and there are ones out on the
database.

We have been seeing return codes such as -302 that we determined was
due to memory corruption, and I suspect -204's we have encountered are
also related to this.

Currently we are reviewing the linkage areas on all of
subroutines and trying to take as much corrective action as possible.
We believe the potential is there and it may be a very hard
problem to solve/track back to if it happens intermittently in
production during the processing of accounts.


Use Case:

We have this issue in a cobol program that calls an RPG subroutine and the RPG was populating the field passed in the linkage area and using the incorrect length.

The other situation we had was a cobol program calling an cobol subroutine with (subroutine had a larger linkage field receiving value being passed, and then moved data into that field to be sent back.


Idea priority Urgent
  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Feb 15, 2019

    Thank you for your request. After investigating what it would take to do additional checking, we determined it would be performance-prohibitive to do so. Therefore this request is being declined.