Play Time = Productive Time?

[sfordenbacher]

I wrote a system on the iseries that allows our QC operators to measure various physical dimensions for our parts. In fact every part has different dimension measuring requirements and acceptable limits, everything is control file driven. Once the test data is recorded, the data is stored in DB2, and we generate statistical reports such as histograms and control charts. The software that does the charting is a PC based tool that uses ODBC. The way we tell the PC tool what to chart is by generating a complex XML document. So cgidev2 was in fact a life saver that made generating the xml file much easier.

[lujate]

The two URL's for the source (http://www.mcpressonline.com/ftp/prog/02/MCPRESSXML.zip & http://www.mcpressonline.com/ftp/prog/02/ProdTempl.zip) are not working.

[V.Mack]

My apologies. The links should work now. Victoria Mack, Executive Editor

[Guest.Visitor]

Hi Jon, Should you wrap the XML character field data in an Encode2()? After all, I've been thinking about creating a product number in our system that is called '<>&". Thanks for the article. ) Chris

[Guest.Visitor]

Greetings, Jon! After attending a few of your sessions at COMMON this Spring in Anaheim, I decided to use CGIDEV2 and Scott Klement's HTTPAPI in our shop's XML project. (Since we're still at V5R2, we're unable to utilize the XML-abilities of RPGIV available in V5R4.) We needed to build an XML file, put it into a SOAP wrapper and send it to the Medical Information Bureau (MIB)--then parse the response from the MIB and print the relevant data for our customer. CGIDEV2 helped tremendously! Our template contained the SOAP wrapper as well as the XML, and writing the file to the IFS was a piece of cake. HTTPAPI then aided the sending of the XML file via an HTTP POST, and the parsing of the response. It's a beautiful thing. Thanks so much for bringing it to our attention!

[Guest.Visitor]

kgibson, I did something very similar. My problem was that some of the variables in the /COPY books from CGIDEV2 and LIBHTTP are named the same, so I got compiler errors. I had to break that logic up into separate programs. This was only a minor inconvenience, for the end result. Chris

[JonFParis]

Hi Chris, Yes - if you need to include characters that have specific meaning in XML in the data then it should be encoded. I debated whether to include this information in the article, but it can get complex quickly and I decided it was better to not confuse the issue at this point. I do intend to write a follow up a some point in the future which will cover this topic. If I have time later I'll dig out some references to threads in various forums that discuss this topic. Glad you liked the article.

[JonFParis]

Wow - that's terrific to hear. It really is a great approach - particularly if the "shape" of the XML document is likely to change in the future. You can often just get away with changing the template. Good to hear that Scott's terrific work came in handy for you as well. Thanks for writing.

[JonFParis]

Hi Chris, It is one of the limitations of the RPG /COPY that you have no option to change the names in a COPY member as you can in COBOL for example. I'm a bit surprised though since I know Scott uses naming conventions that are designed to avoid such collisions. What variables in particular were involved? If they relate to common structures such as USEC then you could probably avoid the problem by using conditional compilation directives to wrap those portions of the code so that they are not included if the other version is already present.

[Guest.Visitor]

Jon, CGIDEV2/QRPGLESRC,PrototypeB and LIBHTTP/QRPGLESRC,IFSIO_H have lots of IFS root system type collisions. (O_RDONLY, O_WRONLY, O_RDWR, read, write, etc). I didn't see a way to avoid it using DEFINED. If you can suggest a way, that would be great. Thanks. Chris