1. Being a Better RPG Programmer

What skills should an RPG programmer have besides knowledge of basic RPG? Written by Jim Staton Recently, I had the opportunity to interview candidates for a programming position at our company. I had just lost an excellent employee due to personal

2. The API Corner: Providing Access to an Application Function

All you need is the User Function Registration APIs. Written by Bruce Vining Last month, in "Accessing a Command Line," we looked at how the Retrieve User Information (QSYRUSRI) API could be used to control access to a specific function with an app

3. Profound Logic Blasts the Myths Surrounding Rational Open Access: RPG Edition

A Webcast takes on all challengers, asserting that the technology works elegantly to modernize source-code available applications while saving time and requiring no programming. Written by Chris Smith There has been an air of mystery and, thus, ske

4. Understanding and Exploiting Qshell on IBM i

Qshell's Unix-like interface to the iSeries is especially helpful for developing in Java and for working with the IFS. Written by Ted Holt and Fred A. Kulack Editor's Note: This article is an excerpt from the book Qshell for iSeries, which is avail

5. Practical SQL: Defining Your Data: TEXT and LABEL

Using DDL to define your data has a lot of benefits, but you still need to know a few tricks to get all of the features we enjoy in DDS. Read on for the secrets! Written by Joe Pluta Today's article is my first dedicated to Data Definition Language

6. RPG IV and a New Approach to Control-Break Processing

Essentially, what's old is new again! Written by Jim Martin Those of us who used the RPG cycle and L1, L2, etc. for control-break processing remember how slick it was. Very few lines of code were needed, since most of the work was being done by the

7. The CL Corner: Using the SQL Select Statement with RUNSQL

Would you like to query your database from CL? Written by Bruce Vining Last month, in "Introducing the New Run SQL Command," we reviewed how you could insert, update, and delete rows/records in a database using the RUNSQL CL command. Today, we'll l

8. CA Plex Could Be the Best Development Tool of All, Reader Says

After reviewing our choice of the top 10 development tools, one reader speaks up in favor of CA's under-promoted rapid application development tool. Written by Chris Smith Whenever you publish a wrap-up article listing industry products, you often

9. PHP 1: What You Need to Know Before You Start

So you're a great RPG programmer. Is that enough? Maybe not. Written by David Shirey So, here you are, an RPG professional, all dressed up and ready to go. You can code up RPG real good, even some ILE. Got all that CL and DDS stuff mastered, but da

10. The API Corner: Accessing a Command Line

The Display Command Line Window (QUSCMDLN) API makes it easy! Written by Bruce Vining When recently visiting a client, I overheard one of their developers mention the desire to get to a command line from within an application program. There is, of

11. Technology Focus: Application Modernization Isn't Just Good for You, It's Getting Critical

Being able to offer a nice UI, browser access, and Web services access in your IBM i apps is all to the good. However, there are hidden bumps in the road to app modernization. Written by John Ghrist "Application modernization" has come to mean many

12. Practical RPG: New Open-Source EGL Tools for RPG Developers

How quickly can you build multi-tiered Rich Internet Applications? With the new open-source EGL Development Tools, you can measure your development time in hours, not days or weeks. Written by Joe Pluta I have been an advocate of EGL for a long tim

13. How Much Do You Know About Job Switches?

This in-depth discussion about the IBM i job switches may reveal surprising—and helpful—information. Written by Junlei Li The design of the job switches can be traced back to earlier IBM midrange systems such as System/3, the first generation o

14. Power i Forecast: Top 10 Development Tools

Today's tools are getting so sophisticated that business users with no programming experience can easily develop robust applications. Written by Chris Smith The importance of tools to the IBM i community can't be underestimated, but they, like rest

15. The CL Corner: Introducing the New Run SQL Command

Would you like some SQL with your CL? Written by Bruce Vining It would appear that thank-you cards to family members of the IBM CL SQL development teams might be in order as these IBM developers seem to be putting in lots of overtime—and not gett

16. Update Your Data with Peace of Mind Using Commitment Control

Learn how to use commitment control in your RPG programs to ensure a complete transaction and how to roll back the changes when unable to complete. Written by Tom Snyder I'm usually talking about powerful IBM i resources that can do great things wi

17. The API Corner: More on UNIX-Type Time Values

There are some things you need to consider when using epoch-based time values. Written by Bruce Vining Last month, in the article "Understanding and Using UNIX-Type Time Values," we looked at how to answer the specific question, "Does anyone know h

18. Practical SQL: Using Old World Tools with New World Data

Using DDL to define your files provides a wealth of new features, but just which features should you embrace? Some of that depends on the tools you use, and this article explains a couple of pitfalls. Written by Joe Pluta The ongoing SQL vs. native

19. The Case for SQL CASE

SQL CASE expressions are powerful. Understand their syntax and where they can be used. Written by Sam Lennon Did you know that the SQL CASE construct can be used in SQL SELECT and UPDATE statements and in WHERE, GROUP BY, and ORDER BY clauses? This

20. Cool Things: A Simple Utility for Sending HTML Emails on the IBM i

Send a simple message to notify a user when a batch job completes, or send a detailed notification to a customer, or anything in between. Written by Mike Faust If you've used the SNDDST command on the IBM i to send email messages, you know that thi

21. The CL Corner: New Support for CL Commands Lets You Know When a Command Ends

Need to know when "something" has finished? The Command Analyzer Retrieve exit point capability tells you what you need to know. Written by Bruce Vining This month, I had planned on looking at the DDS details of implementing the message subfile (re

22. Are Web and Mobile Apps Becoming a Challenge? Try a Modern Wireframe Tool

Today's drag-and-drop prototyping applications could turn designing a modern interface into child's play. Written by Chris Smith Designing colorful, artistic, and user-friendly interfaces is not something that RPG programmers generally could claim

23. Lotus Domino Designer Now Supports Mobile Apps

IBM is now offering support for a number of popular open-source components to its Eclipse-based rapid application development (RAD) tool. Written by Chris Smith With the emphasis on mobile applications and social networking, many shops today are tr

24. Use Qshell Tools to Clean Up Your IFS Automatically

Create a useful RPG program to purge unnecessary files from your IFS. Written by Tom Snyder The year-end stuff is over, you've captured all your yearly snapshot data in their own files, and you're feeling pretty good about yourself. Next thing is t

25. The API Corner: Understanding and Using UNIX-Type Time Values

Learn how to format a returned value such as 1,329,293,701 to a fixed definition of days, months, years, etc. Written by Bruce Vining Earlier this month, over on the RPG Programming section of the IBM i mailing list rpg400-l@midrange.com, this ques

26. Harnessing the Power of Control Language Programming for IBM i

Learn how to execute commands in batch using SBMJOB in this excerpt from the MC Press book Control Language Programming for IBM i. Written by Jim Buck, Bryan Myers, and Dan Riehl The SBMJOB (Submit Job) CL command lets you submit a batch job to a j

27. A Visual Guide to Cost-Effective Testing on the iSeries

By bringing practical tools and advanced techniques to how you test, the costs and risks associated with testing can be reduced dramatically. Written by Databorough Services The following article is an extract from the white paper "A Visual Guide t

28. Practical RPG: Handling Abnormal Termination in Servers

One of the hard parts of any server-based architecture is knowing when your server has been canceled; this article shows you how to address that. Written by Joe Pluta I saw an email message in the midrange.com mailing lists the other day about the

29. Prompted SQL DDL Creation

Not familiar with SQL CREATE TABLE syntax? No problem! There's a really easy way to create SQL DDL (Data Definition Language) statements. Written by Sam Lennon IBM i developers are becoming more comfortable exploiting the power of SQL to retrieve a

30. The CL Corner: Letting the User Know What's Right and Wrong

Use a message subfile to return error information to the user. Written by Bruce Vining Anyone who has been following this column for a while probably knows that I believe in using messages whenever possible. Messages are a wonderful way of keeping

31. Get the Day of the Week, Full Text Date Values, and More Within RPG Using SQL

Create useful date-centric service programs with embedded SQL. Written by Tom Snyder Welcome to 2012! All of our year-end processes are complete, and it's the beginning of a new year with a clean slate. 2011 was a very clean year date-wise because

32. The API Corner: Renaming and Moving Objects Doesn't Have to Be Difficult

The Rename Object API offers flexibility above and beyond just renaming. Written by Bruce Vining In last month's article, Deleting Objects, we reviewed a rather general-purpose API: Delete Object (QLIDLTO). This month, we'll look at another general

33. What Are the Differences Between DB2 for i and SQL Server SQL Syntax?

Avoid headaches and wasted time by learning the major differences between DB2 for i and T-SQL dialects. Written by Michael Sansoterra It's apparent by emails I've received that some SQL Server developers are having an opportunity to delve into the

34. Practical CL: Extracting a Bit

Extracting a bit can be done a number of ways, but the code in this article uses only the basic arithmetic capabilities of CL. Written by Joe Pluta This article is sort of the antithesis of what we normally do in RPG Developer. Sometimes, you need

35. Maximize the Abilities of the LDA

Store pointers in a job's Local Data Area. Written by Junlei Li The Local Data Area (LDA) is a user-domain, permanent space object (with MI object type code/subtype code hex 19CE) that is allocated to each IBM i job by the system when the job becom

36. Using Binding Directories with Your Service Programs

Make compiling easier for service programs with the use of binding directories. Written by Tom Snyder With the end of the year comes time to close out my series of articles on service programs. In previous articles, I discussed how to create a serv

37. The API Corner: Deleting Objects

The Delete Object API offers flexibility in terms of removing unneeded objects. Written by Bruce Vining As a new year approaches, many of you may be looking at general house-cleaning of your i. This activity might include deleting those objects tha

38. Practical SQL: UDFs and Service Programs, Part II

With a little creativity, SQL allows you to add a form of overloading to RPG that can really extend your toolkit. Written by Joe Pluta In the previous article in this series, I created a simple user-defined function (UDF) that acted as an SQL inter

39. Want to Know All the MI Object Types Supported by Your IBM i?

Retrieve the exact table of MI object types via the undocumented API QLICNV. Written by Junlei Li On IBM i, historically there are two flavors when referring to objects. At the MI level, MI objects are categorized by a 2-byte MI object type code (1

40. Need a Quick App Deployed to the Web? Try RapidBiz from VACAVA

An affordable cloud-based development environment for SMBs, the solution promises to be a quick Web application builder for business users and one that developers can utilize to shave hours off time spent programming. Written by Chris Smith In our

41. Is a Graphical Debugger for IBM i Really an Improvement?

You can try one at no charge since it's already included with the operating system. Written by Chris Smith A study a few years ago concluded that software bugs cost the U.S. economy alone more than $59 billion annually and that more than a third of

42. Features and Cautions of the Binding Language

Find out how to support multiple signatures and what to be aware of when changing service programs. Written by Tom Snyder I initially intended on just doing a three-part series that worked its way toward binding directories, but I feel as though I

43. Curious About Finding Errors in SQL Statements?

With the help of the QSQCHKS API, you can easily and quickly find where errors occur. Written by Andrew Shelestov A lot of people run SQL statements often, but few of them can find the place where an error occurs in those statements. In this articl

44. Subfiles and Data Queues: A Perfect Combination

Provide your users with everything they've ever wanted in a subfile program. Written by Kevin Vandever Editor's Note: This article is an excerpt from the book Subfiles in Free-Format RPG published by MC Press.   If you've ever looked at Program

45. Case Study: ASNA Wings: Re-imagining Modernization at INFOCON, Both Ways

Modernizing for a GUI doesn't mean you have to give up the power of RPG. Written by Thomas M. Stockwell Fueled by the talent of more than a dozen IBM RPG programmers, and an overall staff of 50, INFOCON is an IBM Business Partner with a vision of e

46. Practical SQL: UDFs and Service Programs, Part I

In this installment of our continuing series on using SQL in real business applications, we introduce the concept of invoking service programs from within SQL. Written by Joe Pluta We continue to provide you with examples of integrating SQL with tr

47. Uncover the Secret of the Changed Object List (COL)

Discover the essence and usage of the COL associated with a library. Written by Junlei Li In the reply post in 2009 to a question called "Best Way to Check if a Library Has At Least 1 Changed Object" in the midrange-l mailing list, CRPence mentione

48. QuickLook: PlanetJ Web Object Wizard Community Edition (WOW CE) V7.0

Create database-interfaced Web applications for IBM i in five minutes—for free! Written by PlanetJ Corporation WOW CE 7.0 is a free rapid application development (RAD) tool for IBM i that can build robust Web applications or serve as a query and

49. The API Corner: The Case of the Missing Stream Files, Part II

Process the data returned by the QjoRetrieveJournalEntries API. Written by Bruce Vining Last month, in "The Case of the Missing Stream Files," we saw how to call the QjoRetrieveJournalEntries API, documented here, in order to access all journal ent

50. Using Binding Language with Your Service Programs

Do you know how to recompile your service programs without having to recompile all programs using the service program? Written by Tom Snyder I have to admit that the binding language was a late discovery for me, and I've struggled for quite awhile