Conditional masking provides developers with another tool for protecting sensitive data.

Written by Kent Milligan

In the first article that I wrote on the DB2 for i field procedure (FieldProc) support in the IBM i 7.1 release, I shared that the Field Procedure support delivered at GA should not be used to conditionally returned masked values due to the risk of data loss. Thus, a FieldProc program written for a credit card column on a decode call always needed to return the credit card number ('1100220033004400') instead of a masked version ('************4400') of the credit card number for unauthorized users.

Learn the details behind the User Function Registration APIs.

Written by Bruce Vining

In last month's API Corner, we took an initial look at the QsyRegisterFunction API of the set of APIs supporting User Function Registration. The API was used to first define a product, BVS_APPLICATIONS, and to then define a function within the product, BVS_CMD_LINE_WINDOW. For space reasons, the API parameters in that article were hard-coded and not explained in any detail. This month, we'll take a deeper dive into this API and see how you can customize access to various application features.

Rational Open Access for RPG Edition may be the most important thing IBM has ever done for its midrange platform.

Written by Roger Pence

The green-screen, character-based user interface has been the IBM i's nemesis since the mid-90s. We probably have Windows to thank for this fickle frustration. Once we all got used to the notion of pull-down menus, radio buttons, and snazzy colors, the old-fashioned green-screen user interface became annoying very quickly. Over the years, we've seen many attempts to make the IBM i feel more modern. We've endured IBM's OS/2-based "polymorphic GUI" (remember that?), a litany of screen scrapers (none of which ever fooled anyone), and browser-based emulators that never quite delivered on their promise.