By Bruce Vining

Control Language (CL) has seen many significant enhancements in recent releases. With V5R3, CL was enhanced with structured programming constructs such as DOFOR, DOUNTIL, and DOWHILE and the associated commands ITERATE and LEAVE; SELECT and the associated commands WHEN, OTHERWISE, and ENDSELECT; etc. V5R4 followed with additional enhancements, such as subroutines with the command CALLSUBR and the associated SUBR and ENDSUBR controls; data structures with the support of STG(*DEFINED) variables on the DCL; the ability to define compiler options in the CL source using DCLPRCOPT, etc. V6R1 continues this trend with several significant enhancements that impact the development and problem determination associated with CL applications.

Others will think you work for IBM.

By Ted Holt

A System i developer recently informed me that after several years of programming, he is finally learning to create commands. I am amazed that many developers have worked many years with the System i and its predecessors, yet have never created a command, but it seems to be very common.

This developer mentioned two areas that have given him trouble, and I was able to help him. First, he wanted to understand how to qualify an object. Second, he wanted to add help text to his command. I have seen this guy's code, and I know that he is very capable. I have no doubt that the commands he produces will be indistinguishable from those IBM ships with i5/OS. Here's the information I gave him. I hope it will be of benefit to many others.

Holidays should be fun! With CL-based variables, at least they're not a headache.

By Bruce Vining

In the last column in this series, we looked at how to calculate a date such that it would be a minimum of 60 days from an arbitrary date and ensure that the calculated date did not fall on a Saturday or Sunday. We accomplished this using the i5/OS APIs CEEDAYS, CEEDYWK, and CEEDATE. We noticed, however, that holidays were not being handled. When avoiding a Saturday or Sunday calculation, we would use the following Monday, which might be a holiday. In today's column, we'll look at one possible solution for bypassing holidays. Note that there are many, many possible ways to handle holidays. This is simply one: one that may be better or worse than other methods, depending on your situation.

Format and name derived columns when you use SQL to do ad hoc analysis of information in an SQL table.

By Skip Marchesani

I frequently use Interactive SQL or Run SQL Scripts in Navigator to do ad hoc analysis of information in an SQL table, which often results in one or more new columns being derived or created based on existing columns. When I first began doing these types of queries, I was frustrated with the way SQL identified and formatted a derived column in the result set. 

Integers fields are a fantastic way to store relatively large numbers in a small space, but getting RPG to play nice isn't always easy.

By Joe Pluta

There are times when RPG simply leaps forward into the future and times when it needs a little cajoling. The whole concept of ILE was a quantum leap. Integer support, a little less so.

What's new with EGL, and what's coming?

By Joe Pluta

And I thought my last article started with some bad news. I'll tell you all the good news about EGL, including the amazing new mashup support, but first the bad news.

The i Loses a Hero

Unless you've been living on Mars, you already know that the System i community lost a true hero recently. Al Barsa Jr. was one of the staunchest allies the platform ever had.