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 purpose API: the Rename Object (QLIRNMO) API, which is documented here and has been available since V2R3. The Rename Object API, as you might expect, allows you to rename an object. Not as obvious, the QLIRNMO API also allows you to move an object. As with QLIDLTO, using the Rename Object API allows you to directly operate on an object without having to run a CL command from your RPG application program under the covers.

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 that have been created over the last 12 months and are no longer needed. In the past, if you wanted to automate such cleanup activities from, say, an RPG application program, you may have written various CL programs that were then called from the RPG program in order to run the appropriate DLTxxx CL command or, as an alternative, constructed the appropriate CL DLTxxx command within an RPG program variable and then run the command using an API such as Process Commands. If your system is at V6 or later, you now have another option, one that does not rely on running CL commands. This new technique, of course, is also available to your application programs whenever they need to delete an object, not just for general system maintenance.

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 article, I'll show you how to detect the position of these errors by using the Syntax Check SQL Statement (QSQCHKS) API , which is documented here.

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 entries associated with the removal of an IFS link from a directory. The links removed might be *STMFs, *SYMLNKs, *DIRs, etc. As the goal of the project is to determine who removed the links, today we'll look at how to process the results of calling the QjoRetrieveJournalEntries API.

The QjoRetrieveJournalEntries API offers flexibility in terms of tracking IFS usage.

Written by Bruce Vining

Earlier this month, a question was posed over on MIDRANGE-L related to a user having trouble with IFS objects mysteriously disappearing. The question was if there was a way "to journal or otherwise monitor an IFS directory, that would tell us the who, what, when, where, and why of those deletions?" The system can't help very much with the "why" part of the question, but with journaling the system can certainly provide information related to who, what, when, and where. And with that information, hopefully the "who" can help to explain "why."

Many APIs are available on the IBM i that will enable you to extend your RPG applications; the C Runtime APIs provide a wide range of added functions.

Written by Joe Pluta

In a previous article, I demonstrated how you could use the CEE APIs to provide additional programming features to your RPG programs, specifically in the area of advanced mathematical and trigonometric functions. The CEE APIs are very standardized, with traditional (for RPG programmers, anyway!) parameter- and error-handling. The C Runtime APIs are quite a bit different as they are modeled after the existing APIs of the UNIX world. And while those APIs are completely familiar to the UNIX developers among us, we RPG types can use a little help getting started with them, and this article provides that help.

The QSPRILSP API can simplify your access to a job's most recent spool file.

Written by Bruce Vining

Last month, in "Just How Many Spool Files Do You Have?," we looked at the Retrieve Spool Information API QSPSPLI. I received quite a bit of feedback on the article—some suggesting a follow-on topic, others reporting a problem they were running into.

This TechTip series explores the useful yet simple Web services of GeoNames. We started with the time zone API, and now we'll combine two other Web services in order to retrieve data about a country, using an address or set of GPS coordinates as a starting point.

Written by Rafael Victória-Pereira

Now that we know how to find a time zone (given an address or set of GPS coordinates), let's find out more about the country! For that, I'll use the Country Info REST Web Service. As with the previous tip of this series, I won't discuss the methodology—only the highlights of the Web services used here—so if you haven't read the first tip, it might be a good idea to do it now.