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.

By Susan Gantner

With the use of free-format (aka /Free) RPG logic becoming more and more popular, many shops are beginning to utilize prototypes for their program calls because the CALL operation code is one of those that doesn't work in free-form. This is a movement to which I say, "It's about time!" For far too long, many shops have used prototypes only with subprocedures. Even with this upswing in the use of prototypes, however, I've found that many programmers are still not taking advantage of all that prototypes have to offer.                   

Variable scoping support, the ability to take a source stream file as input, increased LOB limits, and so much more!

By Gina Whitney

If you have been using the SQL ILE RPG precompiler for many releases, you probably know that it does not fully support all the features that the compiler offers. In V5R3, enhancements were made to the precompiler to support commonly used compiler features. These enhancements were the beginning of a precompiler revolution. The gap between the precompiler and the compiler is narrowing, embedding SQL into programs is becoming more seamless, and attitudes about the precompiler are changing.

Need to calculate the dates of the first and last days of last month or any month? See how easy it is in RPG IV.

by Sam Lennon

It's fairly common that you need to calculate the dates of the first and last days of a month to print in report headings, show on screens, or select data. It is usually last month, but it could be next month or the last three months or whatever the customer requests. Date arithmetic in RPG IV makes it very easy to calculate past and future dates and date ranges. There are three simple rules, and it doesn't matter how you store dates.

In this part of our RPG XML series, you'll learn how to use RPG's XML-SAX op-code to deal with problematic XML documents and handle situations that XML-INTO cannot deal with.

By Jon Paris

In the previous two articles in this series, "%Handling XML-INTO Problems" and "i5/OS Offers Native XML Support in V5R4", we focused on the capabilities of RPG's XML-INTO. As we saw, this op-code processes an entire document, either as a single piece or, when needed or desired, in "chunks" by using the capabilities of the %HANDLER BIF. There are, however, situations when this will not work for you. This often relates to limitations in RPG's data structure (DS) capabilities. As you know, a named DS is limited to a maximum size of 64K (at least until V6R1 anyway). Suppose that even a single repeating element will not fit into this? That may sound unlikely, but it doesn't take a huge number of repeating text fields to exceed this limit. Another example, and one that seems to occur quite often, arises when your XML document contains a structure that simply cannot be represented in an RPG DS. To illustrate this, take a look at the new version of our XML document, shown below:

By Paul Tuohy

Another year and another set of RPG enhancements. As always, the reactions range from "I'm not sure how that applies to me" to "This is downright intriguing."

As my teammate Jon Paris mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the IBM documentation we have seen to date seems to be placing a strange emphasis on which enhancements are most pertinent. But in fairness to IBM (now there is a novel thought), I think most of the documentation simply follows the order of RPG specifications. In this article, I will attempt to guide you through the enhancements in the order I think is most pertinent. Feel free to disagree.