Comparing Objects in Java

Hey, David:

I hope you can help me with a compare problem in Java. I have users enter a search variable (customer number 8 characters) in a jtextfield to search for a customer record. I then pass this to another Java program as a string called compare, where it loses any blanks padding ("0390       ") and becomes ("0390"). The customer number field on the AS/400 file is 8 char and appears to retain this size when I pass it to a string for comparison using cncust = (String) record.getField("CNCUST").

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Creating a Custom Setup Program for New OS/400 Software

Hey, Shannon:

My company writes software for a niche industry, and we've been pretty successful with it. In fact, we are adding new clients all the time. In the past, when we put our software on our clients' AS/400s, we pretty much used existing OS/400 job descriptions, subsystems, and the like. What we'd really like to do, in order to give our software that "professional" touch, is to come up with some kind of setup program that would allow us to generate the OS/400 objects we need to allow our software to run in our own subsystems and such. Oh yeah, and we also have a couple of jobs we want to kick off automatically every time the AS/400 IPLs. Can you help us?

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Reader Feedback and Insights: Another Advantage of Surrogate Keys

Hey, Ted:

I agreed with most of your points on the use of surrogate keys ["Pros and Cons of Surrogate Keys"]. However, I think you missed one important advantage to their use.