Display Operations Navigator from a 5250 Green Screen
by Shannon O'Donnell

Running PC applications from an AS/400 has long been a fascination with me. I guess it's because the AS/400's character-based 5250 green screen is so boring and PCs are so dynamic and exciting. Whatever the reason, I'm always looking for new things I can do to better integrate the AS/400 with the PC. In this article, I'll show you how easy it is to display the Operations Navigator GUI from within your 5250 green screen application. READ MORE >

Add Oomph to Your Commands with Validity Checking Programs
by Kevin Vandever

How many of you out there have written your own CL commands? A lot of you? Great! You know, then, that one of the tricky parts of a command is the validation of parameters. How do you keep the user from entering junk into your commands? The best way to accomplish this validation, in my opinion, is to write a validity-checking program. Sounds impressive, eh? Well, come on in and learn, not only how to write one, but some additional uses for them as well. READ MORE >

Pack on the Calories with ListView Pudding
by Bob Butcher

In the article "Sprinkle GUI on Your Green Screen Salad," I pumped some nutritional concepts at you, like ODBC, SQL, and ADO. There wasn't really too much in the calorie department, but there were essentials you needed to have some understanding of before today's lesson. Today, we get into the dessert, the fun stuff, as I discuss how to use the ListView control in Visual Basic to display records and how to manipulate our records on the AS/400. READ MORE >

Batch Jobs Can Talk Back
by John Chadwick

Users demand a quick turnaround on their batch jobs. But how do they know when the batch job is done? It may produce a report, but there can be a lag time before it actually prints, and you don't want impatient users submitting the same job over and over, as if that will help. The 20th answer was that users would get a cryptic system message once a batch job had finished, which they probably 'wouldn't understand. The new way is slick and easy. The modern age has arrived! READ MORE >

Database Triggers: Add Consistency and Integrity to Business Logic
by Kevin Vandever

In IT, we write programs, users run those programs, and magical stuff happens, right? Well, sometimes we write too many programs or write different versions of the same program. We aren't able to keep track of where all the business rules are, whether these rules are consistent, and whether they are being run where they are supposed to be run. What can we do to get a handle on this situation? Resign? Yeah, that's one way, but another, less drastic, method is to use database triggers. READ MORE >

Use WebSphere Studio for Building Web Pages
by Shannon O'Donnell

If you have not yet installed the latest version of IBM's WebSphere Studio Developer Client tools, it's time to do so! There are many new development tools buried in the overall WebSphere Studio Site Developer Advanced IDE. In fact, you could probably spend a month simply discovering all the functionality. One of the cool things available to you with WebSphere Studio Developer Client is a pretty sophisticated WYSIWYG HTML editor. READ MORE >

Reader Feedback and Insights

We value your feedback and your insights into the OS/400 market. Feel free to send a letter to the editor. We will consider your letter a candidate for the reader feedback column associated with this newsletter, but we will contact you before we make your email public. READ MORE >