The IT Jungle

Guru Classic: My Favorite Keyboard Shortcuts for RSE/RDi

July 17, 2019 Susan Gantner

When using RDi for editing my CL, DDS, RPG, or COBOL code, I find that I can save a lot of time by using keyboard shortcuts for functions that would otherwise require that I take my hands off the keyboard to use the mouse. So I thought I would share a few of my favorites. Many of the shortcuts I use are standard for other applications that I also use for email, spreadsheets or text editing. It’s easy to forget that some of those same shortcuts can be used when we’re editing our RPG code.

A lot has changed on …
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Guru Classic: The New Basics — Indicators

July 17, 2019 Jon Paris

The history of indicators pre-dates even the earliest versions of RPG and takes us all the way back to the old tabulating machines, perhaps even earlier depending on how broad a definition one uses. What is without doubt, though, is that indicators in the sense of *INnn and *INLR were added to the RPG language as a vehicle for translating those old tabulator board programs.

RPG has grown a lot since those early days, and yet many people still write code using the old-style numbered indicators. LR? Well, we’re kind of stuck with that, but there hasn’t been a need …
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Guru Classic: Looking For Commitment, Part 2

July 17, 2019 Paul Tuohy

As companies look to modernize their applications, commitment control can play an integral role. This set of three articles was originally published in March 2009. The content of the articles has been updated for free form RPG.

In this article I will take a look at the basic rules and coding requirements for using commitment control within RPG programs.

A Database

This is the SQL used to create a schema named COMMIT, which contains two related tables called HEADER and DETAILS.
```
(A)  CREATE SCHEMA "COMMIT" ;

(B)  CREATE TABLE COMMIT/HEADER (
     	"KEY" CHAR(2) CCSID 37 NOT NULL DEFAULT '' ,
     	
```
… Read more
IBM Takes A Hands Off Approach With Red Hat

July 15, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

IBM has been around long enough in the IT racket that it doesn’t have any trouble maintaining distinct portfolios of products that have overlapping and often incompatible functions. The System/3, which debuted in 1969, is only five years older than the System/360, which laid the foundation and set the pace for corporate computing when it launched in 1964. Both styles of machines continue to exist today as the IBM i on Power Systems platform and the System z.

With the $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat, which closed last week, neither of those two legacy products are under threat and …
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Remain Breaks New Ground With ALM Suite

July 15, 2019 Alex Woodie

Coding season just ended for Remain Software, the Dutch application lifecycle management (ALM) vendor with a growing US presence. That means customers are sorting through a torrent of new functionality in its flagship TD/OMS product, including improved hooks to DevOps tools like Git and Jenkins, a new cross-platform cross-reference module, and a nifty API generator too.

New stuff started emerging from Remain Software around the POWERUp conference in May, when IT Jungle sat down with company representatives to talk about development trends, current and upcoming releases of Remain’s software, and what customers are looking to get next.

Arguably the biggest …
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Guru: Finding Large Files With Python

July 15, 2019 Mike Larsen

It’s always a good idea to purge files that aren’t needed any longer. Chances are that you already have procedures in place to purge data from Db2 files and tables, but what about files that reside in the IFS? Do you have a good solution for keeping the IFS clean?

Perhaps you have old order files stored in the IFS. If you work for a large company, these types of files can accumulate quickly. I’ve written processes in the past to remove files from the IFS using RPG, but I’d like to offer an alternative. I’m going to show how …
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Four Hundred Monitor, July 15

July 15, 2019 Jenny Thomas

The IBM i is in a constant battle to defend itself from being regarded as a legacy platform. Still, worries about its future persist and companies continue to look for the latest slick technology to propel them into the future. But a new report from Gartner warns that jumping platforms not only might not be a viable solution, it could leave your organization in a worse situation than where you started. You can get a closer look at and some takeaways from the Gartner report via the Seiden Group at the first link below. Isn’t it about time that we …
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IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 21, Number 28

July 15, 2019 Doug Bidwell

A reminder once again: Don’t forget the annual OCEAN technical conference. This is just a reminder that if you are in our neck of the woods in southern California that the OCEAN TechCon19 IBM i Technical Conference – check out CODE LEARN20 – runs from July 25 through 27.

In this week’s IBM i PTF Guide, there are updates to Backup Recovery Solutions for IBM i 7.2 and IBM i 7.3. Also, IBM’s Pre-Upgrade Validation Tool now supports V7R4! See new link in “Links” section of the Guide.

New (Updated) Links this week:
- System: Machine Ineligible Condition
- ACS:
… Read more
Eradani Bridges The Gap Between Legacy And Open Source

July 8, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

In this publication, legacy is not a dirty word or even remotely pejorative. Rather, “legacy” is just a shorthand way of delineating between applications that encapsulate decades of the evolution of a business and the transactions it processes, and all of the other new stuff that this business is also doing and perhaps coding with newer tools and programming languages.

A new company, called Eradani, has been founded by some experts in both the IBM i world and the open source world with the express purpose of building a technical bridge so these two different cultures can see a …
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Skytap Bullish On Its Hourly Billing In New IBM i Cloud

July 8, 2019 Alex Woodie

After a successful tech preview, Skytap last month announced that its public cloud for IBM i is now open for business. Customers can rent time on Skytap’s IBM i cloud, starting at $200 per month per vCPU or $.50 per hour per vCPU. While the monthly option will work well for production workloads, it’s the hourly billing option that’s turning heads, especially among IBM i developers looking to adopt agile and DevOps practices.

Skytap isn’t the only cloud option for IBM i customers. There are numerous private cloud offerings launched over the past few years, largely as IBM business partners, …
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Guru: One Way To Deal With Two Null Formats

July 8, 2019 Ted Holt

Hey, Ted:

We are building a new system and want to use modern programming and database techniques. I have had quite a time trying to get nulls to act right. It gets confusing fast because RPG handles them differently than the way embedded SQL does. When using SQL for I/O, how do we handle the two null formats?

— Brian

There are several ways to go about the “problem” of nulls. Let me give you one simple method, but keep in mind that it’s not the only way.

First, let’s create a table and put some data into it.
```
create 
```
… Read more
As I See It: Paper Or Plastic

July 8, 2019 Victor Rozek

Technology managers often grapple with a thorny employment dilemma: Do they hire for specialization or suppleness; specific or general knowledge; narrow but deep, or broad but shallow. It’s the quandary of expert versus generalist, and it’s like deciding whether you want to buy a hot car with no utility, or a utility vehicle with no hot.

Some of the ambivalence arises from the fact that both are contextually useful and necessary. A handyman by definition must be a generalist; but you probably don’t want a handyman performing your bypass surgery.

Yet according to Jerry Useem, things are shifting noticeably in …
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IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 21, Number 26

July 8, 2019 Doug Bidwell

All of us at IT Jungle like to support our local user groups, and being from Southern California, the IBM i PTF Guide has a soft spot in its heart for the annual OCEAN technical conference. This is just a reminder that if you are in our neck of the woods, the OCEAN TechCon19 IBM i Technical Conference – check out CODE LEARN20 – runs from July 25 through 27.

Turning back to the IBM i PTF Guide, there is a new High Availability Group for 7.4, and updates for MQ for IBM i – v7.1.0/v8.0.0/V9.0.0 for IBM i …
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How Big Blue Stacks Up IBM i On Premises And On Cloud

June 24, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Here’s the $64,000 question: How much more does a slice of the IBM Cloud running IBM i cost compared to buying an on-premises machine with the same rough amount of capacity and installing IBM i on it and putting it into production? The answer to that question is: That all depends. But in general, as is the case with all infrastructures available on premises and on the cloud, the cloud is always more expensive.

This is not a surprise if you think about it for a moment. By using cloudy infrastructure, you are offloading the hassle of maintaining hardware and …
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ARCAD Brings Traditional 5250 Development Into DevOps Fold

June 24, 2019 Alex Woodie

IBM i developers who embrace modern DevOps techniques typically also use modern development tools, like RDi. Much of the IBM i world uses IBM’s latest development environment, but many have resisted. Now, thanks to new software from ARCAD Software, IBM i developers who work with older tools like PDM can also partake of the benefits of DevOps.

Getting older IBM i developers on board with the latest tools and techniques is a big priority for ARCAD Software, according to Alexandre Codinach, vice president of Americas for ARCAD Software, which included the new 5250 development capabilities with the launch of …
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Guru: When %SCAN Isn’t Sufficient

June 24, 2019 Ted Holt

The RPG %SCAN built-in function is wonderful! I can still remember having to look for a string within a string using RPG II on System/36. What an ordeal that was! Yet in some situations %SCAN can’t do all I need it to do. In those cases, I rely on the power of SQL.

One case where SQL comes in handy is when I need a case-insensitive scan. Instead of RPG’s %SCAN function, I use SQL’s LOCATE and UPPER functions, like this:
```
dcl-s  Description  char(48);
dcl-s  pos          int (10);

exec sql
   set :pos = locate ('HAMMER', upper(:Description));
```
If Description has the …
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Four Hundred Monitor, June 24

June 24, 2019 Jenny Thomas

There was a lot of excitement in the world of IBM i last week. Last Friday, June 21, marked the 31^st birthday of the IBM i. But you may have forgotten to celebrate because it also marked the release of IBM i 7.4. We have been writing about the coming 7.4 enhancements for weeks in The Four Hundred, and you can continue to follow us for the latest news as the rollout continues. For now, check out all the latest news and happenings around our industry at the links below, and don’t forget to check the calendar for …
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IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 21, Number 25

June 24, 2019 Doug Bidwell

First of all, Happy 31st Birthday to the AS/400, which had its anniversary on June 21 when, absolutely not coincidentally, Big Blue shipped the latest and greatest IBM i 7.4 release of its operating system for the Power Systems platform. We have all been eagerly awaiting this new release because of the many new features it has, and we are just beginning to sink our teeth into it.

For your reference, I upgraded a system running IBM i 7.3 to IBM i 7.4 as soon as the new release was available, and just so you know, all the Java licensed …
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Guru Classic: Looking For Commitment, Part 1

June 19, 2019 Paul Tuohy

Author’s Note: This set of three articles was originally published in March of 2009. (See links in Related Stories below). As companies look to modernizing their applications, commitment control can play an integral role. In my next three Guru Classic articles, I will be updating the content of these articles for free-form RPG.

In this article, I will discuss what commitment control is, why you may want to use it, and the basic requirements for commitment control. In subsequent articles, I will look more closely at how commitment control works, different ways in which it can be implemented, …
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Guru Classic: Giving RDi a Split Personality

June 19, 2019 Susan Gantner

A commonly asked question by RDi newbies is: “How do I view source in split screen like I can in SEU?” The answer is that you can’t do it exactly like SEU, but then why would you want to? The RDi editor offers far greater flexibility.

The original version of my tip on this subject was published back in 2007. Back then, the toolset we know as RDi was called “WDSC”. Quite a lot of other changes have occurred within RDi as well. Originally, a specialized perspective was required to make this feature work well. Today’s RDi works well without …
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