Bob Cozzi
-
Guru: Copy From Stream File FMTOPT(*NOCHK)
April 13, 2020 Bob Cozzi
Using SQL frequently, as I do, I tend to look for solutions to problems that can be resolved using the database language (i.e., SQL). Sometimes I have to invent a missing piece of the puzzle. Often that entails writing a User-Defined Function (UDF) for use in SQL, but sometimes a CL command is the better choice.
Recently I had a situation where what the client calls an “EDI File” was being downloaded using sftp on the IBM server running i. This file is created at a vendor that runs IBM mainframes (an actual mainframe by the way) and the file …
Read more -
Guru: Copy OUTQ To PDF
February 3, 2020 Bob Cozzi
A long time ago I created a CL command named Copy from OUTQ (CPYOUTQ). This command allowed you to selectively copy spooled files from one OUTQ to either another OUTQ or to the IFS as a PDF or text file. My customers use it all the time for monthly archiving of spooled files and redistribution of output. You may have it on your own system.
Being one of the handful of original advocates for the so called “Openness APIs” for IBM OS/400 (now IBM i), I quickly embraced the system APIs and have used them extensively throughout the decades. One …
Read more -
The (More) Modern RPG Language
December 16, 2019 Bob Cozzi
Back in 1988, I wrote what became the book on RPG III. Then in 1996, I published the RPG IV version and updated it again circa 2000. But in the years that followed, RPG IV became mostly stale; a tweak here and there, but nothing too spectacular.
In recent years, a wave of RPG IV enhances has been revealed, most notably free-format was completed and helped propel RPG IV, once again into a truly modern language. Although the measure of “modern” for RPG IV seems to lean toward how much free-format syntax is supported; which is ironic considering COBOL and …
Read more -
SQL To The Rescue
April 10, 2017 Bob Cozzi
Since the early 1990s, developers have been using SQL embedded in RPG as a way to retrieve just the right data for the task at hand. Certainly it was at least a decade before it became commonplace to see SQL embedded in RPG, but now, 15 years later, it is in fact the go-to method for data access, or at least you can see it from here.
I was an early adopter of SQL, but an off-again, on-again user of embedded SQL. Originally, I felt the first format RPG with quasi-free format SQL (and all those plus signs to continue …
Read more