As promised in Part 3 of this Geezer’s Guide, this time I am going to be looking at the new support for prototypes and procedure interfaces. There are not a large number of enhancements in this area. Mostly they consist of improvements in the compiler’s use of defaults. Of course they also inherit all of the data definition enhancements in areas such as data type and length.

Prototypes

Let’s start with prototypes and see how they have changed. The basic building blocks are dcl-pr and dcl-parm. As with dcl-subf in data structures, the dcl-parm is optional and only needed when

It happens to all of us. Someone tells us he needs a program just like an existing one, but with one small change. We clone the program, modify the clone, and now instead of one program to maintain when business requirements change, we have two. Before we know it, we have eight or 10 or more. Fortunately, there is a simple but seldom-used technique we can often use to avoid cloning programs.

The technique to which I refer is to use an option parameter. An option parameter controls the behavior of a program. Contrast option parameters to data parameters, which

If you’re like most IBM i administrators, your backup routine is probably set in stone and you don’t really need to change it all that much. It’s solid and it works. But sometimes things happen and you may need to tweak your backup to accommodate new situations or needs. This week, let’s look at three different scenarios where you might have to change or modify your backup solution.

Our Backup Scenarios

Here are three different backup situations you may encounter that could force you to make some small but significant changes to your backup routines.

1. Developing a new IBM i