Cross-Reference Your Procedures

April 28, 2004 Bruce Guetzkow

[The code for this article is available for download.]

With the advent of procedures, it has become much simpler for iSeries programmers to write reusable snippets of code. But keeping track of those snippets is a bit more involved. Since a source member can contain multiple procedures, how do you know which procedures are found in which modules and where they are used? If you have the *MODULE objects, from IBM, you have the tools to answer those questions. With the code provided in this article, you can create your own procedure cross-reference files and commands.

THE

Using RPG As Your ASP Language, Part 1

April 28, 2004 Howard F. Arner, Jr., and Holley Davis

I have a weird rule about evaluating new software that has served me well throughout my career. If I can’t make the software do something useful or interesting in the first hour, it sucks. And I deduct points if I actually have to read the manual. As many of you know, I am not an RPG programmer. When I program on the iSeries, I use the C compiler. For programming client applications that talk to the iSeries, I use Visual Basic or Prolog, or I program in C.

I know enough RPG to be very dangerous, like a toddler with

Keep Your Users Informed

April 28, 2004 Hey, Ted

Although we run an ERP package, we have plenty of homegrown programs that fill holes in the package. Most of them produce reports that the package doesn’t offer us. Sometimes a user keys runtime information into a prompt screen and presses a function key to submit a request to batch. However, if the results don’t come off the printer PDQ, the user may submit another request, thinking the first one was not accepted. How can we inform the user that the request was received?

–George

Your problem reminds me of something I’ve noticed: that homegrown software often does a poor

Find Database Records with Invalid Dates

April 28, 2004 Hey, Ted

We store dates in YYYYMMDD format in packed decimal fields in our database. This served us well when we wrote all our applications in green-screen RPG. Now that we’re using other technologies, invalid dates (like all zeros, all nines, or April 31) cause us problems. Is there a way in SQL to test the validity of a date? Something similar to RPG’s TEST op code with the D extender would be great.

–Kenny

I don’t know of an SQL function that will tell you whether a numeric field contains a valid date, so I wrote one.

Use the method of

OS/400 Alert: Googlize Your Enterprise

April 28, 2004 Shannon O'Donnell

In a great example of the chicken coming before the egg, a software vendor, whose entire reputation has been built on the quality and accuracy of its software, is now moving into the hardware business by hardwiring its software into its new hardware. Google, the world’s leading Internet search engine vendor, is now offering hardware to allow your company to move into the search engine business. Intrigued? Read on!

GOOGLIZE YOUR BUSINESS

Google.com is rapidly becoming the de facto search engine of the entire Internet, easily outpacing its nearest competitor, Yahoo. One of the primary reasons for this success