RPG IV Comment Blocks

December 8, 2004 Hey, Ted

Conditional compilation directives (/IF DEFINED) have two good uses that I have not seen mentioned in any of the midrange-oriented e-mail newsletters. Maybe you would like to tell your readers who work in RPG shops about them.

One good way to use a conditional compilation directive is to comment-out large sections of source code. Here’s an example.

 /if defined(TheFollowingIsCommentedOut)
C                    eval      *in21 = *on
C                    eval      *in22 = *off
C*                   eval      *in23 = *on
C                    if        *in24
C                    exsr      DoSomething
C                    exsr      DoSomethingElse
C                    endif
 /endif

I prefer this technique to that of commenting out each line individually. For one

Controlling PC Access

December 8, 2004 Hey, Wayne O

First of all, thank you for your good Web site and your very useful essays. I have some questions about AS/400 security. I would like to find a solution to prevent access to the database, running remote commands from PCs, and PC file transfers.

Of course, we want to give permission to users to be able to run programs that use files or objects for reading and updating. I have followed your recommendation to specify *EXCLUDE for *PUBLIC when securing files with the Grant Object Authority (GRTOBJAUT) command, but doing so prevents our users from running any program that uses

Admin Alert: Use Fix Central to Order iSeries PTFs on CD-ROM

December 8, 2004 Joe Hertvik

Fix Central is IBM’s online facility for downloading and ordering PTFs. From this Web site, you can immediately download PTFs through a Web browser or download a CD-ROM image of the PTFs to an FTP server for later use. But Fix Central’s big flaw is that you can’t specifically order PTFs on CD-ROM. You have to work the Web site to request that IBM send you CD-ROM fixes. Fortunately, that isn’t very hard to do.

From Fix Central, IBM allows customers to download PTFs via a browser or through an FTP download. And I see the point. Customers can immediately