I was intrigued by your article Have Your Cake and Eat It, Too. I decided to try your tip with some of my own data. The resulting data set had an anomaly in it. The system omitted a row of input, yet the total was still correct. Why?

–Wyatt

It’s my bad, Wyatt, and I should have known better. (Note to self: Leave instructions for my survivors to put those last five words on my tombstone. It seems to accurately describe my life so far!

The problem was that the example used the word UNION, but it should

You all know that a lot of code consists of similar patterns. In my previous article Be Content with Content Assist, I explained how Content Assist could be used to insert a standard piece of code. This is well and good, but it only applies to free form RPG or COBOL. What about fixed form specs or code that need some alteration?

Although not specifically designed with RPG or COBOL in mind, RSE contains a Snippets view that allows you to define snippets of code that may be amended as you insert them into your program.

The Snippets View

When purchasing i5/OS third-party software, vendors may request system control information for the partition their products will be installed in. This information is used to create unique licensing keys that must be installed with the product for piracy prevention. Unfortunately, IBM doesn’t have one screen to find vendor-required system information. To remedy that fault, this week I provide a roadmap for locating common vendor information.

What Vendors Want

It’s my experience that System i software vendors are generally looking for two or more of the following pieces of system control information in order to create a unique product licensing key.