What follows is a question that I have paraphrased from the emails of various readers of this august publication, who all seem to be encountering a similar issue: “Is it possible to view the value returned by built-in functions, such as %EOF and %FOUND, when working in the green-screen, full-screen debugger?”

The short answer is “No.” The debugger will not show you the result of any function, built-in or user-defined, unless that function is defined to the debugger. (See Undocumented Debugger Function.) The reason for this behavior is that a function is not a variable. A variable is a

One of the things I like about WebSphere Development Studio Client (WDSc) is having the ability to use the Tab key to move through an RPG spec without having to prompt as I would in SEU. But it is WDSc’s ability to customize the tab key behavior that I really like.

To change the standard tab settings, open the Preferences dialog from the Windows menu pull-down and then drill down to Remote Systems –> iSeries –> LPEX editor parsers -> ILE RPG as shown below:

(Click here to see a larger image)

Notice the “User Defined Tabs” check

Scheduling system i5 batch job execution can be an art form. Some groups of jobs (such as monthly processing) must run in sequence to maintain data integrity while other jobs (such as nightly reports) can be simultaneously run to achieve better throughput. Luckily, there are specific techniques for creating subsystem job queues to meet these needs. This week and next, I’ll explain how to create multiple subsystem job queues to help with your throughput issues.

Why Would My Subsystem Need More Job Queues?

All i5/OS subsystems use job queues to stage work for processing. Job queues are assigned to a