I ran into an interesting situation recently. I was attempting to tie service program B to existing RPG program A, so that A could use some of the service program B’s routines. Guess what? Program A wouldn’t compile. The experience brings up a good point about procedure prototyping in RPG.

To use a subprocedure requires a procedure prototype. The prototype defines the subprocedure’s interface–the list of parameters, how each parameter is defined, and so forth. RPG programmers commonly use the /COPY and /INCLUDE directives in order to include prototypes in the modules that need them. We have talked about this

Today’s databases can be complex creatures with lots and lots of dependencies. Once upon a time all you had to worry about was what logical files were built over a physical and whether or not it was attached to a journal. But today you can have view, indexes, constraints (key, foreign key and check), triggers and journals related to a table (physical file).

You can make use of the Display Database Relationships (DSPDBR) and Display File Definition (DSPFD) to see these relationships but, let’s be honest; these aren’t exactly the easiest reports to read. Alternatively, you could use some of

With the newer Power i, System i, and i Series machines, IBM provides the ability to reconfigure your CPU and Main Memory (RAM) configurations on the fly. This week I’ll show you how to set up your system so that you can automatically transfer CPU capability and memory between systems. It’s not difficult, as long as you have the right version of the Hardware Management Console (HMC).

A Framework For Moving Resources

The best way to teach is by example, so let’s create a framework scenario where I can illustrate the concepts and techniques involved. Let’s say that our example