We recently started adding Web customers to our customer master file, in which a customer ID is a field of seven characters. The ID’s of Web customers consist of the letter “W” followed by six digits. Is there any way using OPNQRYF to change only the customer IDs that start with “W” to the customer number “5000000” for reporting purposes? Doing so would allow us to keep a lot of existing programs running without a lot of modification.

–John

OPNQRYF does not have conditional logic, John, but in your case, you can fake it out. Here’s the type of OPNQRYF

Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here.

Modern day printers are fabulous in all that they do. In addition to accepting basic ASCII text streams, modern general purpose laser printers usually process either postscript (PS) or printer command language (PCL) streams to generate ornate printouts. So what about using these printers with the IBM i? If the printer understands PCL (or a few other data streams such as IBM’s PPDS or Epson FX/LQ), then there is no problem because IBM’s host print transform functionality magically converts SCS/AFP spool files into one of the aforementioned data

i5/OS remote output queues are used to send spooled files to printers attached to remote systems. They are commonly created with two objects: the remote output queue itself; and a virtual printer device that allows the queue to function as a locally attached printer device. However, this configuration has some issues when it is restored from backup media, but those problems are easily fixed if you know the right tricks.

Anatomy of a Remote Output Queue

Remote output queues (remote OUTQ) are a special type of i5/OS writer that communicates with and sends spooled file output to a printer located