Almost every kind of business application uses dates. Hopefully you’re taking full advantage of all the RPG support for date data types to simplify your logic. If you’re using more than one line of code to calculate the number of days, months or years between two dates, or to add a number of days, months, or years to a date, you’re working way too hard!

Many of the “dates” we deal with come from a screen or a database file and aren’t true date data type fields. They are numeric or character fields that contain values that we treat as

We have two sets of order files–one current and one history–with the same fields but different record format names. (Who knows why?) The two inquiry programs use the same display file; and yours truly forgets to make changes in the history program when he changes the current program. I get the big brain idea to use the same program for both, but how do I override the history file to the current file when the record format names do not match?

–David

Let’s suppose your two files are called CURYRSLS (current year sales) and SLSHIST (sales history). The record formats

Occasionally, a user, operator, administrator, or programmer will incorrectly answer an i5/OS inquiry message, causing system problems. When that happens, it can help to quickly discover how the message was answered, if only to prevent the offending job or user from incorrectly answering it again. This week, I’ll look at some investigative techniques for answering that classic i5/OS question: Who answered that inquiry message?

Using QSYSOPR To Find An Answering Job

While investigating inquiry message whodunits, an administrator’s first instinct is to display the system operator message queue (QSYSOPR) where the inquiry message originally appeared. When inquiry messages are fresh,