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  • Guru: When %SCAN Isn’t Sufficient

    June 24, 2019 Ted Holt

    The RPG %SCAN built-in function is wonderful! I can still remember having to look for a string within a string using RPG II on System/36. What an ordeal that was! Yet in some situations %SCAN can’t do all I need it to do. In those cases, I rely on the power of SQL.

    One case where SQL comes in handy is when I need a case-insensitive scan. Instead of RPG’s %SCAN function, I use SQL’s LOCATE and UPPER functions, like this:

    dcl-s  Description  char(48);
    dcl-s  pos          int (10);
    
    exec sql
       set :pos = locate ('HAMMER', upper(:Description));
    

    If Description has the …

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  • Four Hundred Monitor, June 24

    June 24, 2019 Jenny Thomas

    There was a lot of excitement in the world of IBM i last week. Last Friday, June 21, marked the 31st birthday of the IBM i. But you may have forgotten to celebrate because it also marked the release of IBM i 7.4. We have been writing about the coming 7.4 enhancements for weeks in The Four Hundred, and you can continue to follow us for the latest news as the rollout continues. For now, check out all the latest news and happenings around our industry at the links below, and don’t forget to check the calendar for …

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  • IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 21, Number 25

    June 24, 2019 Doug Bidwell

    First of all, Happy 31st Birthday to the AS/400, which had its anniversary on June 21 when, absolutely not coincidentally, Big Blue shipped the latest and greatest IBM i 7.4 release of its operating system for the Power Systems platform. We have all been eagerly awaiting this new release because of the many new features it has, and we are just beginning to sink our teeth into it.

    For your reference, I upgraded a system running IBM i 7.3 to IBM i 7.4 as soon as the new release was available, and just so you know, all the Java licensed …

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  • Guru Classic: Looking For Commitment, Part 1

    June 19, 2019 Paul Tuohy

    Author’s Note: This set of three articles was originally published in March of 2009. (See links in Related Stories below). As companies look to modernizing their applications, commitment control can play an integral role. In my next three Guru Classic articles, I will be updating the content of these articles for free-form RPG.

    In this article, I will discuss what commitment control is, why you may want to use it, and the basic requirements for commitment control. In subsequent articles, I will look more closely at how commitment control works, different ways in which it can be implemented, …

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  • Guru Classic: Giving RDi a Split Personality

    June 19, 2019 Susan Gantner

    A commonly asked question by RDi newbies is: “How do I view source in split screen like I can in SEU?” The answer is that you can’t do it exactly like SEU, but then why would you want to? The RDi editor offers far greater flexibility.

    The original version of my tip on this subject was published back in 2007. Back then, the toolset we know as RDi was called “WDSC”. Quite a lot of other changes have occurred within RDi as well. Originally, a specialized perspective was required to make this feature work well. Today’s RDi works well without …

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  • Guru Classic: Where Does Data Live? The New Basics

    June 19, 2019 Jon Paris

    Every time I teach some of the more recent additions to RPG, such as XML parsing or Open Access, I find that I need to include some “remedial” education on some of the data definition enhancements that have been made to the language over recent releases.

    Most of these enhancements came into the language many years ago back in the days when D-specs were de rigueur, but if you had no immediate need for them, they may have passed you by. After all, even the most avid reader of this newsletter has probably forgotten most of what they read here …

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  • Pricing Revealed For IBM i Slices On IBM Cloud

    June 17, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

    Today is the day. You can finally go out onto the IBM i Cloud and buy on-demand slices of Power-based systems from Big Blue itself and load up the IBM i operating system and integrated database and do actual work on it. And, if it floats your boat, you can run AIX partitions on the IBM Cloud, too, on the same Power S922 and Power E880 iron that IBM is making available and carving up with its homegrown PowerVM server virtualization hypervisor.

    IBM revealed its plans for IBM i and AIX on its own public cloud, called the Power …

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  • Meet IBM’s New Security Architect for IBM i

    June 17, 2019 Alex Woodie

    Security isn’t just a feature of the IBM i operating system. It’s a fundamental concept that all IBM engineers share as they go about their business building and maintaining the system that’s used by over 120,000 organizations around the world. But when it comes to bringing it all together, there’s one person in charge of ensuring the operating system is as protected as it can be: the security architect.

    The security architect job has been held by several folks in the IBM Rochester lab over the years, including Patrick Botz, Carol Woodbury, and Jeff Uehling. Botz and Woodbury now work …

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  • Guru: Use SQL to Generate Random Data

    June 17, 2019 Ted Holt

    Suppose I needed to generate a large database table with random data in order to adequately test the performance of an SQL query. Suppose that, for security reasons, I was not allowed to copy the production version of the table. Suppose that I needed a way to generate a lot — and I do mean a lot! — of random data. Suppose this scenario is not mere supposition.

    Before an SQL query goes into production, it should be tested against a production-like dataset. Running a query against a test dataset of 25 rows (records) can produce unpleasant surprises when it’s …

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  • Four Hundred Monitor, June 17

    June 17, 2019 Jenny Thomas

    In celebration of Father’s Day, which was yesterday in the U.S., Forbes magazine posted an article with life lessons from five billionaires dads. Aside from the fact that most of us aren’t billionaires, we all have dads in our lives — whether it be your own father, or you are a father, or your spouse or friends are fathers, you probably don’t have to look far to find someone who is doing their best to be a good dad — and it seemed like a good thing to share since the advice could be useful in business and family matters. …

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