• Guru: Refactoring RPG – GOTO

  August 27, 2018 Ted Holt

  When I first learned COBOL, I coded loops the way all the programmers in my shop did — with GO TO. Paragraph names were labels, not routines. Then I took a class in COBOL and learned structured programming. I’ve never looked back. I wish other people felt the same way, because I don’t like to work on GOTO-laden programs.

  Injudicious use of branching — in RPG that would be the GOTO and CABxx op codes — is a major reason I refactor. GOTO plays havoc with program “logic”, a word I hesitate to use in this context. The minute someone …

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• Guru: DB2 For i XML Composition And The IFS

  June 11, 2018 Michael Sansoterra

  Hey, Mike! Regarding Composing An XML Document From Relational Data, Part 1, I have built an XML document using DB2 and i. When I run the query, I get a worthless result set. How do I use the SQL XML functions to get a usable XML file?

  This question comes from reader RA, and he doesn’t exaggerate. The result set from his XML-based query looks like this:

  ....+....1....+....2....+....3....+....4....+
  ************Beginning of data************** 
  
  XMLDATA 
  -------- 
  #CGULIB#
  
    1 RECORD(S) SELECTED.
  
   ************End of Data********************
  

  Notice that DB2 for i does nothing to make the XML attractive to human eyes as the entire XML …

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• Guru: Ready or Not! Part 3 Of Big Changes In RDi V9.6, Compare/Merge, Code Coverage, and More

  June 4, 2018 Susan Gantner

  This is the third in my series of tips on RDi V9.6. In this one I’ll cover the new compare and merge support, along with improvements to code coverage and a few other smaller enhancements in V9.6. I originally thought this would be the last in the series, but IBM recently made available a new point release that introduced enough new features to mean I’ll be adding at least one more tip.

  Compare And Merge

  The ability to compare the content of two source members is not new to RDi, but with V9.6 the facility now offers the option to …

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• 30 Years And Just Getting Started: IBM i Celebration Looks Ahead

  April 4, 2018 Dan Burger

  It’s been said many times that you can’t move forward if you keep looking back. What you’ve accomplished is not the end point. It’s the foundation for building toward the future. You can look back to see what you’ve missed, but it takes forward thinking to make up for it.

  This week is the beginning of a lengthy celebration spotlighting “30 years of innovation and we’re just getting started.” The IBM i team launched a website yesterday with a focus on the future, an emphasis on innovation and a reliance on social media (and IT Jungle) to spread the …

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• Guru: Use SQL To Find Duplicate Source Code

  March 12, 2018 Ted Holt

  According to Brian Tracy, “good habits are hard to develop but easy to live with; bad habits are easy to develop but hard to live with. The habits you have and the habits that have you will determine almost everything you achieve or fail to achieve.” This is as true in programming as in anything else we may do.

  Unfortunately, even those of us who strive for good work habits often have to follow the work of people who did not. One bad habit I come across occasionally is known in software engineering as WET solutions. WET stands for “write …

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• Guru: At Last! A Tool To Search an Output Queue!

  November 6, 2017 Ted Holt

  As far as I’m concerned, a technician can’t have too many tools! I appreciate the good people of IBM for the software tools they provide to help us do our jobs. I also appreciate those people who freely share software tools they’ve written. I’m pleased to pass along a tool from faithful reader Tim Swearingen.

  The tool is a CL command called Search an Output Queue (SRCHOUTQ), and it fills a gap. You can use SRCHOUTQ to look for a string inside the spooled files of an output queue. The search, I am happy to say, is case-insensitive. Here’s more …

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• A Fast Idle For IBM i Development

  September 27, 2017 Alex Woodie

  One thing that’s clear about Liam Allan is he doesn’t take things slow. At just 20 years of age, Allan is one of the brightest young developers on the platform. Now the British coder is sharing his latest creation with the IBM i world: a lightweight ILE development tool dubbed Idle.

  There are many options when it comes to IBM i development tools, especially if open source, Web-native languages are your thing. There’s no shortage of environments for creating PHP, Node.js or Java apps. The opening of the IBM i platform has been a great thing in that regard.

  But …

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• Guru: Passing Parameters From The Command Line

  February 6, 2017 Jon Paris

  In my previous “Fundamentals” tips, I discussed the importance of making sure parameters are the correct size and how to correctly handle omitted parameters. In this tip I want to address what has to be the most frequently asked question about parameters.

  The most frequently asked parameter question comes in many forms, such as:

  • “How do you pass them from the command line?”
  • “Why do I see garbage in the back end of my character parameters?”
  • “Why are my numeric values passed incorrectly?”

  Usually these questions arise when a programmer wants to simplify the testing of a program and does …

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