• Guru: Date Format Confusion

  May 10, 2021 Ted Holt

  Hey, Ted:

  I use the Copy to Import File (CPYTOIMPF) command to build a CSV file to be sent to a MySQL system. My colleagues are unable to import the file because of the format of a timestamp field. CPYTOIMPF puts a hyphen between the date and time (e.g. 2021-05-10-04.36.24.849555), but the other system wants a space between them. Other than writing a custom program do you know of another way to change the format of the timestamp output?

  — Richard

  You won’t need a custom program, Richard. There’s another way to handle this requirement.

  IBM has already very thoughtfully …

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• Guru: Customizing RDi Beyond Preferences

  May 3, 2021 Susan Gantner

  In my last tip , I covered a few of the preferences that I like to change to customize the way I use RDi. But there are a number of other customizations I use that aren’t implemented via the Preferences dialogs. I’ll continue the customization topic in this tip by covering some of those other options.

  Compile-Related Customizations

  I’ll start out with a couple of things I like to change related to compiling code. This includes customizing and creating new compile commands and modifying my compile Error List.

  I like to modify some of the parameters for the “ordinary” compile …

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• Guru: A Simple Script That Capitalizes on IBM i’s Open Source Capabilities

  April 26, 2021 Rob McNelly

  In my last piece, we got Yum and Bash running on IBM i. Now let’s build on that foundation to find an open campsite.

  I’m serious. Recently I used an IBM i LPAR to schedule a hiking and camping trip to the Grand Canyon. Where to begin? My bio, perhaps. Here it’s mentioned that “Rob enjoys camping, hiking, biking, and backpacking through the mountains of Arizona. . . . His favorite trip was hiking to the blue waters of Havasupai, and he is planning on hiking the Grand Canyon in the near future.”

  So last summer I went …

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• Guru: Compare Pieces Of Source Members

  April 19, 2021 Ted Holt

  Next to Barbara Morris, the F15 key seems to be the RPG programmer’s best friend. I do not like duplicated source code, but for years I have been finding it everywhere. Sometimes I find the same source code in multiple source members. Sometimes I find the same source code two or more times in a single source member. If you’ve been programming in an IBM i shop for more than two hours, you know what I’m talking about.

  As I wrote three years ago in this august publication, duplicated source code is bad because it embodies the WET principle, …

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• Guru: Web Services, DATA-INTO and DATA-GEN, Part 2

  April 12, 2021 Jon Paris

  In Part 1 of this series I discussed the use of DATA-GEN and DATA-INTO to create “blog entries” via a web service. This time I am going to focus on using the GET HTTP method to retrieve blog entries. As you will see the basic process is very similar.

  I am going to start by retrieving a single blog post, but rather than retrieve all of the data associated with the post I will show you how to restrict processing to specific elements. I will then move on to look at two approaches to processing multiple posts. The first processes …

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• Guru: Web Services, DATA-INTO and DATA-GEN, Part 1

  April 5, 2021 Jon Paris

  Many of the “Can you help me with. . . ” communications that cross my desk these days include reference to JSON. Sometimes the questioner is receiving JSON in a file, or has to retrieve it from a web service, or needs to generate JSON in response to a query. While there are many ways to handle these requirements, RPG’s built-in DATA-INTO and DATA-GEN can do a lot of the heavy lifting for you and are quite simple once you understand the basics.

  In this series of tips, I am going to start with a basic example that uses both …

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• Guru: Stub Testing And SQL

  March 29, 2021 Ted Holt

  A stub program is a program that does nothing but stand in as a place holder for a real program, which may or may not exist yet. I have used them for years to help me test program changes. There are also stub subroutines, stub subprocedures, etc. What I want to talk about today is how to use a similar concept for SQL queries.

  You can use your favorite search engine to learn about stubs, but I’ll give you an example to increase the chances that you’ll know what I’m talking about. Let’s say that I am modifying a CL …

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• Guru: Getting Yum And Bash Up And Running

  March 15, 2021 Rob McNelly

  In the March 1 edition of The Four Hundred, I noted that an emphasis on things like system/application modernization and open source solutions gives IBM i newcomers a degree of comfort with the platform. I also made the point that no matter how long you or I have been at this, there are always people, young or not so young, who are new to the platform and come to this site seeking introductory information about various tasks and capabilities.

  With this in mind, I want to delve further into open source for those who are new to it. As …

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• Guru: SELECT INTO And Arrays

  March 8, 2021 Ted Holt

  I got egg on my face again. I told a couple of colleagues that they could use the SELECT INTO statement to load multiple rows into an array data structure in an RPG program. Boy, was I wrong! I had confused SELECT INTO with the FETCH statement, of course, which retrieves data over which a cursor has been declared.

  But the matter continued to nag me. I much like the simplicity of SELECT INTO. There’s no cursor to declare, open, fetch from and close, the same reason I like the FOR loop in SQL PL. It seemed (and continues …

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• Guru: For IBM i Newcomers, An Access Client Solutions Primer

  March 1, 2021 Rob McNelly

  I enjoy reading about IBM i Fresh Faces. Sure, it’s refreshing to see that it’s not just graybeards like me who are working on the platform, but what really matters is that young people are learning about, getting hands-on with, and coming to love IBM i. I appreciate that many of these stories revolve around system/application modernization and open source solutions. This gives newcomers to IBM i a degree of comfort by reducing their learning curve.

  Learning any new technology is challenging. Specifically, how do you go from learning about the concepts to actually getting on a machine and …

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