• Guru Classic: Looking for Commitment, Part 3

  August 14, 2019 Paul Tuohy

  As companies look to modernize their applications, commitment control can play an integral role. This set of three articles about commitment control was originally published in March of 2009. (See Related Stories below.) The content of the articles has been updated for free-form RPG. In this article, I will take a closer look at how commitment control works by looking at the journal entries for commitment control. I will also discuss the LCKLVL and CMTSCOPE parameters on the STRCMTCTL command.

  Commitment Control And Journals

  Commitment control is dependent upon the use of a journal. A journal is used in conjunction …

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• Guru Classic: The Efficiency of Varying Length Character Variables

  August 14, 2019 Jon Paris

  Remember the bad old days when dinosaurs still roamed the earth and the only way to build strings in RPG involved playing silly games with arrays? Or worse still, obscure combinations of MOVE operations? Thankfully those days are far behind us — although sadly there are still a few RPG/400 dinosaurs coding away!

  RPG IV introduced many powerful new string handling options, such as the %TRIMx family of BIFs, but even now there are capabilities in the language that few programmers fully exploit. One of my favorites is variable length fields. This lack of familiarity made this tip an obvious …

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• Guru Classic: Everybody Likes Shortcuts! Part 1, Navigation

  August 14, 2019 Susan Gantner

  I wrote the original version of this tip a few years ago but I still find a lot of RPGers aren’t using keyboard shortcuts as much as I think they should be. Since shortcuts can make you so much more productive, I’m re-visiting this topic with a few updates for changes in more recent versions of RDi. It’s also a follow-on to my last Guru Classic tip on RDi keyboard shortcuts.

  I’ve seen a particularly sharp increase in the use of RDi (or Rational Developer for i) by RPGers in recent years. I suspect that has a lot to …

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• Guru Classic: My Favorite Keyboard Shortcuts for RSE/RDi

  July 17, 2019 Susan Gantner

  When using RDi for editing my CL, DDS, RPG, or COBOL code, I find that I can save a lot of time by using keyboard shortcuts for functions that would otherwise require that I take my hands off the keyboard to use the mouse. So I thought I would share a few of my favorites. Many of the shortcuts I use are standard for other applications that I also use for email, spreadsheets or text editing. It’s easy to forget that some of those same shortcuts can be used when we’re editing our RPG code.

  A lot has changed on …

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• Guru Classic: The New Basics — Indicators

  July 17, 2019 Jon Paris

  The history of indicators pre-dates even the earliest versions of RPG and takes us all the way back to the old tabulating machines, perhaps even earlier depending on how broad a definition one uses. What is without doubt, though, is that indicators in the sense of *INnn and *INLR were added to the RPG language as a vehicle for translating those old tabulator board programs.

  RPG has grown a lot since those early days, and yet many people still write code using the old-style numbered indicators. LR? Well, we’re kind of stuck with that, but there hasn’t been a need …

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• Guru Classic: Looking For Commitment, Part 2

  July 17, 2019 Paul Tuohy

  As companies look to modernize their applications, commitment control can play an integral role. This set of three articles was originally published in March 2009. The content of the articles has been updated for free form RPG.

  In this article I will take a look at the basic rules and coding requirements for using commitment control within RPG programs.

  A Database

  This is the SQL used to create a schema named COMMIT, which contains two related tables called HEADER and DETAILS.

  (A)  CREATE SCHEMA "COMMIT" ;
  
  (B)  CREATE TABLE COMMIT/HEADER (
       	"KEY" CHAR(2) CCSID 37 NOT NULL DEFAULT '' ,
       	

  …

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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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• Guru Classic: What’s That Name, Again?

  March 6, 2019 Paul Tuohy

  Author’s Note: This article was originally published in February 2013. I recently had to hunt out this article when visiting a client. The content is even more relevant as the use of SQL stored procedures continues to grow.

  One of the great things about writing articles and tips is that people will drop you a note to ask a question or tell you how much they liked (or disliked) what you wrote. But even better is when someone drops you a line to let you know they have taken what you wrote and extended it.

  Such was the case with …

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