So here’s a fun situation. An interface that works perfectly in the test environment but which randomly falls over in production. Better still, it’s part of the overnight batch processing so it tends to fall over at around 9:30 in the evening. I need to be able to determine what Read more…
One of the advantages of SQL over native IO is that it allows you to handle sets of data rather than having to read and update each row individually. However, there can be cases where you want to handle your data line by line. To do this with SQL, you Read more…
I am very fond of the Vim text editor and will use it, out of preference, whenever possible. This includes writing RPG (and, obviously, RPGLE) programs on the IBM i. The only downside here is that, while Vim supports syntax highlighting for a multitude of languages, RPG isn’t one of Read more…
RPG has, since the beginning of time, supported a set of indicators — one byte characters that can be either *on or *off. These are popular but really shouldn’t be used any more. Being named *IN01 to *IN99 makes for indicators whose function is unclear and you are much better Read more…
So here’s the situation: Five warehouses populating five sets of files (same filenames, different libraries) and I have an RPGLE program that needs to read through each of these to accumulate dispatch information. The traditional way of doing this would involve writing a CL program to OVRDBF to each file Read more…
If you spend any time developing RPG applications you will find that, sooner or later, you will need to debug a program that runs in batch. There are a few steps that you need to take in order to do this and, because my memory is terrible, I’m putting them Read more…
I’m a big fan of service programs. From a maintainability point of view, encapsulated procedures are great. And exported procedures, which mean you only need to develop any piece of functionality once, are even better. However, I now find myself in the position of having to start creating a set Read more…