The SQL Create Alias statement was enhanced in the latest round of Technology Refreshes, IBM i 7.5 TR4 and IBM i 7.4 TR10. Previously when you created a SQL Alias you had to give a specific member in the DDS Physical file. Now I can use *LAST to denote the most recent member in the Physical file, and what is really cool is if I add another member to the file the Alias will now use that member! This will be clearer when I show my examples. First I need a DDS physical file. I called this one MULTIMBR, and it is found in my library MYLIB. A R RMULTIMBR A FIELD 10 ..read more

Have you ever wondered how many different types of objects there in IBM i? And what the types of objects are? The latest Technology Refreshes give us a SQL View that contains that information, and we can query it to answer those questions. The SQL View is called SYSTEM_OBJECT_TYPES, and it is found in the QSYS2 library. It has three columns: OBJECT_TYPE:  Object type TEXT_DESCRIPTION:  Description of what the object type is CATEGORY:  There are two categories: IFS - object is in the IFS LIBRARY - object resides in a library (not an IFS object) Read more ..read more

Two years ago the Send Message, SND-MSG, operation code was added to RPG. In the latest round of Technology Refreshes a number of new options have been added to SND-MSG and the Target, %TARGET, built in function. To oversimplify it SND_MSG consists to three parts: Type of message to send Message text or variable The target for the message, which is the %TARGET built in function, BiF. This is optional For example: SND-MSG *INFO 'Message text goes here' %TARGET(*SELF) Read more ..read more

Last month I wrote about a way to list all of the unused virtual devices in your partition. In response to the article I received a question: "Is there a way to then delete these devices, other than manually going through? One system I just did has over 5,000 devices...." The answer, of course, is yes there is. Before I give my final result let me go through the steps I did to create a SQL script to delete the unused virtual devices. I can identify the virtual devices using the Object Statistics SQL Table function. I do not want to repeat myself. For the details read my previous article. I de ..read more

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As part of the latest Technology Refreshes, IBM i 7.5 TR4 and 7.4 TR10, comes an addition to the variable and data structure definitions. It is now possible to use the constant keyword as part of those definitions to protect them from being changed. Why would I want to do that? There are times I want to use a variable, rather than a constant. It might be to contain a date. I would not want this to be changed, either on purpose or by accident. Below is an example: 01 **free 02 dcl-s StartDate date inz(*sys) const ; 03 dsply StartDate ; 04 StartDate = d'2024-07-04' ; Read more ..read more

This moth I have two events I will be talking at. I will be the speaker of the July meeting of the Central Texas IBM i User Group, CTXiUG. This meeting is on Tuesday July 9 at 6:30 PM (CT. I will be talking about various ways I have used SQL on IBM i to keep partitions clean of old objects, etc. You can register at the CTXiUG website here. Later this month I will be attending and presenting at one of my favorite conference's, OCEAN user group's TechCon24. The conference is a four-day affair. The first day, Wednesday July 24, is online. I am presenting in person on the second and third days ..read more

It has been possible to create a Microsoft compatible Excel spreadsheet using SQL since the last Technology Refreshes. In my example I demonstrated how you could do this within a RPG program. A few months have passed and I have been asked how to do the same within a CL program. With a minor change I will show it is possible. Let me start by showing the code for this program: Read more ..read more

Last week I was at i-UG's i-Power2024 conference, in the United Kingdom. This gave me another opportunity to hand out some RPGPGM.COM-unity ribbons. What is the RPGPGM.COM-unity? You will have to click on this link to learn what it means, and see who I gave ribbons to ..read more

Today the PTFs for the latest Technology Refreshes, IBM i 7.5 TR4 and 7.4 TR10, become available. There are three sets of PTFs you need to download: General PTFs for the Technology Refresh Database PTFs (SQL) RPG PTFs The numbers for these PTFs are different for the two releases. These are the numbers I have found so far: IBM i 7.5 TR4 IBM i 7.4 TR10 General TR PTFs Database PTFs SF99950   7 SF99704   28 RPG PTFs I cannot wait to start trying all the new features and functions. When I do, I will write about them on this website ..read more