In my previous tip about the latest release (9.6.0.11) of RDi, I promised to cover new features targeting easing the transition from PDM/SEU for new RDi users. If you’re an experienced RDi user, don’t tune out yet — you may find something of…

When I first sat down to write this tip my focus was on introducing you to the new RPG features that were added alongside the latest September Technology Refresh (TR). However, when I tried to reference one of the enhancements from the spring…

Just when you thought my multi-part series on V9.6 of RDi was surely finished, it’s back! It seems like the song that never ends. Happily, though, since more new features have been added to RDi, many of which are the direct result of RFEs (a.k.a.…

In this tip I’m going to discuss some of the options used with DATA-GEN and DATA-INTO to deal with the fact that element names in JSON and XML frequently contain characters that are not legal in RPG names. This is important because RPG’s -INTO and…

In the same announcement as the IBM i 7.4 TR4, three new RPG Built-In-Functions (BIFs)—%Upper, %Lower and %Split—were introduced. Let's take a look at what they offer. %Upper and %Lower The purpose of these BIFs is pretty obvious from their names and…

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 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…

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…

To say that RDi is highly customizable is putting it mildly. There are hundreds of preferences to set as well as many other types of customizations that can be done. I’m often asked about my favorite preference settings and other customizations. This…

In my previous tips (see Related Stories below), I covered the new BIFs and op-code options added with this release. This time I’m going to discuss a couple of new compiler options that focus on the conversion of character data to numeric. While you…

In my previous tip I outlined some of the new features added to RPG with the Fall 2020 release. In this and the following tip I will be covering the features that I ran out of space for in that first one.This time I will cover the new FOR-EACH loop…

In this time of pandemic we could all do with a little cheering up. So “Santa” Barbara (a.k.a. Barbara Morris) and the elves at the IBM Toronto Lab have delivered an early Christmas present. Available now via PTF for 7.3 and 7.4, there are some real…

Here I go again – more enhancements to talk about that have come about in RDi V9.6. This time, it’s the debugger that has been enhanced. The 9.6.0.7 fix pack included some new goodies for the debugger. Both of the enhanced features were popular…

In my first two tips in this series I covered the basics of automatic sizing arrays and variable sized arrays. In this final part am going to discuss some of the current limitations in this support and the facilities IBM has put in place to help…

IBM i experts Jon Paris and Susan Gantner explain debugging procedures for Rational Developer for i. Debugging is one of those topics that many programmers don't like to talk about. Maybe they don't like admitting (even to themselves) that they may…

In my first tip on this topic I covered the automatic sizing option (*AUTO) for the new dynamic arrays. In this tip I am going to look at the second option (*VAR), which allows the programmer to directly control the capacity of the array, growing and…

Some 12 months ago, when the 7.4 release was announced, I wrote the Guru Tip “7.4 Brings New RPG Goodies” describing the features of 7.4 that were also available on 7.3. I said at the time that I would return later to discuss the 7.4-only features.…

I’m guessing that you have some RPG code in your shop that’s desperately in need of some refactoring. I have yet to visit an RPG one that wasn’t in that position. If by chance you don’t know what I mean by “refactoring” or why you may need it, I…

YAJLINTO Options for Special Data Types JSON supports a boolean data type (i.e. an indicator in RPG terms) - the values for such elements being 'true' and 'false'. By default, YAJLINTO maps these to to '1' (true) and '0' (false). These defaults work…

If my crystal ball had told me just how many RDi V9.6 fix packs there would be and, more importantly, how many great new features would be added, I might have thought differently about starting a numbered series! Looks like I may well make it into…