Back in the olden days – files were filled with numbers and long string of data. Words like SAUSAGES might have been stored as a 30 ALPHA field in the format “SAUSAGES______________________” which, even tho its padded with *blanks – is just wasting a lot of space. Nowadays, most systems use variable length fields, shorter,

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By using MSGCON (message constant) keyword. You use MSGCON, a field-level keyword to declare the text for constant fields is contained in a message description. Years ago, this was used by a lot of companies to create multilingual display files. The idea was that you could remove the ENGLISH language fields from every *DSPF and

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Have you been asked to add a part number as a barcode to an existing warehouse report? Does the report currently print as an old fashioned text based spool that looks like it came from the 1980’s? Is this program written in RPG? Is the Printer file defined in DDS? If the answer to these

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Modernizing AS400 aka WEB-ENABLING AS400 and iSeries Converting an old green screen application to run in a website is as easy as typing an email or uploading a photo to facebook. If you are a modern IBM i Software developer the chances are, your system has lots of old AS400 and iSeries that code that

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Twenty years ago these are the kind of things you had to know to work on the old AS400 systems. I found these on an old dusty corner of my homeserver. Enjoy the trip down memory lane or to use old RPG lingo AS400NERD CABEQ ‘1’  START MISCELLANEOUS How do you combine two record formats

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Is SQL faster than CPYF Native IO? For the longest time I’ve heard about the performance difference between a true SQL INDEX and a DDS ACCESS PATH generated index on the IBM i operating system (or ‘OS400’ which was a ten year old, but very commonly used version of the the same OS). But is

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Code400.com is probably the best RPG programming related forum around (Bob Cozzi’s comes in a close second but the UI is just awful and I really cant spend to long trying to navigate around without getting annoyed… but I digress…). I frequently read neat little tricks and this is a smart one I saw a

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