Create useful date-centric service programs with embedded SQL.

Welcome to 2012! All of our year-end processes are complete, and it's the beginning of a new year with a clean slate. 2011 was a very clean year date-wise because it ended on a Saturday. Typically, there is always special handling with the last week of the year for one reason or the other, which makes working with data a prevalent topic. For this article, I wanted to share a few handy little SQL functions that I've put into service programs to extend the existing RPG date resources. And this is all done with very minimal code in a reliable way that is highly reusable.

Find out how to support multiple signatures and what to be aware of when changing service programs.

I initially intended on just doing a three-part series that worked its way toward binding directories, but I feel as though I need to cover more on the binding language before I can move on. So this follow-up article will discuss support for multiple signatures and things that you should be cautious of when using the binding language.

Do you know how to recompile your service programs without having to recompile all programs using the service program?

I have to admit that the binding language was a late discovery for me, and I've struggled for quite awhile working around it. But I've found the binding language to solve the problem of having to recompile your service programs without having to recompile all the programs that are using it. Without the binding language, service programs are very similar to modules due to the need to recompile the programs every time they change. This article will show you how to overcome this problem with the use of the binding language.

Produce better code and exchange knowledge with code reviews.

One of the most typical obstacles with the adoption of modern programming techniques in RPG shops is the fact that everyone is at a different level of knowledge in different areas. All programmers have their areas of work that they find important, and they may not always be in the same genre. With code reviews, you give all of the people with different flavors of programming styles the opportunity to share their knowledge with the others on the staff.

Take advantage of global, static, and non-static variable attributes within subroutines and procedures.

IBM has always been good at giving us all the tools that we need in one box and ensuring that they run on the box reliably and efficiently. Since RPG has evolved into the ILE environment, we have been given more capabilities in the realm of modular coding and encapsulation. With these new capabilities, you have to learn about what you're gaining, what you're losing, and what all the nuances are of the different coding styles. In this article, I intend to describe the scoping and attributes of variables with RPG procedures.