Flexible Input, Dazzling Output with IBM i

In the old days, our beloved server was, in many cases, the only system a company used to perform its business. Today, IBM i is no longer an island. This book is about building bridges that link that "island" to the modern business server world. You'll discover easier and more flexible ways to get data into your IBM i system, plus rather surprising methods to export and present the vital business data it contains.

Flexible Input, Dazzling Output (FIDO) is all about interfaces. It shares more with a dog than just its name: it has a few tricks of its own!

The solutions presented here range from novel ways to prevent and recover user errors on .csv input files to the creation of professional-grade, interactive, and fully customizable charts based on your data in real time. Your DB2 data will look great in program-generated Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and browser-based, interactive chart--everything from simple bar and pie charts to combinations of charts and/or charts and data tables.

The techniques provided in this book are all based on existing open source tools or were created from scratch by the author. By integrating these input/output methods into your own applications, you'll be able to provide flexible, integrated, and modern solutions--from ILE RPG programs, without having to increase the application landscape complexity with new servers and programming languages.

No other book provides such a comprehensive set of tools, and they're open source, free, and easy to integrate into your application solutions. Let FIDO bring modernization to your RPG-based applications without the full weight of new design tools and new languages. It's just ILE RPG and a few tricks!

Upon completion of Flexible Input, Dazzling Output with IBM i, you will:

• Possess new ways to link your IBM i to the outside world
• Know how to automate boring tasks such as file transfers
• Be able to create and read and write files on the IFS from an RPG program
• Understand how to prevent and correct user errors in .csv import files
• Be able to create beautiful interactive charts directly from your RPG code without having to learn a new programming language
• Easily integrate Windows-based applications with your IBM i programs
• Have your RPG programs produce professional-looking spreadsheets instead of ugly printouts
• Have gained a set of open source free tools that will help you solve everyday problems with ease and style