Advanced, Integrated RPG

Advanced, Integrated RPG shows you how to take advantage of the latest technologies from within existing applications. A vast amount of business software exists on IBM Power Systems that provides detailed, secure, reliable information. But the means of delivering this data needs to keep up with the modern day standards that users demand. Solutions such as Excel spreadsheets, Adobe PDF files, and email are requirements for today's users, yet RPG is viewed as incapable of fulfilling these needs without accompanying software that is cost-prohibitive and offers limited capabilities. This book gives you the tools to break through these obstacles and use common development tools to share information and provide more-compatible interfaces.

Beginning chapters cover modernized syntax changes that have occurred in RPG ILE, such as free-formatted coding, modular coding with prototyping, service programs, and activation groups. The book then introduces some of the basics of the Java programming language and the integration of RPG with Java by starting with the capabilities of RPG and diving deeper into the details of JNI, which provides the basic building blocks for the rest of the chapters, making it possible for the reader to take advantage of all of the Java resources that are available through RPG.

Most RPG modernization books focus on the front end or cover syntax and encapsulation, but they don''t leverage these capabilities to provide new enhancements. This book focuses on the backend by updating your reporting from greenbar reports that are physically distributed to electronic documents that are distributed using email.

Advanced, Integrated RPG will bring you right up to speed, providing modern-day solutions from within RPG.

With Advanced, Integrated RPG, you will:

• Update your RPG OPM techniques to take advantage of what ILE has to offer
• Be introduced to the Java programming language and how to exploit it from RPG
• Gain exposure to Open Source technologies and how to make them accessible to RPG
• Learn how to migrate existing greenbar reports to Excel spreadsheets and PDFs
• Discover how to automatically email reports using RPG and JavaMail