August 1996

• In This Issue -
• Letters -
• Lotus Notes and the AS/400: A Match Made in Heaven - Triangle Computer Services' John Nicholson and Kevin Drew say it's high time AS/400 shops look at groupware to manage key business processes. A Notes-to-AS/400 link is the perfect tool for integrating and organizing business information so it's available to all your users.
• The Case for Visual RPGs - Roger Pence says that with visual RPGs, you can get a good overview of visual, event-driven programming, quickly create test programs, and learn some graphical interface design.
• Notes/400: Groupware Comes to the AS/400 - Robert Tipton says that by integrating Notes into your IT environment, you can bring best-of-class, workflow-based, collaborative power to your existing AS/400 applications.
• Newswatch -
• International Update -
• Update -
• Make Your Programs Perform -
• Benchmarking ILE's Call Performance - Julian Monypenny and Roger Pence provide the results of benchmarks comparing the performance of RPG IV subroutines, dynamic calls, bound calls, and service program calls on both CISC and RISC machines.
• The Ins and Outs of RPG IV Calls - IBM Rochester's Paul Remtema explains how the implementation of various types of RPG IV calls differ and how those differences affect call performance. He also shows some performance comparisons and provides tips on improving call performance.
• RISC vs. CISC: What Does It Mean for RPG and C Performance? - IBM's John Brock reports on benchmarks that compare RPG IV and ILE C/400 language performance on CISC and RISC AS/400s.
• Lotus Notes on the AS/400: It's Here! - Paula Fulton explains a V3R2 feature that lets an AS/400 Integrated PC Server (formerly FSIOP) run Lotus Notes 4.0, so Notes users can import data from DB2/400 into Notes databases.
• Disk Analysis Utilities/400 2.5 - Chuck Lundgren reviews Cedar Creek Data Systems' Disk Analysis Utilities/400 (DAU/400), which offers an easy way to locate AS/400 files with deleted records and reorganize those files by physical or logical key.
• Performance Investigator/400 - IBM Rochester's Clair Ewert introduces Performance Investigator/400, IBM's graphical AS/400 performance monitor, and describes a sample use of the product.
• Step-by-Step Setup for SNA - In this follow-up article to "Step-by-Step Setup for TCP/IP" (July 1996), Mark L. Bauman and Robert Dick explain how to configure an AS/400 for SNA using the same Ethernet line description as for TCP/IP.
• Program with AS/400 TCP/IP Sockets - Scott Hammersley provides an overview of sockets, discusses sample client and server sockets programs, and offers tips for working with sockets programs on the AS/400.
• Exploring the Client Access Data Queue APIs - Chuck Lundgren's Visual Basic utility Data Queue API Explorer shows you how you can exchange data between the PC and the AS/400 using Client Access data queue APIs (rather than file transfer or APPC APIs). He also explains what some of the hurdles in developing such an application are and how to overcome them.
• Plug 'n' Play RPG Look-up Windows - Give your programs pop-up windows with a scrolling list of user choices, input validation, and optional search and file-maintenance features. The templates Craig Hatmaker presents in this article let you quickly generate flexible, reusable program objects that provide the functionality of a complex look-up yet isolate that complexity from your applications.
• Tech Corner -
• Newsmart -
• Hardware Report: A Stroll Down Memory Lane - Ted Hooten offers some tips on buying previously owned AS/400 memory and highlights some good used hardware buys.
• A Buyers Guide to AS/400 DASD - John Ghrist presents a Buyers Guide to selected DASD subsystems for the AS/400.
• New Products & Services -
• IBM Announcements -
• Street Talk -