RPG IV Jump Start, Fourth Edition: Your Guide to the New RPG

Rating:
Summary: A Small Dynamo of RPG IV ILE information
Review: This is a 15 chapter, 3 appendixes book that is only 270 pages, yet it gets you into RPG ILE in a short span of time. The author does a great job of specifying the changes from RPG III to RPG IV. I like the way a chapter was devoted to each specification change from Header, File, D-spec, Input , to the Calc spec. There are chapters devoted to Free form expressions using the EVAL opcode and the book does a good job of covering the many variations of the EVAL expressions. The new RPG Built-in Functions are covered, where there is a conscious move to change from RPG III's use of conditioning and result indicators to RPG IV's appropriate Built-in Function, eg., use of %FOUND bif with the CHAIN opcode to return a true value when a record is found, whereas, in the RPG III way the resulting indicator was turned off when the record was successfully found. There is a chapter devoted to Procedures, Subprocedures, and Prototypes, and the author takes you through the process of declaring and defining the procedures in actual coding examples. There is a chapter devoted to the new date/time operations and date bif's. These go a long way to simplifying date handling operations that used to take several lines of code. All in all, a good jump start into RPG IV for the person with knowledge of RPG III.

Rating:
Summary: A Small Dynamo of RPG IV ILE information
Review: This is a 15 chapter, 3 appendixes book that is only 270 pages, yet it gets you into RPG ILE in a short span of time. The author does a great job of specifying the changes from RPG III to RPG IV. I like the way a chapter was devoted to each specification change from Header, File, D-spec, Input , to the Calc spec. There are chapters devoted to Free form expressions using the EVAL opcode and the book does a good job of covering the many variations of the EVAL expressions. The new RPG Built-in Functions are covered, where there is a conscious move to change from RPG III's use of conditioning and result indicators to RPG IV's appropriate Built-in Function, eg., use of %FOUND bif with the CHAIN opcode to return a true value when a record is found, whereas, in the RPG III way the resulting indicator was turned off when the record was successfully found. There is a chapter devoted to Procedures, Subprocedures, and Prototypes, and the author takes you through the process of declaring and defining the procedures in actual coding examples. There is a chapter devoted to the new date/time operations and date bif's. These go a long way to simplifying date handling operations that used to take several lines of code. All in all, a good jump start into RPG IV for the person with knowledge of RPG III.