MidAtlantic Midrange is proud to offer the next in our continuing education seminars, bringing you the best education and educators available in the iSeries world, and to do so at User Group Rates.

RPG: What's New, What You Should Be Using, What You May Not Know
With Jon Paris

This one-day seminar explores the issues regarding the development and deployment of the latest in V5R2 RPG and the latest in techniques and tools in developing RPG for GUI and web applications.

We start the day out with: RPG IV: Did you know... (Prototypes, Compiler Directives and other features and functions you may have missed)

As we travel around the world talking to RPGers, we often find that even experienced RPG IV programmers have "missed" a few gems along the way.  This session is designed to fill those gaps.  Examples? How about Prototypes?  Many people know that you need prototypes when defining and using Subprocedures, but many fail to appreciate their other uses.  For example, did you know that you can use prototypes to call PGM objects? Or that a prototype will defend against passing incorrect parameters? Or that in some cases they can take care of the differences for you?

Did you know that you could conditionally include source lines based on a parameter to the RPG compiler?  A great way to include/exclude additional code needed for testing without having to delete or comment it all out.  There are many other uses for this great feature too. How about mail-merge function?  Did you know that through the combination of two of the latest features of RPG IV that you now have an easy way of blending customer names and other details into text templates? Additional tidbits include new performance optimization options and effective use of pointers in RPG trigger programs. Even if you have been programming in RPG IV for some time, you will likely learn something new in this session.

Then we move on to: Exploiting RPG's V5 Power Features.

With free-format RPG stealing all the headlines, it was easy to overlook some of the other powerful features introduced in the V5 releases of RPG IV. This session will show you how to make the most of them to power-up your RPG programs.

Major topics to be covered include:

• How to use the new MONITOR function to simplify error handling
• Ending the decimal data error blues by combining MONITOR with new I/O features
• Many Data Structure enhancements, including Qualified and Nested DSs, DS Arrays and new BIFs that help you to structure your data to match the real world
• How to code RPG "methods" for use from Java and how call Java methods from RPG

With the V5R1 release of RPG IV IBM has "liberated" the language.  In this session we will explore the essentials of /free-form coding including:

• The basic syntax rules of /Free RPG (or "How I learned to love the semi-colon")
• The new Built-in-Functions designed to replace unsupported operation codes, including the new BIFs to manipulate dates and times
• Coding alternatives for the defunct MOVE operation
• New operations you can ONLY use in /Free form

This session gives you some practical examples of how subprocedures can be used in your business applications. We will show you how some of the optional prototype keywords can be used to make your procedures more versatile. In addition we will also discuss how subprocedures can be used to mask complexity and modularize I/O functions to simplify the task of changing the database design.

And finally, we end with: Brewing Up Mixed RPG and Java Applications

The Java Native Method (JNI) support in RPG IV opens up a whole new world of possibilities.  We can now write Java methods in RPG, and invoke Java methods from RPG.

These days there is a wide range of Java utility software freely available.  Examples include: XML parsers, PDF creators, e-Mail, and Excel spreadsheet creation to name just a few.  In this session we will introduce you to the basics of using these facilities from within your RPG programs.

Knowledge of RPG IV prototyping is assumed, some Java knowledge is helpful but not essential.

Jon Paris has been involved in the data processing industry for over 30 years. In 1988 Jon joined IBM's Toronto Lab, where he played a major role in the planning and design of the new RPG IV language. In 1994, he moved to the AS/400 Application Development Tools Market Support Group, where he was involved in producing educational and other support materials and services related to AS/400 programming languages and development tools, such as COBOL/400, RPG IV, CODE/400, and VisualAge for RPG. Jon left IBM and is now one of the principles in Partner 400, a Consulting company specializing in iSeries Application Development education. Jon is a frequent speaker at user group meetings and conferences around the world.

This course starts at 8:30 AM and ends at 5:00 PM and will be held on:

May 23, 2005 at the Richmond Airport Holiday Inn in Richmond, VA.
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May 24, 2005 at the Holiday Inn in College Park on US1 and the Beltway.
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May 26, 2005 at the Holiday Inn in Ft. Washington, PA.

The course fee is $275 for non-user group members and $250 for user group members. This fee offering is a special arrangement between Washington Area Midrange Users Group and MidAtlantic Midrange. Members of other AS/400 User groups may also apply under the user group rate.

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Please circle the date of the session you plan on attending.

Please mail completed form with check to: MidAtlantic Midrange, Conference Services,

12023 Blackberry Terrace., North Potomac, MD 20878.

For any further questions or reservations, contact K.B. Soni at 301-590-7121 or by email.