RE: Validity Checking Programs

Jonathan,

I think you're going about this the wrong way.

Not only will this be considerable work to set up initially, but since you're in effect changing IBM
commands, you're have to redo it when you upgrade the OS or possibly even apply PTFs.

Ideally, you should have a Change Management System. This is just one of the benefits a decent change
management package brings you. But I assume that is not an option.

Therefore, two approaches come to mind.
- Write your own basic CMS. Provide your own 'Work with' type screen which lists the objects in your
database and which provides a 'Create' or 'Compile' option that will look to see what command to use.
You don't even necessarily have to manually load the command, your CMS may be able to use APIs to
determine how an object was created last.

- Take advantage of existing open source pre-compilers. There's at least one, and possibly more that
allow you to specify the create command to use as a specially formatted comment inside the source
itself. Search in the RPG-L archives for more info.

HTH,

Charles Wilt

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jonathan Mason
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2007 8:26 AM
To: 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'
Subject: Validity Checking Programs

I'm in the process of trying to write a utility that will
capture which parameters were specified when a command was
executed so that they can be reused as defaults the next time
the command is run for the same object.
For example, when using the CRTPGM command for some objects I
may have binding directories specified, whilst for others I
may list the service programs and modules separately.

I thought about using Validity Checking Programs (VCP)
assigned to the particular commands that would log the
parameters used in a database, but this has raised a number
of questions:

a) The documentation says that the parameters for the VCP
need to be in
the same sequence as the Command Processing Program (CPP),
however there's no documentation anywhere on the parameters
accepted by any given CPP. I can prompt the command and see
the available parameters, but there's nothing to say that -
for example - whether OUTPUT(*PRINT) passes "*PRINT" or "1"
or anything else to the CPP. I have found that by specifying
two parameters for a VCP, the first of 4 characters followed
by a 1024 characters I can substring the second parameter to
find the details by trial and error. Does anybody know if
there is any documentation anywhere that shows what the CPP's
are expecting?

b) Secondly, when I assign a test VCP to a command the VCP
only runs
when I prompt the command and press Enter. Is this the
correct behaviour for a VCP? I would have expected it to run
every time the command is executed.

c) Are there any API's that return compile time
information? If, for
example, I compare the DSPMOD output with the QBNRMODI system
API there are a lot pieces of information missing from the API output.

Thanks

Jonathan
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