RE: calling mail.jar from rpg

Well, good question. I'm starting to use the Apache Poi Project for
creating spread sheets with the stuff that you wrote. I really like it!

IMHO, it makes sense to use POI for Excel.

The file format of an Excel file is extraordinarily complex. Indeed, the name POI stands for "Poor Obfuscation Implementation" because the programmer who wrote it thought that Microsoft must be trying to obfuscate their file format if they use something that complex. (He used the word "poor" becuase he figured it out, so it must not have been that well obfuscated to being with.)

Writing your own tools for Excel in native RPG would be a major, major undertaking, and would probably take you years. Using POI spares you that work.

I just thought I use the mail.jar that sun put out and keep it as close
to rpg as possible so some of the other developers and I can learn as we
go.

Unlike Excel, E-mail is NOT complicated. And there are existing pure RPG tools for it that are free and you can download and use them. Consequently, I don't see why you want to use Java for e-mail.

I keep coming back to this same point: If your goal is to "keep it as close to RPG as possible" then why do you want to do it in Java?

To me, that's like saying "I want authentic Mexican food!" and then getting on a plane and flying to Japan. There's nothing wrong with Japan, but Mexico would be a more logical place for authentic Mexican food.

In your stuff it doesn't look like you used anything but the
classes put out by the poi project.

I guess that depends on what you mean by "my stuff". If by "my stuff" you mean the articles I wrote about POI, then you're right... I only used POI in my articles about POI.

If by "my stuff" you mean "my entire body of work", then you're wrong. I've used lots of other things besides POI. I've presented multi-part article series on JDBC from RPG and JFreeChart from RPG, neither of which have anything to do with POI, but both use Java classes.

Can't this same thing be done with the mailapi? I would just like to know if it could be easily done, if not, that's fine. I want it understandable to everyone in our iseries group so we can use some of this.

I think you need to distinguish between whether something CAN be done and whether it SHOULD be done.

In my mind, it makes more sense to use RPG for e-mail, rather than have RPG calling Java for e-mail.