Question on sending status messages to a RPG program

I have not done this before and so it trial and error to get this to work.



Situation:

At night, a user is updating shipments. There is a record lock. It causes
the program to crash. I have added code so that is does not crash.



Problem:

Whilst still in the program, I need to send a message to the program so that
a message will appear on the screen showing who has the record locked.



Done so far:

* Changed the WAITRCD(3).
* SNDPGMSG to the program queue with status(*STATUS).
* The message is not displayed until the next EXFMT.



What I want to do:

* Have the message display in the message subfile immediately, before
the EXFMT.
* Whilst the lock is only 3 seconds, the delays are too long and so
the user needs to see it immediately.
* When this happens at midnight, I get a call to fix the problem. Now
I will not get the call, but because the message is not shown immediately,
the users will simply cancel the program clicking on the red X and trying to
start again. That will make it more of a mess to fix.
* I do, do a EXFMT again but the message is not always displayed.
* The SNDPGMMSG could be called from a program that is called by the
program doing the EXFMT.



Any suggestions?



Thanks



Darryl Freinkel

A4G

Telephone: 770.321.8562 Mobile: 678.355.8562