Re: API (used to be F9 code retrieval)

[email@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (James W Kilgore)]

Ravi, Jim,

As with all things, they exist, its just a matter of degrees.  API's 
(Application
Program Interface's) have been around since day one of the AS/400.  The list of
available API's has grown as the OS has grown.

They are no more complicated than if you were to write your own "black box"
function that is callable within any application program.  Let's say before 
RPGIV
you wrote a black box to compute days duration and made that a callable before 
an
opcode would do the same thing.  An API (IMHO .... like QCMDEXC) is a callable
that has yet to become an opcode ;-)

In the old days of the S/38, MI (Machine Interface) programs would accomplish 
the
same result and on the S/3x one could acquire assembler routines that were
callable to do things like retrieve current cursor location or page line number.

Not really rocket science here.  Just learning someone else's code.

BTW, we may as well get use to it if JAVA classes are going to be the "acquired
foundation" that we build our applications upon.

Seasons Greetings,
James W. Kilgore
email@James-W-Kilgore.com

Ravi wrote:

> I recall using API's atleast 6 years ago, before ILE. API's are probably
> written using low level code ( PLMI ???) where you pass in
> a set of input parameters and read the result out of user spaces.
>
> Jim Suiter wrote:
>
> > I've used APIs in Visual Basic code in a MS Windows environment, and from
> > what I have gathered, with the advent of ILE, they are now on the AS400.
> >

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