Re: Question - re: OS/400 APIs

[Vern Hamberg <vhamberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hooboy, Trevor

Whether these are interesting depends on what you want to do. We use
message handling, the various object ones (user space, esp.), various MI
functions (mostly read-only stuff) that are callable in C or RPG (we need
low-level information about the machine, in the fastest way possible),
date-handling routines, various list-retrievals (jobs, objects, etc.) which
often use user spaces, Unix-style things, for IFS and date/time, et al.

I've never done much with spool file APIs - no need and not worth the
effort yet - they're kind of tough to deal with, IIRC. The MI date-handling
things are really ugly. The file-description-retrieval ones are just
nasty--deeply nested structures.

Many were first surfaced by IBM, in order to give us ways to do the same
things that CL commands do, but faster, less overhead. Over the years, more
and more stuff has been exposed.

If you haven't looked at manuals yet, be sure to check out
<http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/iseries/v5r1/ic2924/books/c4158000.pdf>, the
"API Programming" manual. And especially Jon Paris', et al. Redbook "Who
Knew You Could Do That...?",
<http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/pubs/pdfs/redbooks/sg245402.pdf>

HTH

Vern

At 02:49 PM 11/20/2002 -0600, you wrote:
> All,
>
> This is a little research for me in regard to using OS/400 APIs.
>
> What APIs are useful?
> What APIs are commonly used?
> Are there any that are really interesting?
>
> Thanks,
> Trevor
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> trevorp@looksoftware.com