Re: CHGPF - Cannot drop fields

In any event, here is an RFE: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rfe/execute?use_case=viewRfe&CR_ID=71934


Mark Murphy
STAR BASE Consulting, Inc.
mmurphy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


-----Buck Calabro <kc2hiz@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: -----
To: wdsci-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
From: Buck Calabro <kc2hiz@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: 05/28/2015 11:58AM
Subject: Re: [WDSCI-L] CHGPF - Cannot drop fields

On 5/28/2015 9:31 AM, Mark Murphy/STAR BASE Consulting Inc. wrote:

Really, we are going to force ourselves back to 5250 green screen just because that is the way it has always been? Seems to me since IBM owns both RDi and IBM i there could be some communication between the two teams to allow CHGPF, and ALTER TABLE to drop or shorten columns in the GUI. Is RDi the future for IBM i development or not. If it is, you have to be able to do this.

I'm genuinely torn. On the one hand, I am a green screen developer: I
write code that will only execute on the green screen. DDS, subfiles,
that stuff. I cannot test my code without a 5250 session. I always
have one open. Switching from RDi to 5250 is fast and easy and I do it
hundreds of times a day. What's one more time?

On the other hand, CHGPF is in fact a one-time 'object creation'
command. A compile, if you will allow me the liberty of stretching the
meaning. It's part of development, not testing. It would rock to be
able to CHGPF from inside RDi because that's part of the natural edit,
compile cycle.

The difficulty, as Michael points out, is that the host behaviour of
CHGPF is quite different to the host behaviour of CHGPGM. IBM i insists
on issuing a message to warn you if your CHGPF is about to drop a column
- but only if issued interactively. Issue a CHGPF in a batch job and
IBM i behaves differently - IBM i does not issue CPA32B2 at all in
batch. Instead, it issues a CPD32CC *DIAG, CPD32CE *DIAG (which falsely
claims an inquiry message was replied to!), and a CPF7304 *ESCAPE which
terminates the CHGPF. The upshot of that is that not even changing the
reply list will help!

In a last ditch effort to try a workaround, I did a CHGJOB
INQMSGRPY(*RQD) and tried it. No dice. IBM i says 'Hey, you're in
batch so you get auto-killed'.

This is a situation with IBM i itself, not RDi. It'll probably take a
DCR or a COMMON requirement to change CHGPF to allow a batch process to
issue CPA32B2.