Readers Insights and Feedback: Dealing with Record Locks

July 17, 2002 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Hey, Ted:

It’s been over a year, but I had a batch job that would run into a record lock problem . If it encountered a record lock, it would retrieve the job name and send a break message to that device (all problems were caused by interactive jobs) asking the user to release the record being updated (back out of the update screen).

Also, I modified update programs and screen files to use the INVITE keyword, and I set the device wait to three minutes; if the user had the update screen up for over three minutes, the RPG

SQL and System/36 File Names

July 17, 2002 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Hey, Ted:

Is it possible for interactive SQL to access a file whose name contains a period (.)?

— John

Yes. Enclose the file name in double quotes (“).

select * from tholts/"AP.VENDR" 
  where F00001 like '%BILL%'

If the library name has a period, enclose the library name in double quotes.

select * from "MY.LIB"/"AP.VENDR" 
  where F00001 like '%BILL%'

Be sure to key quoted names in all caps.

— Ted

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Using Timestamps as Unique Keys

July 17, 2002 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Hey, Ted:

We need to generate unique keys for each record written to a file and thought that the timestamp would make a good unique key for a file. Then we ran into a problem. The RPG TIME op code fills in only the first three digits of the microseconds portion of a timestamp field. The last three digits are always zeros.

Is there another way in RPG to fill the timestamp with a unique time, such as an op code that fills the last three digits as well?

— Michael

Since your concern is that you have a unique