The iSeries-toolkit: Open Source toolkit for the AS/400 programmer (Home Page)

OPEN SOURCE TOOLS FOR THE AS/400

Current Release:

Downloads:

Support:

Feedback:

Links:

Welcome to the iSeries-toolkit Project
The iSeries-toolkit is a set of utilities and applications for iSeries and AS/400 Programmers. This toolkit gives those programmer a set of components and utilities that form the basis for a complete application framework. That framework supports most common programming tasks including message handling, native and IFS file access, dynamic storage allocation, sorting, scripting, and API interfaces.

The iSeries Toolkit helps programmers build an understanding of ILE and RPGIV programming techniques by providing complete utilities and examples. The long term goal is to help iSeries programmers build multi-tiered applications from components that take advantage of the strengths the iSeries platform. Through example, the iSeries-toolkit can also help RPG programmers build an understanding of object oriented programming techniques. The components of the iSeries-toolkit use several object-oriented design patterns like Mediator, Façade, and Singleton.

Component based architectures are nothing new, however they are seldom carried out in entirety and often contain compromises necessary to meet demanding application delivery schedules. The iSeries-toolkit helps you avoid those compromises and gives you proven components with well defined interfaces that plug into your applications. If one of these components does not fit your application structure, well -- you've got the source.

Latest Pre-Release
iSeries-toolkit 1.7 (May 19, 2003): iseries-toolkit 1.7 fixes several bugs and adds new features to the iseries-toolkit ( Details - Download Now ) Features in this version include:

Data queue enhancments to duplicate and manipulate data queues via commands and RPGIV procedures
Support for replace and numeric sequence SQL UDFs
Tomcat 4.1.24 start up and shutdown scripts
Retrieve job information including submit date, job, library list, stack, etc.
Commands that include Create Duplicate Data Area, Create Database File from SQL Statement, Check IFS Object, Copy Message Description, Delete Messages > n Days Old, and Change Object.
API support including synchronous and asynchronous list, retrieve file description, retrieve job information, list objects, programs, service programs, modules, members, database relations, command execution, data queues, user profiles, and many more.
Native support for Ant running on the iSeries.
Dynamic file access via SQL including the ability to direct select results to a file
Support for messaging, message description, data queue, user space, user index, job attributes, text manipulation, and more.

The downloads page contains the latest release. The iSeries-toolkit is being continuously updated; to get the latest development source use the Concurrent Version System (CVS) interface. You can use the CVS interface provided on this site for the occasional downloads, but for more than occasional downloads, you will want a full CVS client. There are several CVS clients to choose from, Windows users might try out WinCVS.

New Developers
Several new project developers have joined the project since the last release and have contributed ideas, documentation, and code. Among those developers, Pete Hall made several important bug fixes and added new support for several authority and string manipulation APIs.

Help Wanted
We currently need help with the following tasks (and much more):

Examples and iSeries Java related utilities -- Many iSeries developers are moving to Java and looking for examples and Java based utilities.
Ant support -- Currently this package supports running standard Ant tasks on the iSeries. In the future it would be nice have Ant tasks that compile and build all iSeries applications using ant.
Feedback -- Any feedback and suggestions are greatly appreciated and will be taken into consideration as future releases are built. There are several good ways to provide feedback, email is great but registered bugs and feature requests are preffered.

To help with one of these tasks, please contact David Morris

Selected News
In addition to news on the project page, here are some important news excerpts:

May 19, 2003: iSeries-toolkit 1.7 is now available.
April 2, 2002: Added new Module to API X-reference page.
January 2, 2002: Added new resources page.
December 12, 2001: Added new iSeries open source links page.
December 2, 2001: Installation instructions added to documentation page

Please send comments and questions concerning the site to David Morris.
Last Modified on Tuesday, March 25, 2002 06:22:20 MST.
© 2001 The iSeries-toolkit. See the project statistics here.