AS/400 Chapter 1: Introduction

This tutorial is an introduction to the AS/400 (System i5) system and to the RPG and DDS programming languages. This is the first from a series of nine articles covering several aspects of the system.

AS/400 is a computational platform launched in 1988 by IBM. Currently it is officially named System i5, although the term AS/400 is still widely used, because of that we will be using the term AS/400 throughout the tutorial, just be aware it's not its official name anymore.

The machine's operating system is usually OS400. This system has several application from database managers to compilers, editors, etc. AS/400 supports several programming languages like Java, C, SQL, Assembly, COBOL, PHP, etc.

Minimum requirements to complete the tutorial:

  • Basic programming knowledge.
  • Basic database knowledge (relational model, SQL).
  • Access to an AS/400 server.
  • Access terminal to the AS/400 server (in this tutorial the examples are given using Moshasoft).

A small application will be built through each chapter. After the last chapter the application will be able to manage a set of shops and their clients. At the end of each chapter you will be given the source code to the complete application.

This is the application's data model:

AS400 application data model
AS400 application data model
Dércia Silva
Posted by Dércia Silva on October 26, 2007

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