APL2 Product Updates Available


Workstation Updates

Since our last newsletter, the IBM APL Products and Services group has
shipped two service updates for Workstation APL2 Version 2.0.

Service Level 1 was shipped in October 2002.  In addition to fixes
for user-reported problems, it included the following enhancements:
 - {Quad}PW session variable
 - Rank limit raised to 64
 - External function versions of DISPLAY and TIME
 - Object editor improvements
 - Support for datagram sockets in AP 119
 - AP 127 and 227 -isol option
 - AP 145 support for dynamic window creation
 - Tools for rearranging controls and creating resizable dialogs
 - New printer properties to set orientation and margins
 - AP 207 print orientation

Service Level 2 was shipped in April 2003 and included these enhancements:
 - Support for Unicode data in {Quad}FX, {Quad}CR and {Quad}TF
 - Monadic ATR and RTA
 - AP 227 commands to query ODBC system and table information
 - New GUI programming documentation and demos
 - Unicode clipboard operations

Mainframe APL2 News

Several interesting updates to mainframe APL2 were shipped via PTF
in 2002 and 2003.

Calling COBOL

With the installation of the fix for APAR PQ68135 it is now possible to
call COBOL subroutines multiple times from APL2 with a single
initialization of the COBOL runtime environment.
For more information, consult Technote 1083379 in the Support section of
the APL2 web site.

AP 119 Workstation Compatibility

 - SOCKET command support for the DGRAM keyword to request
   datagram sockets for use in connectionless communications
 - GETHOSTBYNAME and GETHOSTBYADDR added for querying host information
 - Supported number of open sockets increased to 256
To update AP 119, order UQ73321 (TSO) or UQ73322 (CMS).

Saving Data: Fast and Precise

The ATR and RTA external functions have been extended to
produce and process Common Data Representation (CDR) format.
The CDR format preserves the original numeric precision.

Order UQ74032 (TSO) or UQ74033 (CMS)


Fun with the Object Editor

The APL2 for Windows Object Editor has received some very welcome updates.

First and foremost is the capability to edit more than just
character arrays.  The object editor now uses a Grid control and
supports editing matrices containing numbers, character vectors,
or a combination of both, in a manner very similar to a spreadsheet.

The object editor has new productivity enhancements for editing
functions and operators too:
 - Localize and unlocalize names
 - Sort the names in the header
 - Localized names are color-coded
 - Identify duplicate labels
 - Marked lines only check box in the Find dialog

Finally, the Object Editor and Session Manager both have a new System
Option allowing the use of Unicode in clipboard operations (useful for
copying and pasting examples from the APL2 books).

Have fun using the new APL2 Object Editor!

GUI Applications Step by Step

The Workstation APL2 library now includes a new book:
"APL2 Programming: Developing GUI Applications", (SC18-7383).
This book is shipped with APL2 for Windows in Service Level 2,
and can be downloaded from the APL2 web site.

"Developing GUI Applications" gathers all of APL2's GUI reference
information for Windows into one convenient place.  It contains a
step-by-step introduction to GUI programming and extensive examples.
Topics in the new book include:
 - Creating windows dynamically
 - Using the dialog editor
 - Building complex applications, including using multiple dialogs
 - Remaining responsive during long-running operations
 - Calling DLL services
 - Class, style, property and event reference tables
 - Using DDE to communicate with Access and Excel


Join us at APL 2003

This year's ACM conference on APL will be held jointly with the Federated
Computing Research Conference.  FDRC offers a broad canvas for the
exchange of ideas, development experiences and tools.  This will be an
excellent opportunity to share APL with people who use other tools.  We
hope you can join us.

June 11-14, 2003  San Diego, California
www.acm.org/sigapl/apl2003

APL2 Available Free to Educators

The IBM Scholars Program is a no-charge offering developed to support
higher education institutions.  The IBM Scholars Program makes it easier
for faculty and researchers to access IBM products and technologies,
educational resources and other information.  Best of all, the IBM
Scholars Program includes APL2!  For more information, visit

http://www.ibm.com/university/scholarsprogram