Skip to Main Content
IBM Power Ideas Portal


This portal is to open public enhancement requests against IBM Power Systems products, including IBM i. To view all of your ideas submitted to IBM, create and manage groups of Ideas, or create an idea explicitly set to be either visible by all (public) or visible only to you and IBM (private), use the IBM Unified Ideas Portal (https://ideas.ibm.com).


Shape the future of IBM!

We invite you to shape the future of IBM, including product roadmaps, by submitting ideas that matter to you the most. Here's how it works:

Search existing ideas

Start by searching and reviewing ideas and requests to enhance a product or service. Take a look at ideas others have posted, and add a comment, vote, or subscribe to updates on them if they matter to you. If you can't find what you are looking for,

Post your ideas
  1. Post an idea.

  2. Get feedback from the IBM team and other customers to refine your idea.

  3. Follow the idea through the IBM Ideas process.


Specific links you will want to bookmark for future use

Welcome to the IBM Ideas Portal (https://www.ibm.com/ideas) - Use this site to find out additional information and details about the IBM Ideas process and statuses.

IBM Unified Ideas Portal (https://ideas.ibm.com) - Use this site to view all of your ideas, create new ideas for any IBM product, or search for ideas across all of IBM.

ideasibm@us.ibm.com - Use this email to suggest enhancements to the Ideas process or request help from IBM for submitting your Ideas.

Status Future consideration
Workspace IBM i
Categories Languages - RPG
Created by Guest
Created on Mar 6, 2024
Merged idea

This idea has been merged into another idea. To comment or vote on this idea, please visit IBMI-I-3521 Allow the CONST keyword for a standalone field or data structure.

Read only datastructures with the use of the keyword const. Merged

If we have datastructure with overlapping fields, like in this example:
(See the added CONST keyword after the qualified keyword).

       dcl-ds ProductionStatus qualified CONST;
        ALL           char(18) inz('01020510152099WOCO');
        NEW           char( 2) overlay(ALL:1);
        REALLOCATE    char( 2) overlay(ALL:*next);
        ALLOCATION    char( 2) overlay(ALL:*next);
        MANUAL        char( 2) overlay(ALL:*next);
        ALLOCATED     char( 2) overlay(ALL:*next);
        COMPLETE      char( 2) overlay(ALL:*next);
        ARCHIVED      char( 2) overlay(ALL:*next);
        WAREHOUSE     char( 2) overlay(ALL:*next);
        CUSTOMERORDER char( 2) overlay(ALL:*next);
      end-ds; 

 

We can then use the subfields qualified to the datastructure name like this.

if someProductionStatusField = ProductionStatus.COMPLETE;
  doSomething( );
endif;

 

It would be great if the datastructure would be considered a read-only datastructure to avoid changing it's values  with code,

and it makes the code much more readable.

Idea priority Medium