The Integrated Language Environment® (ILE) model is a set of tools and associated system support designed to enhance program development on a system.
Bindable ILE APIs are independent from the high-level languages. This can be useful when mixed languages are involved.
The ILE APIs provide functions such as:
ILE APIs use the following naming conventions:
ILE service programs (*SRVPGM) use the following naming conventions:
Integrated Language Environment (ILE) APIs are contained within service programs that the calling program binds to. In addition, some ILE APIs provide a program interface for the original program model (OPM) languages. You can usually distinguish between the *SRVPGM interface and the *PGM interface by the name of the API. For example, the registration facility APIs provide both a program and a service program entry point (procedure) interface. For the Register Exit Point API, the service program entry point interface is named QusRegisterExitPoint and the program interface is named QUSRGPT. A bindable procedure name can be up to 30 characters and mixed uppercase and lowercase. A program interface name can be up to 8 characters and is all uppercase.
A binding directory is used for ILE APIs that are contained in service programs. A binding directory is a list of names of modules and service programs that provides a reference by name and type. Service programs that contain ILE APIs are in the QUSAPIBD binding directory. This binding directory is implicitly used by ILE compilers to resolve the ILE API references; therefore, it is not necessary to explicitly name the service program or the API binding directory when creating programs that use ILE APIs. If you provide your own APIs with the same name, make sure that you also provide your own binding directory or service program.
Most APIs (ILE and non-ILE) have a header file supplied by i5/OS™. These header files reside in the optionally installable library QSYSINC. The header files provide the prototypes for the API as well as define any structures that are used by the API. The QSYSINC library is used by the ILE C compiler to search for header files; therefore, it is not necessary to specify a library qualifier for any header files that reside in the QSYSINC library. When coding in ILE C, remember to enclose the header file name in less-than (<) and greater-than (>) symbols because this affects how the library list is processed in locating the header file.
It is typical for an API that is not retrieving information not to return any output to the caller other than the error code parameter. If an error did not occur when using APIs, the requested function completed successfully.
The presentation of the ILE APIs is similar to that of the OPM APIs.