Stay up to Date with RPG Enhancements

If you’ve been developing on IBM i for a long time, you’ll know that RPG has a reputation for being stable, reliable… and quiet.

Enhancements arrive steadily, but rarely with fanfare. As a result, many IBM i shops are still writing RPG that looks and behaves much like it did in the late 1990s. Not because developers are unwilling to modernise, but because the language evolves in small, powerful increments that are easy to miss when you’re busy keeping the business running.

But here’s the truth: RPG has changed more in the last decade than most developers realise.

If you haven’t kept up, you’re missing out on cleaner syntax, faster development and features that make modern RPG a genuinely elegant language.

This article highlights the most important enhancements you may have missed, and why 2026 is the perfect time to bring your RPG skills up to date.

Free‑Form Everything: The Shift That Changed the Language

The biggest transformation in RPG’s history was the move to fully free‑form syntax. What began with free‑form calculations has expanded to include F‑specs, D‑specs, P‑specs and virtually every other part of the language. Gone are the days of counting columns or aligning code to rigid positions like we all use to.

A traditional fixed‑format snippet like this, and then becomes:

C           PRICE     MULT QTY       TOTAL 

Total = Price * Qty;

It’s cleaner, more readable and instantly more approachable for new developers. Free‑form RPG looks like a modern language, because it is one.

If your team is still mixing fixed and free‑form, now is the time to standardise. The readability and maintainability gains alone are worth it.

It’s cleaner, more readable and instantly more approachable for new developers. Free‑form RPG looks like a modern language, because it is one. If your team is still mixing fixed and free‑form, now is the time to standardise. The readability and maintainability gains alone are worth it.

Embedded SQL: The Productivity Boost You Can’t Ignore

SQL has become the primary interface to Db2 for i and RPG’s SQL pre-compiler has matured into a fast, reliable workhorse. Many shops still rely heavily on CHAIN, SETLL and READE loops, but SQL often delivers the same result with fewer lines of code and better performance.

Consider the difference between a multi‑step record‑processing loop and a single SQL SELECT that returns exactly what you need. SQL Services take this even further, replacing dozens of APIs with simple, queryable interfaces. Need job information? Network stats? Object details? There’s an SQL Service for that.

Modern RPG and SQL are a natural pairing. If you haven’t embraced embedded SQL yet, you’re missing out on one of the biggest productivity boost the platform has ever offered.

DATA-INTO & Modern Data Handling

One of the most transformative enhancements in recent years is DATA-INTO, which allows RPG to consume structured data, JSON, XML, CSV, or custom formats, without hand‑written parsers. In a world where integration is everything, this is a game‑changer.

A simple JSON payload can be mapped directly into a data structure with just a few lines of code. No loops, no manual parsing, no string manipulation. RPG becomes a first‑class player in modern architectures, capable of working with APIs and web services as easily as any contemporary language.

If your applications interact with external systems, DATA-INTO is not optional, it’s essential.

New BIFs & Language Features You’ll Wish You’d Known Sooner

IBM has delivered a steady stream of new built‑in functions and language features that solve real‑world problems elegantly. A few highlights:

• %SCANR - reverse scanning, perfect for parsing paths or delimited strings
• %LIST & %RANGE - cleaner, safer ways to work with lists of values
• %MAX / %MIN - simple aggregation without loops
• TEMPLATE - reusable data structure definitions
• LIKEDS - deep copying of nested structures
• OPTIONS(*EXACT) - stricter parameter checking for safer procedures

These enhancements don’t just make code shorter; they make it more expressive and less error‑prone. Every developer who discovers them wonders how they ever lived without them.

Procedures, Modules & Service Programs: The Underused Power of ILE

ILE has been around for decades, yet many applications still rely heavily on monolithic programs with global variables and tightly coupled logic. Modern RPG encourages a modular approach, sub-procedures for isolating the logic so it’s easier to maintain, prototypes for clarity and service programs for reusable business logic. 

Modular design brings enormous benefits:

• Easier testing
• Reduced side effects
• Clearer interfaces
• Better long‑term maintainability

If you’re still writing large, single‑source programs, adopting ILE practices is one of the most impactful steps you can take toward modernisation.

Why 2026 Is the Right Time to Modernise Your RPG

RPG is not a legacy language frozen in time. IBM continues to invest in it, refine it and extend it. The enhancements described above aren’t experimental, they’re mature, stable and widely used in modern IBM i development.

Modernising your RPG doesn’t require a big‑bang rewrite. You can adopt new features incrementally:

• Convert new modules to free‑form
• Introduce SQL where it makes sense
• Use DATA-INTO for new integrations
• Refactor long routines into sub-procedures
• Adopt new built‑ins as you encounter opportunities

Every small improvement makes your codebase cleaner, more maintainable and more future‑ready.

RPG has evolved, and it’s time for many IBM i shops to evolve with it. Whether you’re maintaining long‑lived applications or building new ones, embracing modern RPG will make your development faster, your code clearer and your systems easier to support for years to come.

If you haven’t revisited the language in a while, 2026 is the perfect year to catch up. Your future self, and your future developers, will thank you!

Do you want more? 

If so, come and see Andys RPG presentation at the i-UG (UK) summer i-Power 2026 event in Milton Keynes in June 2026.

Register here https://iugipower2026.sched.com/