This will have to do until I put a real page together. For now, I want 
to describe what this API does.

In short, it provides iSeries programs the same facility that Windows 
programs have with iSeries Access -- the ability to call programs on 
remote iSeries with two-way parameter passing. Parameters can be 
character, packed or binary, input, output or both. As many as 30 
parms can be declared.

The function works, but has some significant limitations.

First, I cannot yet provide encrypted passwords. Since I'm limited 
to ILE CL, I haven't worked out DES or SHA-1 password encryption. 
It's tricky enough getting communications working.

Second, I cannot supply the sockets code needed. In order to work, 
I rely on the IBM iSeries Custom Technology Center's TCP/IP Socket 
Client APIs (visit http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/iseries/service/welcome_3.htm 
for goodies). This is freeware though they require filling out an 
interview form of some kind. I first used these years ago, V3R2 I 
think. I've used them to help in prototyping sockets functions ever 
since. Extremely useful when you need do stuff in a hurry, 
especially when you're not a sockets expert in the first place. 
The IBM download provides access to sockets in _any_ HLL including 
OPM CL. Both OPM and ILE APIs are provided.

Cool stuff from IBM. If you haven't visted the iCTC, you haven't 
done yourself a favor. Most importantly, if you want to try my API, 
you'll need to install IBM's TCP/IP Socket Client APIs first.

To call my API, you'll pass in a remote host name (or IP address), 
a profile and password, and a structure describing parms and values. 
The structure should be large enough to hold any return values. The 
API returns values in the structure.

If you pass in the local host name or IP address 127.0.0.1, the call 
will route to your own system. There are two uses for this that I've 
found. First, it allows you to test on a single system. Second and 
potentially more useful, it allows your called program to run as a 
batch call. There is overhead of course, but there are cases where 
avoiding the interactive tax can be useful.