1-About it

This tool has been designed to ease the maintenance of applications installed on multiple IBM System i's.
It is especially suited to the case where applications created and maintained on a development box need to be distributed to one or more production boxes.
ODF allows a System i to transmit objects to a number of other IBM System i's. A single command can transmit and install objects to up 300 remote systems. Object transmission and installation are performed via FTP through a batch job (by the way, if you need a secure FTP, just install SECTCP).
Note - Distribution of PC files (IFS stream files) can also be done to non-IBM System i boxes.
The following can be distributed with a single command (ODF/ODSTR) from a single System i to multiple systems:

• a given library
• a set of objects you could save through a SAVOBJ command
• up to 50 members of a given file
• a set of IFS objects you could save through a SAV command.

ODF is an public source utility for IBM System i.

2-Prerequisites

• OS/400 release V5R2 or subsequent
• ILE RPG IV Compiler, product 5722WDS, opt. 31.
• The REXEC (Remote Execution) server needs to be active (see command CHGRXCA) on the receiving systems.

3-Installation

• Download file odf.zip from the Easy400 download page and unzip it.
• Follow the Readme.txt instructions to upload and to restore library ODF.
• On the IBM System i run the following procedure:
  STRREXPRC SRCMBR(INSTALL) SRCFILE(ODF/QREXSRC)
  It does the following:
• creates service program ODF/ODF
• creates modules and programs in library ODF
• restores IFS directory /odf
• creates and populates library ODFDATA.
  This library will contain local user data.
• Duplicates ODF commands to library QGPL.

4-Updates