The Integrated Language Environment (ILE) is a programming model developed by IBM for their

AS/400 The IBM AS/400 (Application System/400) is a family of midrange computers from IBM announced in June 1988 and released in August 1988. It was the successor to the System/36 and System/38 platforms, and ran the OS/400 operating system. Lower-cost ...

line of computers and remains an important part of the

IBM i IBM i (the ''i'' standing for ''integrated'') is an operating system developed by IBM for IBM Power Systems. It was originally released in 1988 as OS/400, as the sole operating system of the IBM AS/400 line of systems. It was renamed to i5/OS in ...

programming environment.

Languages

IBM provides ILE compilers for C,

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

, RPG,

COBOL COBOL (; an acronym for "common business-oriented language") is a compiled English-like computer programming language designed for business use. It is an imperative, procedural and, since 2002, object-oriented language. COBOL is primarily us ...

and CL. For RPG, COBOL and CL, there are both OPM compilers (still sometimes used for legacy applications) and the new ILE compilers. Likewise, as well as ILE C, there was an earlier EPM-based C/400, although that has been discontinued.

Pascal Pascal, Pascal's or PASCAL may refer to: People and fictional characters * Pascal (given name), including a list of people with the name * Pascal (surname), including a list of people and fictional characters with the name ** Blaise Pascal, Fren ...

and FORTRAN compilers were made available for EPM, but ILE compilers for those languages have never been released; likewise,

BASIC BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College ...

and

PL/1 PL/I (Programming Language One, pronounced and sometimes written PL/1) is a procedural, imperative computer programming language developed and published by IBM. It is designed for scientific, engineering, business and system programming. I ...

compilers were available for OPM, but ILE compilers have never been released for those languages either.

History

On February 16, 1993 IBM announced that V2R3 of

OS/400 IBM i (the ''i'' standing for ''integrated'') is an operating system developed by IBM for IBM Power Systems. It was originally released in 1988 as OS/400, as the sole operating system of the IBM AS/400 line of systems. It was renamed to i5/OS ...

would include major changes to its programming language support – the introduction of ILE. It provided a common interface among the disparate programming languages available to the

computer platform. ILE was an improvement on the two existing programming models available on OS/400 – the Original Program Model (OPM), which was used for traditional business programming languages such as RPG and COBOL; and the Extended Programming Model (EPM), which was introduced for use by C and Pascal. OS/400 (now IBM i) continues to support OPM and EPM to run legacy applications, but new development is encouraged to be in ILE (or PASE, the Portable Applications System Environment, which provides partial binary compatibility with

AIX Aix or AIX may refer to: Computing * AIX, a line of IBM computer operating systems *An Alternate Index, for a Virtual Storage Access Method Key Sequenced Data Set *Athens Internet Exchange, a European Internet exchange point Places Belgium ...

References

IBM software {{compu-prog-stub