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In my opinion any of these perform sufficiently well for most business requirements. I am not disputing that RPG is faster, I just dont think the gap is sufficient to make it a significant decision criteria. Don't take ths the wrong way, but this sounds like a standard marketing response from a vendor who is missing a certain feature [grin]. "That's not important!" The only person who says performance doesn't matter is someone with poor performance. To me, it's not a particularly strong position, especially if there's no other compelling reason to use something besides RPG. And in and of itself, the performance can be crucial. If we're talking four times the performance, that's the difference between an eight-hour weekend process and a 32-hour weekend process. At that point, is it compelling to you? I bet it is to your operations staff. Joe
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RPG and DB2: The Future Is Now
Not true. The consensus is clear that RPG is faster than SQL for every business application problem except perhaps complex set-at-a-time processing. Nobody has disputed that. And RPG is faster than Java for basic business arithmetic. Nobody has disputed that. The only dispute is whether or not people will continue to misuse SQL and Java for some other reason, accompanied by the "performance doesn't matter" excuse. Sure, we need SQL and Java. But most of us already knew SQL or something like it. I was doing OPNQRYF way before I learned SQL. The concept of on-the-fly definition of data access is not new. And while SQL may be a nice tool for certain jobs (many of them the same jobs we used OPNQRYF for back in the day), it's currently way overused. When I see someone replacing a CHAIN with a FETCH, I'm simply dumbfounded. Java has the same potential for overuse, if not worse. And while you may need a Java guy, it's the same way you need a network guy - someone to do the plumbing. If you have an iSeries, you already have the best application development language in the world, and you sure don't need to write applications in Java. You just need someone to get the data from the RPG to the HTML, and that's the Java guy. The consensus? So far it's absolutely clear that RPG and DB2 is still the best combination for a large part of basic business programming. Nothing said so far has challenged that statement. Joe -
RPG and DB2: The Future Is Now
cdr5000 said "Considering you can put together an interactive application using OMW in a few hours that would be an impossibllity with native AS/400 green screen or weeks of work if you ignore the green screen" I'm not totally sure what you're saying here, but it sounds like you think you can put an application together quicker in OMW than RPG. That may be true in some cases, but the difference may not be as much as you think, and not for every situation. Last week I coded programs for 3 new master files. A maintenance program, a search program to scroll through a list and select a record (that can be called from other programs to pass back the selection), and a listing. One set for each file. Total time, 3 hours for 21 objects. I don't call that an excessive amount of time. Of course, as I said I didn't really understand what you were saying, this may not be a valid reply..... cdr5000 said "We are comparing The Enterprise to an old oil burning Chevy." No, we are comparing a sports car to a tractor trailer. The sports car does many things better than a tractor trailer. But no one would suggest hauling 30,000 lbs of bananas through Scranton, PA. with a sports car. Just as no one would suggest entering a tractor trailer in a race at Atlanta Raceway (well, OK, so they DID have the Great American Truck Race there in the 70's, but that was an anomaly). -danComment
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RPG and DB2: The Future Is Now
The only person who says performance doesn't matter is someone with poor performance. I did not mean put it in a way to allow you draw the conclusion that performance was not important. It is important against business requirements. My opinion is in a lot of situations the difference above is not the significant decision criteria. To me, it's not a particularly strong position, especially if there's no other compelling reason to use something besides RPG. Agreed...if that were the sole reason sticking with RPG would be a logical decision. I dont even understand why someone would be looking to transition to any technology unless they believed there was a compelling reason. Perfomance today is a mandatory for the business requirement. I have sat on all sides of the selling equation and performance has been more of a check box. E.G Provide a configuration that must be able to generate xxx bills within y hours based on n accounts with xx billing cycles. To me the more relevant questions that are differentiating solutions is how flexibility of function is provided. If we're talking four times the performance, that's the difference between an eight-hour weekend process and a 32-hour weekend process. At that point, is it compelling to you? I bet it is to your operations staff. [/i] Yes, perhaps I should buy myself an upgrade to resolve the trouble. Outside the context of this dicusion I can utilize deployment of WebSphere on cheaper clustered hardware. But to date I am not aware of anything in our batch run anywhere near 8 hours yet alone 32.Comment
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RPG and DB2: The Future Is Now
Agreed...if that were the sole reason sticking with RPG would be a logical decision. And so what are the other reasons to abandon RPG? It's not performance, it's not the viability of the platform, it's not ease of use... So what is it? JoeComment
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RPG and DB2: The Future Is Now
Joe Pluta asked: So what is it? The psychology of the mouse DaveComment
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RPG and DB2: The Future Is Now
There was a question about AS/400 being best Java performer. As I recall, that was from IBM back in late 90's and based on proprietary garbage collection algorithm as far as I recall ran in background so didn't stop processes to run GC. Since then IBM has donated algorithm to community and probably was incorporated in 1.3 or 1.4 JVM standard. Also, and this is all vague to me now, I think JVM was written under the API layer or whatever AS/400 terminology is for the virtual interface so it gets as good performance as OS code, DB2/400, communications which also hummed because they were below the interface, etc. Probably many more knowledgeable here who can clarify or add to that. rdComment
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RPG and DB2: The Future Is Now
My comments as I read the article and responses: The IT industry and especially IBM is bound and determined that database access be universal via SQL. IBM may not deliberately put a governor on native I/O, but given IBM I wouldn't put it past them, but when it comes to OS internals they will do whatever it takes to make performance decisions oriented toward SQL versus maintaining the code to the metal that made native I/O so fast. They only care about Websphere and for some time now the truly great geniuses of Rochester haven't stood a chance against New York marketing shmucks. Along those lines, IBM by their actions dismantled the very core of business logic expertise that made this country great. This country used to be a country of manufacturers, many of them mid-sized along with their Sys/3x computer, and Americans provided software with source code that was customized in company after company across this land to strive for innovation and competitive advantage. Now these manufacturers have gone out of business, in every city and county across the land, their Sys/3x systems retired but their employees and programmers too young to retire. With IBM bound and determined to make the AS/400 some kind of easy to administer black box departmental server, companies moved to SAP and PeopleSoft and Oracle and now Microsoft by the droves, deserting the Sys/3x that was so cost effective for them. IBM didn't care. They preferred selling Unix anyway and the PowerPC ran both. With luck we would all go away and they could take the AS/400 side of the PowerPC chip out if it and run it like god intended, I can just see them saying now. I asked for years for somebody to show me ERP level business software written in Java, and maybe by now Java programmers can program for a business like we RPG programmers can. I don't know. I still haven't seen the business world start running their businesses on Java ERP's. But I'm sure I'm still considered a Luddite by IBM and their like too, so just consider the source. Speaking of being behind the times, I also leveled a great deal of criticism at these "partitions" that are supposed to be the cat's meow but from which a Linux partition can only access an OS/400 partition through network type communications, making the Linux partition no better than a Linux box on the network as far as communicating with DB2/400 running under OS/400. I have always said and continue to say IBM must be smoking something if they think Linux people are going to run their stuff on an AS/400 partition because IBM can chop off some disk for them and parse out some CPU time to it. Every time I get into this stuff again I get even more disgusted. rdComment
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RPG and DB2: The Future Is Now
It is just to show the possibilities and hopefully get people to understand that the day of the multi-techo dedicated coder, not to mention the green screen, is rapidly becoming history. I guess this is where we don't connect. You consider a report writer to be akin to an ERP programmer. To me, they're worlds apart. The report writer can't exist without someone filling that database with valid data, and that's the ERP programmer's job. Reports and queries, whether hand-written or machine-generated, are entirely contingent on somebody first doing the hard part: getting the data into the database. That is the part that will always need RPG. JoeComment
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RPG and DB2: The Future Is Now
I agree with Joe, you have completely confused data extraction with programming. rdComment
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RPG and DB2: The Future Is Now
I don't see ERP programmmers as some sort of superior ruling class. I've worked around enough coders to know better. I didn't see the word "superior" in any of my posts. At the most I've implied that code generation tools can't write ERP systems. And I'll stick with that. There are two distinct types of programming tasks: data extraction and presentation, and data entry, validation and posting. The two tasks are very different in nature. The first is more about ordering and arranging data and is much more amenable to code generation techniques and tools, while the second is about codifying business rules and, by the very changing nature of business, is more difficult to mechanize. Thus, programmers who perform the latter task need a tool that gives them more control over their environment, one that is closer to the metal, so to speak. Taken to the absurd extreme, of course, this would imply that business rules should be written in MI; however, common sense dictates that there needs to be a productive middle ground. That middle ground is RPG and native DB2 access. It's the idea that RPG is somehow obsolete that I find intolerable. RPG is just as valid as C, which is still going strong the last time I looked. And while new languages and new tools are constantly springing up, there's no tool like a good old tool for some jobs, and business logic programming is one of them. JoeComment
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RPG and DB2: The Future Is Now
First, thanks for reminding me what OMW is. My experience with One World has largly been in managing the 400 database. I barely know how to get into One World, although at one time I created user profiles, etc. But, to the issues: cdr5000 said: I don't see ERP programmmers as some sort of superior ruling class. I've worked around enough coders to know better. The tone has seemd to me to state this: 1. RPG and IBM and the AS/400 are dying. 2. Java (and other X86 terchnologies) are taking over. I have said let the different platforms do what they do best. The 400 and RPG seems the best to me for database and ERP. The X86 platform seems best for data extraction and presentation. I don't see ERP programmers as a ruling class, either. But I also don't see the X86 class of solutions being able to handle the ERP, yet. Also, comparing OMW report writing to programming IS a joke. The type of ap they are turning out is the type of job given to entry level programmers straight out of trade school as the grunt work. But that type of report IS much easier to create than it is on the 400, that part is true. And our One World professionals spend about 50% of their time helping those people fix their simple reports that they get tangled up where they run for 2 days because they set thing up wrong. And as far as One World running on multiple platforms, yes that is correct. But it does so poorly. My GUESS is that there were some brilliant programmers working under the covers to make it work like it does. But I'm thinking that JDEdwards (or whatever company it was that moment) pushed to release it before it was ready. Then, due to downsizing, they have lost their best people. I couldn't find ANYONE in all of the company that really understood how the AS/400 engine worked. They had never even heard of an EVI. However, I see One World as the shape of things to come. This is EXACTLY the thing that I think the X86 class can do well. Provide bridges so applications CAN run on different platforms. And provide the UI. I really hope this happens because it opens up lots of doors. The best of both worlds because it is combining both worlds. So, if this happens, where does that leave the 400 and RPG? Well, there is still a lot of ERP programming that needs to be done. There will probably be businesses that can use all canned solutions for their data aquisition and manipulation. But most won't. And for those, RPG and the 400 are still a viable solution. And, again I say, I think the best solution. For now. -danComment
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RPG and DB2: The Future Is Now
Joe said: "The only person who says performance doesn't matter is someone with poor performance." Or, someone with an overly large machine where everything runs fast! chuck Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer.Comment
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RPG and DB2: The Future Is Now
[LOL!] Yeah, I guess if you're running a 24-way, you don't begrudge a few extra cycles... JoeComment
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RPG and DB2: The Future Is Now
Dan said: "Last week I coded programs for 3 new master files. A maintenance program, a search program to scroll through a list and select a record (that can be called from other programs to pass back the selection), and a listing. One set for each file. > > Total time, 3 hours for 21 objects." However, had you used a tool such as Progen (for green screen) or Websmart (for a browser) then that 3 hours could have easily been 30 minutes, or maybe even less. chuck Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer.Comment
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