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Time for More RPG IV Enhancements?

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  • #16
    Time for More RPG IV Enhancements?

    ** This thread discusses the article: Time for More RPG IV Enhancements? **
    Very true, but I don’t think MS still supports older versions of VB and their push is toward .NET (C# if you please, VB is so grade school). While IBM still supports cough cough the S36 and S38 environments even on a System i5 running V5R4. This has led to complacency and the if it ain’t broke don’t fix it mentality. Until they roll the "legacy" hardware out the door and replace it with a MS solution running on a bunch of glorified PC's in a server farm.

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    • #17
      Time for More RPG IV Enhancements?

      ** This thread discusses the article: Time for More RPG IV Enhancements? **
      I'm still waiting for RPG to be enhanced to allow a call to a SQL stored procedure that returns a result set and be able to access the result set in the RPG, just like the result set from a SELECT statement. When will we ever see this enhancement.

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      • #18
        Time for More RPG IV Enhancements?

        ** This thread discusses the article: Time for More RPG IV Enhancements? **
        To add to this, IBM LEAN layoffs (Layoff Every American Now, IBM'ers say) are spurring lots of discussion this weekend. Only 1300 officially announced, but details from IBM'ers on Cringely's web site running a story on this are not pretty. Most are saying Software is not expected to be impacted much. Global Services is being whacked. I posted here recently how they walked away from a fixed bid Texas contract with enough web this and that buzz hype to make just everybody happy. Unfortunately, the hype turned out not to work. Imagine that. I posted what I could find on it, turned out from the IBM'ers comments it wouldn't have been that hard to find. There were plenty of them. Lots of focus on the layoffs, but in that story is IBM's desire to walk away from money losing contracts. They are sending the work to India to apparently either cut costs or either them or the customer cut bait. Or it could all be Cringely's imagination. Lots of inspired anonymous posters with inside stories of IBM who agree though. rd

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        • #19
          Time for More RPG IV Enhancements?

          ** This thread discusses the article: Time for More RPG IV Enhancements? **
          They gave you a platform. You just used it. But if you wanted room to expand on, they have an opinion column to write up tirades like Joel used to do. If you want a conversion from free to fixed and vise versa, you and other like minded programmers can write an open source one. It's just text manipulation. ILE CL modules bind in with ILE RPG modules, and with C++ modules. No need for a separate program to perform some CL or C functions from within an RPG program. Modifications made in free in RPG fixed programs I agree is a readability and syntax problem, but free types prefer to just code the one new way. I stay with the same predominant style of the programs being worked on, perhaps with new modules in free, but the switching back and forth within a program or from program to program is not ideal, I agree. rd

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          • #20
            Time for More RPG IV Enhancements?

            ** This thread discusses the article: Time for More RPG IV Enhancements? **
            and maybe some of the IBM may adopt. Here I start some of my sggestions: 1. Divide RPG4 into 2 languages. FREE format is just not RPG any more. Why keep it the same name. give also a conversion tool to convert from free format to fix and vise versa. An alternative would be to allow the security manager to specify how programmers should program: Only fixed format; Only free format, or both. Now every programmer needs to learn 2 synatxes which makes it more difficult for newcomers to learn RPG. 2. Long overdo: break the wall between RPG and CL. Imagine using a command like CPYF with qcmdexc. it is cumbersome and hard to read. why not use CL commands in the same way as free format RPG. Why write a separate program just for one or 2 lines of code.

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            • #21
              Time for More RPG IV Enhancements?

              ** This thread discusses the article: Time for More RPG IV Enhancements? **
              Ralph Daugherty: "ILE CL modules bind in with ILE RPG modules, and with C++ modules. No need for a separate program to perform some CL or C functions from within an RPG program." In case of CPYF or RTVSYSVAL which are very common commands, it is hard to justify why RPG should make it complicate to use it and not use it in a more natural way. Imagine if to do a function like writing to a file, we should have been calling a separate program or module in a separate source, with parameters. Besides that, I would like to write my own commands, and I am doing it, it is very useful. But since it is complicated from an RPG Program to call a command, specially if the cammand has many parameters, therefore not to many programmers are creating their own comands. As from the application writer there is no difference if You have it in a separte module or in a separte Program. As far as to understand the code, You need to look up another source, that is the main point. Every RPG program has already a few IBM procedures in service programs, when You do dsppgm You could see its, but from the user programmer point, it is just one program (if the program has only one module), and that is what it makes it simple and clear. I would agree if IBM would give us a way how to write naturally CL commands from within RPG and behind the scenes IBM would create separate modules.
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              • #22
                Time for More RPG IV Enhancements?

                ** This thread discusses the article: Time for More RPG IV Enhancements? **
                Since the CL Command syntax gives named parameters isntead of just counting the positions. If the program with its parameters becomes complex, it becomes hard to use it. bu the CL syntax allows to have default falues for parmeters, and those prametes do not need to be specified, only if the default value needs to be changed. Imagine a program with 99 parameters. you need to count the spaces and pray that you did not make a mistake. what we hae now, in a ceratin way it is like in the stone age when we did not have an external described file and we counted positions of the file were the information is stored.
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                • #23
                  Time for More RPG IV Enhancements?

                  ** This thread discusses the article: Time for More RPG IV Enhancements? **
                  I think the answer to both your points are function front ends. This is a terrific area for community to be able to add function enhancements along lines you suggest, such as for example RPG functions which call CL modules but are front ended seamlessly in RPG. Same with smart handling of parms from which to create a more complex standard parm list. rd

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                  • #24
                    Time for More RPG IV Enhancements?

                    ** This thread discusses the article: Time for More RPG IV Enhancements? **
                    I have so much work to do, and yet another very interesting Cringely column on IBM I can't help but read. The comments from IBM'ers are so insightful. btw, embedded in one post was something pretty funny about the AS/400: The next harpoon was in the early 70s when over a billion was spent on the FS project - which was eventually killed. After FS, the company pretty much went into a shell and ran in a "maintenance and incremental updates" mode. In fact, in that time frame, the only products of significance that came out of IBM was the AS 400 systems (based somewhat on FS - rumor was Rochester never got the word that FS was killed) and SQL/DS-DB/2. http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2..._comments.html

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