December Article by Ted Holt: The Death of OPNQRYF

[B.Myrick]

Ted, Having just read your most excellent article, I must confess that in my opinion OPNQRYF died years ago. That was when I installed ASC's SEQUEL, SQL package. It allowed me to embed SQL statements inside standard CL without having to use Query Management or embedded (shudder) SQL from RPG. This ability alone was cause for me to purchase this product twice more in the last 10 years. One for a client and one for another company I was with. I certainly wish IBM would get on the bandwagon about interoperability and standards. -bret

[Guest.Visitor]

December Article by Ted Holt: The Death of OPNQRYF

[Guest.Visitor]

December Article by Ted Holt: The Death of OPNQRYF

[Guest.Visitor]

December Article by Ted Holt: The Death of OPNQRYF

Glad I just bought Mr. Holt's book "Open Query File MAGIC!"

[B.Myrick]

December Article by Ted Holt: The Death of OPNQRYF

Joel, That's the magic of it. It dissapeared. Sigfried and Roy could not do better. Except they have lots of hair. That or a wig Actually, I just ordered the same book. My idea is to see if maybe I can use OPNQRYF more efficiently that what I did previously. Would solve a lot of issues when helping former clients or employers. -bret

[R.Daugherty]

December Article by Ted Holt: The Death of OPNQRYF

Bret wrote: "That's the magic of it. It dissapeared" Bret, I clicked on it successfully a moment ago. Ralph

[B.Myrick]

December Article by Ted Holt: The Death of OPNQRYF

Ralph, I meant the concept of OPNQRYF Magic. I was making a joke and people took me literally. I try to be serious and they just laugh. ; -bret

[R.Daugherty]

December Article by Ted Holt: The Death of OPNQRYF

Bret intoned: "I meant the concept of OPNQRYF Magic. I was making a joke and people took me literally. I try to be serious and they just laugh. ;" Ok. Just pull a rabbit out of your hat and we'll be back on track, just like we do everyday. Anything up your sleeves....?

[B.Myrick]

December Article by Ted Holt: The Death of OPNQRYF

Again? But that trick never works! - R. Squirel -bret

[T.Holt]

December Article by Ted Holt: The Death of OPNQRYF

Bret, I'm glad you considered my article "most excellent." I esteem ASC's Sequel as highly as you do. I have used both it & OPNQRYF heavily before I went to work full-time for Midrange Computing. Of course, IBM is not suggesting everybody drop OPNQRYF for Sequel. They want us to use IBM's SQL. That is, embed SQL in RPG programs. I hate to see IBM not enhance OPNQRYF. (At this point, the cynics can say, "Of course he does; he sells a book about it.") It's a good tool & works well with RPG and COBOL programs. OPNQRYF's only "crime" is not being cross-platform. I am interested in any feedback anybody has for me. This is only one indication of the direction in which IBM is pushing AS/400 wienies like me. They are telling us to give up the tools we love so well for stuff that can run under the only two operating systems they seem to like any more -- Windows NT & Linux. I hear them saying, "Throw away your RPG & OPNQRYF. Use Java and SQL instead." Or is my hearing bad? Ted

[nycsusan@hotmail.com]

December Article by Ted Holt: The Death of OPNQRYF

Ted wrote: I hate to see IBM not enhance OPNQRYF. (At this point, the cynics can say, "Of course he does; he sells a book about it.") It's a good tool & works well with RPG and COBOL programs. OPNQRYF's only "crime" is not being cross-platform. I am interested in any feedback anybody has for me. This is only one indication of the direction in which IBM is pushing AS/400 wienies like me. They are telling us to give up the tools we love so well for stuff that can run under the only two operating systems they seem to like any more -- Windows NT & Linux. I hear them saying, "Throw away your RPG & OPNQRYF. Use Java and SQL instead." Or is my hearing bad? Ted, YOU wrote OPNQRYF Magic?!?!? Wow! I really got a lot out of that book, it's what got me to try things in CL that I never would have otherwise. I had to leave my copy with a former employer a couple of years ago, so I didn't realize that YOU were THAT GUY! Now I know why you pounced on a couple of my recent OPNQRYF questions! :-) Your book is excellent, and I wish I still had my copy. You asked for feedback about the direction of the AS/400 ... well, I am very concerned about it. Why? Although Dallas is a "large cybercity" http://www.dallasnews.com/technology...obs_06bus.html I found ZERO, ZILCH, NADA advertisements in the last weekend's paper for AS/400 jobs. None. There were plenty of Java, UNIX, NT, and C++ ads however. The online job sites do have AS/400 listings, but there are MORE for those others. Whether or not IBM is pushing us away from RPG, OPNQRYF and other nifty tools is a moot point if they don't do something NOW to get more companies using AS/400's! I think your hearing is fine.

[David Abramowitz]

December Article by Ted Holt: The Death of OPNQRYF

I first became acquainted with "Open Query File Magic" back in 1992. It has been, and remains the standard by which all other OPNQRYF books may be judged. OPNQRYF is fantastically powerful, and can be used where SQL is unavailable, , , , and SQL is unavailable a lot! That's the good news. The bad news, is there have been no enhancements to OPNQRYF for a few releases now. I do not understand the rationale behind this. Dave

[Guest.Visitor]

December Article by Ted Holt: The Death of OPNQRYF

Just pull a rabbit out of your hat Actually, you would probably do better to pull a marketing ploy for the iSeries out of your hat, and donate it to IBM. Cos otherwise I'm afraid we are going to be programming dead iron. One of the main things that killed DEC/Digital was their inability to market their product against strong competition. IBM have relied on the "Blue only" shops for too long, and their own attitude to the AS/400 is poor. But you've all read it in other threads here and at the other site. Yes, IBM need to embrace the new "words" like Java and Web-Enablement, but the iron is still the best applications box around, and RPG the best language on that iron for applications development. They need to stop selling only the "words". And if you don't think that IBM are leaving the iSeries behind: The recent issues of ComputerWorld in Australia - two full page ads for pSeries and one full page ad for xSeries. Not a mention of iSeries anywhere in the whole mag. Russell

[David Abramowitz]

December Article by Ted Holt: The Death of OPNQRYF

Ted Holt wrote: They want us to use IBM's SQL. That is, embed SQL in RPG programs IBM can't want this very badly. If they did, they would charge for OPNQRYF, and include SQL for free, instead of the other way around. Dave

[R.Daugherty]

December Article by Ted Holt: The Death of OPNQRYF

Susan wrote: "Whether or not IBM is pushing us away from RPG, OPNQRYF and other nifty tools is a moot point if they don't do something NOW to get more companies using AS/400's!" This is an excellent point, Susan, and what I was referring to in my post to David this morning concerning alleged new AS/400 sales with no indications of it via want ads. I follow AS/400 help wanted very closely with web job sites and major newspapers. Not counting the consulting companies and headhunters, there was one job advertised in the Seattle metro region during the four months I was there. There is such a surplus of AS/400 programmers throughout the Southwest, from Texas to southern Cal, that recruiters were asking me if I had leads in the midwest. They have plenty of people willing to relocate eastward for a job. The only jobs that I'm aware of are in small town companies that have a hard time finding someone who wants to live there. I think that if there were new AS/400's going in I would have seen something about converting from another system or referring to another language as being helpful or just a flat out reference to staffing a new AS/400 shop as that is an important recruiting point. If someone is buying a new AS/400 and green screen software, they are running it unmodified. Again, I have seen the same thing as you all year, Susan. I go on and on about a windowed visual interface because if it isn't done now, it's like you say.... it will be a moot point. Anybody who thinks they can expose green screen software externally via a browser needs their head examined. That requires newly developed software. Saying that internal deployment of emulators is such a problem that deploying green screens via a browser is going to sell AS/400's is also hogwash. The technology is there, it doesn't sell AS/400's. Functionality is what people buy. Green screens have a lot but need more. A visual interface would deploy all existing green screen software as is and allow us to program keystroke interaction with existing green screen fields. A robust visual interface engine that I have described would pipeline API calls through a secondary sockets channel to populate pop up windows and activate any business API's we wrote and were running in dataq servers. The infrastructure would be able to access any authorized physical or logical file via SQL without us having to write an API for each view and have the files open in a dataq server. Each pop up window is a Java program, draggable around the screen, but funneling their calls through the mother Java program. All would be able to socket to each other to enable dragging and dropping data from one window to another to fill in data. All data would be processed in subfile form - this is far more powerful than the practice of current Windows programming of copying subsets of data to the desktop. Current software can be displayed in GUI form, but current software isn't selling AS/400's. We have to be able to leverage existing green screen software while keying off of it to spawn any number of enhanced functionality threads in Java cross platform software that is integrated to desktop software through JNI. Guization is not enough. It's not aesthetics, it's functionality, and quite frankly, guization actually decreases the functionality existing in a green screen when what is needed is knock your socks off Windows level integration that people now demand. If that demand has sold AS/400's, Susan and I haven't seen it reflected in AS/400 job ads. Ralph ralph@ee.net