Re: AS/Set & 4GL curiosity

Al,

In a message dated 9/2/99 8:41:57 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
tma@evansville.net writes:

> Al Macintyre at Tim PC
>  
>  AS/436 405 CD - we do not have AS/Set & I have determined that some
>  requested mods, such as in ORD500 & ORD570 are out of the question without
>  it.
<<snip>>

Please cease this habit of asking questions from your boss's PC -- despite 
your clearly stated taglines, it opens up liability questions for "the list" 
should we be asked to provide information on you _OR_ your boss regarding 
Internet access.  How hard can it be to log on as yourself or get up and walk 
back to your own desk?  Vent completed, I'll try and answer your questions...

First, some history regarding your rather ethereal question about AS/Set and 
Seagull being 4GL's.  Frankly, the term "4GL" went out in the early '90's 
when CASE failed to deliver on its' promise.  Even when "en vogue", 4GL never 
meant "generate a program in either green screen or GUI", and I'm surprised 
that a publication of "News/400's" stature continued to use the term (I'll be 
writing them a nasty letter soon) at all.  AS/Set didn't "make the cut" 
because SSA (in yet another of their _FABULOUS_ marketing ploys) quit 
developing and selling it to the midrange populace shortly after they had 
converted BPCS _INTO_ it.  Now, only BPCS users can purchase AS/Set, ADK 
receives _NO_ enhancements, and is supposed to eventually be replaced by ODW. 
 I'm further surprised by your company's decision to drop "Loser Vision" due 
to the GUI constraint -- most people dropped it because the darned thing 
didn't WORK.

AS/Set _cannot_ develop either GUI or green screen.  It's a green screen 
tool.  Period.  ODW, the (so far supposed) replacement for AS/Set, is 
supposed to do the GUI stuff.  Unfortunately, we have yet to hear from anyone 
on the list regarding ODW deployment.  We can only assume that ODW is still 
not available, despite the fact that I saw a working copy both last December 
and at the Fall '95 AS/Set User's Group meeting in Chicago, and that SSA 
announced GA quite some time ago.

In current (V5+) SSA nomenclature, AS/Set programs end with a "D" (display) 
or "B" (batch) to indicate that they were generated by ADK.  Except for 
SYS003B, which is actually a CL program ;-).  Regular programs that interface 
to the ADK versions aren't supposed to have a suffix, but AS/Set can 
interface to any "regular" program without any problem.

4GL was a methodology, _NOT_ a standard.  It pretty much stated that we 
should be able to turn pseudo code into actual code, any code.  Sorry but, 
like fifth normal form, the computers still aren't ready for _that_.  One 4GL 
will no more interpret or talk to another than UNIX V will talk to Linux 
without writing an interface.

In closing, I would highly advise _against_ modifying an AS/Set generated 
program without AS/Set if you intend to ever upgrade again -- some idiots 
will tell you "no problem".  Of course, SSA finally got smart and ships only 
ADK action diagrams with V6+ BPCS, so you _CAN'T_ modify DDS or RPG without 
AS/Set.  Personally, the V1R3 code that ADK generates was enough to scare 
_ME_ out of modifying the stuff...

JMHO,

Dean Asmussen
Enterprise Systems Consulting, Inc.
Fuquay-Varina, NC  USA
E-mail:  DAsmussen@aol.com

"We know what a person thinks not when he tells us what he thinks, but by his 
actions." -- Isaac Bashevis Singer
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