RE: Mixed RPG/Java performance (was: EJB versus RPG/COBOL)

> From: Joe Pluta
> 
> Okay, this should be data structure, not individual parameters.  And
in
> fact, you might want to think about a standardized approach to
calling.
> That will be made clear in the next section.

Hmm.  I'm getting old.  I didn't include the code, and I didn't follow
up on this comment.  Okay, let me do the follow up now.

Way back when I started down this road, back in the 90's, it became
clear that a standard way of talking to host programs was needed.  Just
to be able to reduce the complexity of my interface, if nothing else.
If, for example, every program took a single parameter, then I could
design a class (perhaps called "Api") that would call any program.

Over time, I developed two generalized approaches:

1. A single-parameter interface.  This would be used to call simple APIs
that returned bits of information, or to send messages, or any number of
utility functions.

2. A sophisticated message approach that supported messages of any
length, with mixed content.  For example, it could include four
different types of data in order to define an order (header, detail,
shipping and special lines).

The latter technique is used to communicate to server programs running
in batch.  I can thus send arbitrarily large chunks of data in either
direction, including your long-distance charges data.  And its interface
is a simple API that I call using the first approach - building on
success.

And with all of this, these programs provided sub-second response time.
And the really interesting thing is that the first implementation of
this architecture was done in COBOL <grin>.

Anyway, I mention all of this to make it clear that, if you design you
infrastructure correctly, you should be able to have much better
throughput than the 8-15 seconds you seem to be dealing with.  My bet is
that a lot of your overhead is in the stored procedure layer, but that's
just a guess.  I will say this: a decent architect could reduce your
response time as much as an order of magnitude.

Joe