RE: BPCS History

You speak volumes Jim.  We had a gent that worked on PC and Dec 
interfacing to our 400's years ago but has since left.  Having to hand 
write job queing on other machines was one of his biggest complaints.

Rob Berendt
-- 
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary 
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." 
Benjamin Franklin 




Jim Damato <jdamato@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
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09/23/2003 02:18 PM
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RE: BPCS History






Cool post, Joe.  Kind of like the condensed version of Soul of a New
Machine.  A few stand-out points, for me:

>Unix experts were brought in, who insisted that SQL was
>more than a match for DB2...
>...in an effort to maximize the ability to
>programmatically convert code from RPG to SQL/C, the C 
>programmers simply chose the easiest way to do things. 
>Nobody who knew both systems was in charge, and the SQL 
>experts weren't exactly adept at business programming.
>Thus, a CHAIN became a SELECT using a cursor (because you
>never knew if someone was then going to do a READP).

Converting RPG file operations opcode by opcode to SQL, what a messy
concept.  Like replacing a canoe with a rowboat, but keeping your paddle.
This is what Lawson ended up doing -- emulating AS/400 ISAM operations on
top of an SQL database.  It's a great way to horrify DBA's and SQL
developers.


>In fact, nobody had bothered to even design the 
>basic features of CL programs, such as overrides, 
>or message queues, or printer files, or even the 
>concept of a batch job.

It always amazes me how Work Management is taken for granted on Unix and
Windows servers.  So many sys admins and programmers give me a "why would
you need to do that?" -- until they're in a situation where more than five
processes are spawned simultaneously.  I've seen about a dozen half-a$$ed,
incredibly complex, hardcoded messes designed to throttle processes 
through
daemons, text-file based tracking mechanisms, etc., for specific software
products.  Lawson's is probably the best I've seen -- a passable OS/400 
work
management clone.  Still the benefit of a consistent configurable queuing,
prioritizing batch interface managed by the OPERATING SYSTEM doesn't 
impress
some folks.


-Jim

James P. Damato
Manager - Technical Administration
Dollar General Corporation
<mailto:jdamato@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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