Re: The real problem with the SQL precompilers (was SQL on AS400...)

I agree with your assessment. I know IBM has made some improvements to the pre-compiler (thanks Gina!), but this disconnect still bites us all the time. WDSC (RDi) falls over when reviewing compiler errors, debugging is ugly, x-ref and outline features are incomplete, etc..... IBM needs to eliminate this asap. Seems to be in IBM's best interest to make their tools usable, without the work- arounds that we currently are stuck with. IBM should find this situation embarrassing.

I think the opportunity has already been missed.

When they were contemplating making the changes that we have recently seen (and I agree that Gina did good work) they had the opportunity to throw it all away and start over and do it properly. They chose instead to put more chewing gum and baler twine on an already flawed approach. We can't blame Gina for that - she wasn't responsible for the architectural decisions. I suspect that budget (both in Toronto and Rochester) was the ultimate stumbling block.

The ridiculous aspect of this is that the compiler on which RPG IV was based already used the "compiler in charge" approach and it had to be disabled for the ILE implementation. The result of course is that the pre-compiler is almost doomed to be forever behind the compiler as it always has to be updated whenever the compiler changes. That's constant duplication of effort which could have been avoided with a re- write.

Jon Paris

www.Partner400.com
www.SystemiDeveloper.com