Re: Calculating Cyclomatic Complexity of an RPG program

Matt,

My intent was not to emulate the Spring framework, but to illustrate the absurdity of it; something like 25 source files required to implement a trivial application. Compare that to 1 RPG source member and 2 HTML templates; all quite trivial. In the beginning I wondered why the Spring developers were implementing unit tests for every user-written Java component, and embedding them in the project? After a while, it made sense.

Spring process flows include significant mapping between the database, database access objects (DAO), business objects, and view objects (JSP's). Spring handles a lot of that behind the scenes based on configuration code. It would be much harder to debug Spring's "Inversion Of Control" framework code after the fact. So unit tests are applied up front.

That kind of unit testing would be superfluous in RPG because of its streamlined database interfaces. If data needs to be shared between RPG modules, I typically use shared data structures. Forget data mapping and the unit testing associated with it.

The type of components one sees in Spring and the data mapping between them is unnecessary. They make an application overly complex. They require significant additional code, testing, and run-time overhead. They are a waste of time and space.

I'm speaking from an RPG perspective, of course. The components, code, configuration, and testing are necessary if you are coming at it from a Spring perspective. It get's even more complex when you bring something like Hybernate into the mix.


The Spring tutorial didn't go into authentication/authorization or interfacing with other database platforms, so why would I?

What do you mean by "Cyclomatic complexity can be useful with small code fragments where there is a one to one mapping of their functionality, which is what I want to gauge."?

-Nathan.




----- Original Message -----
From: Matt Olson <Matt.Olson@xxxxxxxx>
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc:
Sent: Sunday, June 24, 2012 8:47 PM
Subject: RE: Calculating Cyclomatic Complexity of an RPG program

Wheres your IoC container code?  Wheres your MVC framework?  Where are your objects :-) ?  How to unit test both UI and code with your example?  How do you interface with database platform X (oracle, mySql, etc) in your code?  Wheres your authentication/authorization code? And the list goes on and on. 

Not the same comparison I'm afraid.

Cyclomatic complexity can be useful with small code fragments where there is a one to one mapping of their functionality, which is what I want to gauge.