RPG SQL precompiler plans from Roch.

Just got this from a friend of the SQL design team from Roch.    He said I
could pass it along.

John Carr
--------------------------------


This is in response to the quote:
" The plan to redesign the RPG precompiler has been dropped "

This is only partially true.  Initially a design was being considered that
would have re-engineered the RPG precompiler so that RPG enhancements would
kind of "automatically" be available to the SQL precompoiler.  However,
upon closer examination of this design it was found that it would just
shift the dependency from the SQL development team to the RPG compiler
development team.  Example:  If a new SQL enhancement was added in the
future that required changes from the RPG compiler team, then that feature
would only be made available to RPG SQL programmers if the RPG compiler
team decided to fund that SQL enhancement change (not a guarantee).

The 9 RPG precompiler reqs (see below) gathered from a NEWS/400 web survey
last year were then closely examined.  It was found that the majority of
these enhancements could be delivered for less than the costs of
re-engineering the RPG precompiler.  Given this information along with the
dependency mentioned above. it was determined that the best investment at
this time would be for IBM to just enhance the current RPG precompiler.

The RPG precompiler enhancements that are currently in plan will address
all of the items in the list  below except #1, 6, & 9.   Of the remaining
items, #1 is considered the most important  and it will be considered when
the DB2 plan content is constructed for future OS/400 releases.

1.  Support for using a local variable in a subprocedure as a host variable
in an SQL statement.
2.  Support for host structure in Update statements.
3.  Full support for properly parsing RPG subprocedures.
4.  Full support for the V5 qualified subfield names based on the new RPG
IV D-spec QUALIFIED keyword.
5.  Conditional precompilation: /If, /Define, and other directives.
6.  Support for a structure of host indicator variables.
7.  A precompiler directive to generate an array (or structure) of
indicator variables from a data structure.
8.  Nested /Copy.
9.  Support for /Include.