Re: Converting RPG to RPG ILE

Phil Kestenbaum wrote:

HI,

I am converting a Production program written in RPG, to ILE using the
system conversion tool. It compiles fine and looks good. Is there any
special tests I should run or anything to be concerned with or is it
fine to just put it right into Production?

I'd run all available tests.  You could/should check Appendix A in the
ILE RPG Programmer's Guide to see if there are any listed differences
that might affect you.

Also, if you have any bugs in your program that involve storage
corruption like parameter mismatch problems, the actual storage that
gets corrupted would almost certainly be different for the RPG IV
version than the RPG III version.  With the RPG III version, the storage
that gets corrupted might be some program variable that you don't care
about; with the RPG IV version, the storage that gets corrupted might be
some internal storage the RPG compiler is using to manage one of your
files.  (It can go the other way too; a silent error in an RPG IV
program can produce a crash from the equivalent RPG III program.  It all
depends on how the program storage happens to be laid out.)

Not to suggest that you have _any_ bugs in your program, but I reckon
it's better to have run all available tests before putting it into
production, just in case.  But most likely you won't notice any problems
or differences at all.

About using another conversion tool like Linoma's, as a rule of thumb,
the more RPG-III-like your code is, the more compatible your RPG IV
program is to the RPG III version.  But 100% compatibility may not
necessarily be a good thing.  For example, converting an ADD opcode to
an EVAL opcode can expose errors in your program where it was ignoring
numeric overflow.  In some cases, the overflow was being used
deliberately, but in other cases there may be surprises.