Re: Advantages of RPG

David FOXWELL wrote:

I've read several times lately in articles that, in the author's opinion, RPG is the best language for business logic.

For a programmer who has very little knowledge of the world outside RPG and CL ( like me for instance ) that is difficult to question.

Could those of you who KNOW RPG is best explain very simply, why?

David,

I am a RPG novice (so I may be missing some RPG features or techniques) but have worked with OO technology in depth for about 15 years.

...Please correct me if I'm wrong here...

The MAJOR inhibitor to business programming productivity in RPG and MOST approaches to OO programming in Java is the lack of a dynamic data structure.

Does RPG have the ability to create and use a data structure dynamically? By use, I mean create a "work with type" application, read and act on individual field values on the dynamic data structure.

For example: Take any file like: QIWS/QCUSTCDT sample ibm file that exists on all AS400s. Am I able to read and work with field(s) from that file without creating a record structure to read the data into? Same for any JDE, BPCS, MAPICS files.

Without the capability of using a dynamic data structure I am forced to deal with and program to each different file I want to use. This results in reducing our productivity in normal business programs.

In RPG, can you do this with embedded SQL or record level access?

Thanks,
-Paul Holm