Re: Open Access for RPG

Scott Klement wrote:

At what point do you give up?

You don't.

THE FUTURE OF THIS PLATFORM DEPENDS ON IMPROVING CODE. IT'S NOT HAPPENING. WHAT CAN WE POSSIBLY DO?

Write callable code that can be inserted into legacy systems.

*THAT* is the point behind RPG-OA.

No offense to the designers, but RPG-OA is just another band-aid. It does almost nothing that a CALL can't do. In fact, unless you use free-form access techniques, you're going to use a KLIST, and what exactly is the difference between a KLIST and a PLIST? Not a lot. In fact, I'd prefer teaching people to use data structures to pass data between programs; they're much more flexible.

With RPG-OA, *we* (those that have progressed beyond the 1980s) can provide handlers to do something modern. And *they* (the majority who still thinks RPG II was the end-all-be-all of programming languages) doesn't have to change or learn anything new.

Or you could use a CALL.

With RPG OA we can give them spreadsheets, again without asking them to learn anything.

Same with GUI interfaces.

We do that today. In my shop, we let them call a program that sends the data to a data queue to be processed by Java, or invokes a service program, or whatever. It even works in RPG III.

*THAT* is the point. It's not that RPG OA is a great idea, or is a modern approach. It's not. It's just that we've given up on RPG programmers ever changing anything. So we're making it possible to move beyond 1980's technology without them learning anything.

RPG-OA is a horrible way to modernize code. It's a semi-effective way to cram a 5250 interface onto an existing program without severe rewrite (although I'm still unclear on how indicators are handled), and I suppose there are one or two classes of problems (interfacing to certain types of XML data, perhaps) where it might make sense, but in general it's a technological solution looking for a problem.

Seriously, selling RPG-OA because RPG programmers are too dumb or stubborn is a sign of severe burn-out. Get yourself a vacation and then teach people how to write callable modules. The answer to writing better code is the same as it has always been: modular code.

Sorry, I haven't had a lot to offer this discussion since I thought it was pretty obvious that open access is more or less an extended version of special files and special files never caught on for good reason (and I know them well - I used them all the way back in the S/3 days). I see a few folks love the idea and I didn't want to rain on anyone's parade. But I couldn't let slide this claim that RPG-OA is the only way to modernize the code of those stupid, ignorant RPG programmers. It was many of these same programmers who managed to revolutionize the IT industry and made possible the jobs of pretty much everyone on this list. I'll take a solid RPG III programmer who knows MRP backwards and forwards any day over an ILE expert who doesn't understand the difference between a credit and a debit.

Okay, enough. Sorry you're not happy with the community. But RPG-OA won't make it all better.

Joe