Re: Open Access for RPG

And just to be clear on a couple of points:

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.

If your target audience is already using FREE then the whole "RPG programmers are too dumb" argument is kind of moot. And FREE is the only place where RPG-OA shows any serious syntactical benefit. Other than that, a data structure is the superior solution.

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.

When I say cram a 5250 interface, I meant a 5250 interface modernization. 5250 modernization is pretty much my primary area of expertise, and while RPG-OA makes that easier, I'd really prefer folks rewrote their business logic so that it could be called rather than trying to fit 21st century communications into a 1980s paradigm.

Joe