Is RPG dying

Back to the discussion of event driven systems verses procedural
systems. Event driven systems have to develop methods to control the
processes and as someone said, they can happen in any sequence; the
programmer has to develop a way to control the sequence.



Almost all business transactions (GUI or green screen) are controlled
processes. For inquires, you don't care if the user quits in the middle
of the process; but for update/change/process type of transactions, you
want the user to either complete a definite process thru a series of
defined steps or confirm they want to quit and exit the process (and you
can end the program and clean up). To me, this is the control that RPG
programming gives you.



Control of a defined process is natural to RPG but the programmer has to
develop a technique of his own on an event driven system. (I am sure
there are common techniques now to help with this.)



If an event driven system is processing a transaction, the programmer
must store the data of the transaction and store information about the
transaction to know where he is in the process. Knowing where you are
in a transaction is natural to a procedural system.



To me, event driven systems are like processing with CICS with no easy
way to clean up if the user quits; and, in a business process, you have
to force the terminal to come back to your program to continue the
transaction (and know where you are).



I have worked on all three platforms and, to me, the RPG procedural
language is the best for business processing.



Thanks, Chuck