Re: the ASSET issue again

Just to comment on Chick's objection about large amount of AS/SET code presented
as comments in the generated RPG source: I understand that it might be a bit
annoying to one RPG programmer to analyze the code with all these 'extra'
comments, but benefits of having them, as per my opinion, often outweighs the
inconvenience of having them. When I started writting a code in AS/SET I found
it much more convenient to analyze the generated RPG source looking the comments
lines with the AS/SET code instead of generated RPG code in the same source. As
with all languages used with CASE tools, they are talking to the programmers in
more human-like language and thus allow faster analysis of the code.  Also, as
Helen mentioned, ISDB is really taking you easily through the code ignoring the
comment lines, once you need to debug the program.
Furthermore, although ADK really generates much longer code than one RPG
programmer would write, it does that in an automatic manner (finally it is only
a tool), so after some time of dealing with AS/SET code, you see that there are
certain rules in such extranious code and by only seeing the name of subroutines
generated, you already have an idea what it does etc.
And yes it is true that ADK will generate sometimes 100 lines of code for
something that RPG programmer would use 15 lines only, but if you take into
account that 100 RPG lines of code have been generated from maybe 5-10 lines of
AS/SET code, then I would think that this is something you also should compare
with 15 lines of optimal RPG manually written code and consider when estimating
how much time your shop would spend for the maintenance of code.
The above things might not be that obvious with smaller programs, but when you
talk about huge RPG programs, readibility and maintenance time of such programs
become more important.
Finally talking about the performance of such code, obviously again, longer code
has to run longer too, however if I compare that difference with improvements in
performance achieved in latest BPCS versions (V6.1.01) by redesigning the code,
I wouldn't consider it important. Try to see it in the way that by giving us
(developers in SSA) a tool which makes our job easier and coding faster, it gave
us more time to look into the quality of the code and use of techniques which
would result in more performance efficient code. When saying this I have again
V6.1.01 in mind which by all comments on this list, runs much better, faster and
more reliable than its predcessors. I can also say that I believe that further
improvements are also on the way and definitely you are going to see soon those
dead subroutines disappearing from the code.
At the end, for those who do not like to see AS/SET lines  of code in generated
RPG source, you can choose a 'level of commenting in the generated code'
parameter to be set to 'N' (none) (instead of 'P'=Partial, or 'F'=Full) at
generation time and you will have them all taken out from RPG source. Bellow is
the screen where this can be done (option 7 in ADK):

________________________________________________
 DP05025      Generation Options -  ACP200D

 Run pre-processor . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   Y  Y N
     Run in Batch or Interactive . . . . . . .   B  I B

 Generation options  . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3  1 2 3 4 5
     1=Generate source only
     2=Generate objects only
     3=Generate source and objects
     4=None (Required for interactive pre-process)
     5=Select all required objects for generation

 Level of commenting in generated code . . . .   N   F P N
     F=Full  P=Partial  N=None

 Enter  F1=Help  F12=Cancel
________________________________________________

p.s.: this is not defence of SSA, it is just an opinion from somebody who found
this tool not to be that bad as it is for some other people who prefer RPG.

Regards,
Goran






"Bernard Burchell" <burchelb@connexus.net.au> on 09/18/2000 08:18:07 AM

Please respond to BPCS-L@midrange.com

To:   BPCS-L@midrange.com
cc:    (bcc: Goran Mihajlovic/SSA/US)

Subject:  Re: the ASSET issue again



<plug on>

'AS/SET Quickie Print' can remove all the deleted code lines while leaving
the genuine comments in.  Makes a program much easier to read.  Download:
http://www.precosis.com.au .
</plug>

As for RPG source, in theory you're not supposed to read it.  But if
debugging a program with STRISDB then yes, it's a bit of a strain!
Fortunately ISDB colours the code lines differently so you only need to look
for the comment immediately above an RPG code line.

Bernard Burchell
bburchell@precosis.com.au


-----Original Message-----
From: Chick Doe <Cdoe@barton-instruments.com>
To: BPCS-L@midrange.com <BPCS-L@midrange.com>
Date: Sunday, September 17, 2000 5:45 AM
Subject: the ASSET issue again


>there's been a lot said in the last couple of days about SSA and AS/SET.
while i am not a fan of it, i can understand the logic of writing code in
AS/SET that could then be compiled and run on multiple environments. yes you
will sacrifice performance, but if the intent was to provide improved
functionality at less cost, then i can understand the logic. whether this
was ever delivered or not is another question.
>
>but what drives me absolutely insane is SSA's practice of commenting out
lines in both the AS/SET source and in the resulting RPG source. much o the
complexity in trying to read these damn programs is just trying to decipher
which lines are still executable statements and which are now comments. my
guess is that well over half of all statements in their programs are old
lines of code that are now comments. TAKE THEM OUT AND GIVE US SOURCE
PROGRAMS THAT CAN BE READ!







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